Shelves AGAIN Sigh! Won't This Guy Ever Shut Up About It? (RANT - With a happy ending!)

I have a "Pro" account at Home Depot.  In theory it gets me better pricing on bigger orders.  The size orders I never make since I quit contracting.  I decided to go ahead and order the rest of the shelves for the other wall of the 40' container online yesterday, and have them delivered today.  Time is money after all.
A few minutes after I placed the order I received an email letting me know my Pro account had reached a "Perk Level."  The perk turned out to be $25 in Pro Bucks.  Cool.  With $25 Pro Bucks burning a hole in my virtual pocket I went online and placed a $21 dollar order for a nice Klein 11 way screwdriver with that nice padded rubber handle Klein is famous for Valco inventing.  It said it would be delivered today.  (That was yesterday.)  My new shelves weren't even going to be delivered until the next day (today).  Wow!  So Cool!
I was more excited about my new screwdriver than the shelves.  About 20 minutes later I received an email letting me know my screwdriver order was canceled, and if I wanted my Pro Bucks back I would have to stop working, get in my truck spending my time and my gas to drive to their local store, and stand in line at customer service to get a gift certificate.  That rubbed me the wrong way.  Kinda reminded me of when Home Depot started selling Rigid branded tools and offering a lifetime warranty, but made it so hard to actually warranty a tool it was hardly worth it.  I haven't bought a Home Depot Rigid tool in at least 15 years.  I have heard its better now, but I still don't trust them.
Instead of shutting down machines and spending more of my time and money than it was worth I went on the live chat and tried to get customer service to just put the money back on the payment method.  No.  Oh by the way, no.  And um, no.  They weren't having it, but about the third time the chat agent told me I had to go to the store and stand in line for my gift certificate I lost it.
"No.  No, I do not have to go to the store.  If I had wanted to go the store I would have saved the $79 delivery fee on my net total 1785 dollar shelving order. How about you keep the 25 Pro Bucks and I'll cancel the order for the shelving, and if you pull any games on that I paid with PayPal.  It might take a while, but I will get 100% of my real purchase back from PayPal without going to the store!"
They tried to "reasonable" me or "manage" me, but I had already gone into my Home Depot Account and canceled the order.  I kept arguing with the live chat agent until I saw the automated functions of their website showed my order as canceled.  Then I told him to put the Pro Bucks where the sun don't shine and disconnected.
PayPal shows the transaction as canceled this morning.
Typical rant.  I know.  Wah!  Wah! Wah!  Tell it to somebody who cares. LOL.
The thing is I actually like the Home Deport shelf/racking for this application.  I had actually found a similar style the same size a little cheaper from CostCo.  The CostCo shelving has two issues.  There is no CostCo in Yuma, and each section comes with only 4 shelves instead of 5. Still I was going to do almost anything rather than buy from Home Depot.  Stubbornness like this rarely if ever makes a difference, but I've always voted with my wallet.
I searched dozens of sources on line and read pages of search engine results.  The CostCo shelves were the only thing close enough to satisfy me.
I added four sections of the CostCo shelving to the shopping cart on their website.  The Home Depot Shelves were 389.  The CostCo Shelves were 399 (more) discounted to 349 (less).  Then the there was, "Add to cart for final pricing." Okay lets see what the penalty, taxes, and shipping add up to.  There was no shipping charge.  With taxes and a 5% penalty for not being a CostCo member the total billed to my credit card was $1087 delivered.  That's apx $272 per set.
Since I'll be linking the shelving together (yes it is also link able) I'll wind up with two extra uprights to add to my scrap metal pile.
The CostCo shelving will arrive on Tuesday, and I wrote the following letter to Home Depot and posted it on their Facebook page on several threads thanking them for saving me so much money.
Dear Home Depot,
I would like to thank you for the disingenuous (in my opinion) perk. That resulted in $25 in pro bucks that in my opinion, you never intended to honor.  That perk came from an almost eighteen hundred dollar purchase online. When you didn't honor the purchase I made with the pro bucks, and you told me I had to stop working, and spend my time and gas to go stand in line at the customer service desk at the local store in order to get a gift certificate wasting more of my time and gas than it was worth, I canceled the original purchase before you could process it.
I spent the next couple hours, yes I am aware of the irony, searching for an alternative product that would fit the exact same application.  I found one at a savings of more than seven hundred dollars.
I want to thank you for what, in my opinion, can only at best be described as embedded institutional deceptive practices.  Thank you.
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Bob La Londe
CNC Molds N Stuff
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