Lowe’s Fiasco: You get what you pay for, or do you?

We recently installed a cedar fence and wanted to dress it up using copper-topped post caps. I went to a few local places and decided I could get the best bulk deal at Lowes or Home Depot. So, I bought a few boxes and brought them home. They looked great. Here’s a photo of two of the copper post caps:

I put a few of them on the posts and was so happy until one of my friends said, ” Hey, that one looks strange”. I took it off the post and to my horror, I realized it wasn’t copper-topped at all. It was plastic painted to look like copper! Ahhhhhhhhhh! Finally, they fooled me. I got out the packaging and to make it worse, both packages, the ones with real copper and the plastic painted ones, had the same SKU and barcode (72215 . 189331, 7 53904 00001 9). Both were made in China by the same company (Maine Ornamental) with elaborate packaging that hides the details and looks the same. There was no way I could have discerned one from the other without removing the packaging and flipping them over to reveal the plastic. I was fooled. Then I thought, what if they do this with our plumbing next?

Two days ago I drove out to Lowes and confronted a manager who told me he would call purchasing and research it. He said Lowes probably didn’t know about the change and he was shocked. He took my number and e-mail and said they would contact me. I am not even a bit surprised that I haven’t received and e-mail or phone call from them. Are you? What I can tell you is that I went to Limback Lumber, a family-owned business in Ballard, and their post caps are made in the USA of real copper. I also went to Home Depot and they buy copper-topped caps made in Tacoma that are also real. So, the real ones are still out there, at least for now. By the way, the one in the photo at the top on the left is the one with a real copper top. Could you tell the difference without flipping them over?