I walked into the tool rental section and described the job I need to do, one of their tool rental guys handed me a tool and rung me up for a 24 hour rental.
When I got home I prepared my work area and was about to start when I saw that it was entirely the wrong tool for the job - so I drove right back and returned the tool.
The manager on duty refused to budge on charging me the rental fee even though I didn't use the tool. I saw that they do have the right tool that I needed all along, and asked to just exchange the tool and pay the difference if the other tool cost more, again the manager would not budge. He cited the opportunity cost of the tool not being available for other people to rent, but they have several of that tool in stock and it's not like there was a line of people trying to rent it during the couple hours it took me to drive home, get ready to work and then drive the tool back - so he was just using that as an excuse, it has no merit.
That's just bad customer service - they could have worked with me for a win-win but they chose to lose me as a customer, waste my time and waste their customer service personnel's time as I pursue satisfaction.
Update: After talking at length to the general managers of 2 different Home Depot stores and a couple of other people within the organization they have refunded my money and the senior management apologized to me profusely.
I still find myself disappointed that the manager-on-duty from my initial visit wasn't prepared to see the win-win right up front when it was in his face, and I hope that this experience triggered some training updates to make life easier and more productive for everyone.