Lowes Companies News

As Thanksgiving gets closer, bargain hunters are scouring the web for various "Black Friday" ads.

Dallas, TX - Macy's, Inc. was one of the top movers of today`s trading session as it rallied 6.44% to close at $19.18 on over 17.68 million shares after the company was upgraded by JP Morgan from Neutral to Overweight.

Lowe's Cos. Inc. wants to unload 67 parcels of vacant land throughout the Southeast, including three in Central Florida, for an undetermined price.

Danks Holdings Ltd says it is closer to being taken over by a joint venture between Woolworths Ltd and Lowes after minimum acceptance conditions were met.

Retailers are trying to get you excited about the holidays by releasing their Black Friday deals weeks in advance.

At Mooresville, NC home improvement retailer Lowe's, CEO Robert Niblock and his wife in January jetted to an industry trade group meeting in Naples, Fla. The company requires Niblock to use corporate aircraft for business and personal trips for "safety and security." The company counts some travel by his wife toward his personal use.

The site of the proposed Lowes Home Improvement store in Leesburg VA is located within a a odor zone overlay.

This overlay district surrounds the Leesburg sewage treatment plant which would be across the street from the Lowes.

Leesburg council is unable to hold out for a similar residential mixed use development at the property purchased by Lowes due to the odor zone.

If approved, the Leesburg Lowes might want to plant some fragrant landscaping.

Magnolia? Honeysuckle?

There’s so many of these it’s hard to keep up with them all. Here we have Lowe’s weighing in with a good, old fashioned…make that new fashioned….politically correct “Dad is an idiot” commercial! I’m not sure who writes commercials but they must hate their fathers.

In this commercial, the cliche overweight dad is telling the smart-ass son how he bargained to have Lowe’s provide free delivery and remove the old refrigerator (that he could have sold on Craigslist for $50 AND had someone else haul it off) while the kid smirks. At the end of the commercial, you see the Lowe’s truck that tells you they offer free delivery and will haul off your old refrigerator. OK, so the dad was blowing a little smoke. Maybe he wouldn’t need to if he was appreciated and honored for providing a good life for his spoiled family! Maybe the kid wouldn’t smirk and treat the old man like an idiot if he was put in a flying headlock! That’s a commercial I’d love to see!

Let AWD tell you about Lowe’s. AWD is from Charlotte originally and Lowe’s, headquartered in NC, was once one of my clients. I have never seen a company treat employees worse. Negative reinforcement and jerk bosses ruled the Lowe’s roost. They were a very difficult client and always wanted something for nothing. I always felt sorry for the line employees who were treated like animals. I don’t know if anything has changed but I doubt it. So Lowe’s can kiss this white dad’s ass! They could make a commercial tossing pies at Al Sharpton and I wouldn’t shop there!

OKEECHOBEE, FL -- Trevor Keezer didn't start working at The Home Depot to make a religious statement. He just wanted to earn money for college. "I want to go to school to become a nurse," said the 20-year-old Okeechobee resident.

Keezer says for 19 months, ever since he started working as a cashier at The Home Depot in Okeechobee, he's worn a button with an American flag on it that reads: "One nation under God, indivisible." Keezer sees the quotation, taken from the pledge of allegiance, as his way of supporting American troops at war, and of expressing his Christian faith.

In December, his older brother Army Spc. Steven Keezer Jr., is scheduled to deploy to Iraq for his second tour of duty. For over a year, Keezer says none of his managers mentioned the button on his Home Depot apron, except one supervisor who commented she liked it.

"She actually wanted to wear it," Keezer said. Then, last month, when he started bringing his Bible to work, Keezer says his manager confronted him about the button.

"That's when I was told it had to come off, or I would be sent home. So they sent me home for six straight days without pay. And then today they terminated me," he said.

Unfortunately, the Lowes card offers no rewards. No points, no cash back, nothing at all. To make matters worse, those projects around the house are definitely not cheap. Just remodeling a kitchen or bathroom can set you back several thousand and up. Especially if I’m spending that much, I better be getting something back. Even the most basic cash back credit cards would give me 1% on that, so why would I pay with a Lowes credit card that’s going to give me nothing?

Okay if this thing isn’t going to give rewards, it better be giving you a darn good interest rate. Well, this is letdown #2… at the time I’m writing this, they have a ridiculous 22.99% APR. So 23% interest compounded? No thank you!

Fine Print Warning: Now this is definitely sneaky and can slip by even the most savvy shoppers. Because the card has no rewards and a crappy APR, they need a gimmick to get people to apply. And that gimmick is currently an offer for 0% interest and no payments for 6 months on new purchases of $299 or more. Sounds like a deal, right?

After 7 consecutive quarters of sales and profit declines, massive payroll cuts at stores, can Lowe's afford to still sponsor events like MerleFest 2010?

MerleFest was founded in 1988 in Memory of Eddy Merle Watson as a fundraiser for Wilkes Community College and to celebrate “traditional plus” music.

MerleFest is produced each year by the Wilkes Community College Endowment Corporation and managed by the staff of the college’s Development Office. The event is the primary fundraiser for Wilkes Community College.

Wagenhals had never been to court before. A former teacher who works as curriculum developer at Lakeside Educational Network, she clearly doesn't relish conflict.

But she had paid more than $7,000 for new carpet and flooring in her Maple Glen home, and two rooms had the wrong flooring installed. Waking up to the results every day was a nagging reminder that she had wasted her money - part of a small inheritance from her father, who had lived with her during his final years.

Wagenhals got her day in court Oct. 14. Last week, Lowe's and a subcontractor fixed part of the problem at their expense - an outcome Wagenhals says she would have welcomed on Day 1, back in July 2007, when the mistake occurred.

It's not clear why Wagenhals' problem took more than two years and a lawsuit to resolve. But her story illustrates several things that can go wrong with home-improvement projects, and one way of resolving a seemingly intractable dispute.

Young and old threw mullet at the Mullet Toss contest sponsored by Bozo's Seafood. Trophies and plaques were given as awards for those that threw their fish the farthest in several age categories.

Almost 200 children participated in the CHIPS child identification program, generating child ID kits for their parents in case their child was ever lost. Eight hundred children participated in the Lowe's of Pascagoula children's work shop, building various woodworking projects. The Sandhill Crane folks had a baby alligator at the festival that children could pet and learn more about the wildlife in our area.

What is the latest rumor at Lowe's? Answer: Are Install Managers going away?

That is the question Lowe's store employees are beginning to ask. After weeks of rumors of a Installation Call Center test program, word is spreading like wild fire.

Of course, Associates in the stores that manage the program are concerned about their jobs. It appears Lowe's is secretly planning to move most functions of the Installed Sales programs from the stores to a centralized Call Center.

Lowe's Executives alluded to a "Centralized Project Management" initiative on a conference call with investors in September, but gave little details.

There are still many unaswered questions that are leaving many employees concerned about their jobs being so close to the holidays.

Nicholas Davydow is wanted by the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office for failure to appear in Superior Court, Woodbury, NJ.

A previous bench warrant for Davydow for failing to appear in court on the same charges in June was rescinded.

On Oct. 29, 2008 a Newfield police officer observed a man he recognized as Davydow entering a pickup truck at a borough liquor store. Aware of an arrest warrant for Davydow for theft in Bordentown, the officer stopped the defendant's vehicle.

The officer observed a large number of circuit breakers in the truck. As a result of the officer's investigation, in cooperation with the Lowe's home improvement chain loss prevention staff, Davydow was charged on Nov. 19 with receiving electrical equipment as stolen property from a Lowe's store in Delaware and with trafficking in the stolen items.

A Gloucester County grand jury indicted Davydow on April 9 on receiving stolen property and fencing charges.

Home improvement chain Lowe's recently finalized a lease and soon will start constructing a large store on San Francisco's Bayshore Boulevard at the same spot - a long-vacant lumber yard - that Home Depot walked away from after the economy went south.

The Lowe's store is one of the few projects going forward in the city during a time when construction loans are hard to obtain and demand for new retail space has all but dried up.

"We see this as a wonderful opportunity to serve our customers and we don't have a retail store within San Francisco city limits," said Lowe's spokeswoman Maureen Rich.

You've probably seen the commercials touting the ease of buying appliances from Lowe's: Free next-day delivery, installation and removal of the old appliance. So, it had come time to do some major remodeling around our house, and the first item on the list was a new Bosch dishwasher. It took more than 30 days to get it into the store, but on a Saturday afternoon recently Lowe's called to inform me the washer was in. "When are you going to come in and pick it up?" they asked.

I reminded the salesman of the company's ads: free delivery and installation, and haul-off of the old appliance. "Oh," he replied. "You want us to do that?"

A 77-year-old Briar Creek Township man was found dead at Lowe's Home Improvement Center in West Hazleton on Sunday afternoon, borough police said.

Police said they believe Stephen Dziwura of Davis Hill Road died Saturday while shopping in the outdoor section of the lawn and garden center.

His body was discovered at 12:26 p.m. Sunday, police said, and Luzerne County Deputy Coroner Jeff Stock pronounced Dziwura dead.

Police continue to investigate, but no foul play is suspected, they said.

Ed Golushka, a manager at the West Hazleton Lowe's, deferred comment on the incident to a corporate spokesperson at the company's North Carolina headquarters.

Lowe's has hired Atlantic Retail Properties to dispose of excess real estate in five Southeast states. The assets include 67 parcels of land and one 50,000-square-foot store, according to Atlantic. Last month, Lowe's announced that it was cutting back its 2010 store opening plans to 35 to 45 new stores. As a result of these plans, the company decided to walk away from a number of future store projects, resulting in a $48 million write-off.

The competition watchdog's concerns over Woolworths Ltd's proposed $87.6 million takeover of Danks Holdings Ltd has been hailed as a sound first step toward preventing a duopoly in both the hardware and home improvement sectors.