A customer who previously went viral after finding a $100 garden bed at Home Depot ringing up for a penny has gone viral again for sharing a step-by-step guide on how to find Home Depot penny items.
TikTok user @toolswithsoalz316 shared the advice in a video posted Monday. The clip has received 1 million views and over 28,000 likes as of Wednesday afternoon.
In the nearly 10-minute video, @toolwithsoalz316 says he is ready to “Expose Home Depot.”
The TikToker says he will help the audience determine what departments to look for penny deals in, what to do if they find a penny deal, and the meanings behind the store’s price tags.
“Also going to show you how to tell if you’re in a poorly run store,” he adds, “which is good for you if you are because that means there are penny deals to be had.”
The TikToker starts by informing viewers that they are unlikely to find a penny deal in the clearance section, but he will explain the clearance price tags regardless.
He records an item with a price tag reading $19.00 that was updated on Oct. 20th. He says since the price ends in double zeros, the item is at its final markdown cost before being returned to the manufacturer. “These items are not typically pennied out,” he adds.
Next, he says another tag to be on the lookout for is one with a price ending in $0.06. “You can see this was put out here on July 24th,” he says, pointing out an item marked down to $38.06 from its original $49.98 cost.
He explains that items ending in $0.06 “will go down to $0.03, an additional discount” three weeks after the date on the tag.
According to the TikToker, an item marked with a $0.03 is at its lowest markdown price. As he explains, this is because these items are not sent back to the manufacturer since they are “pretty much disposable.”
Then, he moves on to his next tip: how to know if you’re in the right Home Depot to get penny deals. “Almost all of them are,” he adds.
He says the first thing to look for is whether there are items on top of the “end caps” of the center aisles of the store. “If there is anything on these ends caps up top,” he says, filming an aisle, “there should not be anything up there. It’s a hazard.”
Another thing to look for is whether items are stored in the correct section of the store. “These are light bulbs,” he says, pointing out a blue box in the electrical aisle. “Those should be over on aisle 1 with light bulbs.”
The TikToker says this is a clear indication of a “poorly run store.”
Next, he explains the difference between the price tag colors. He says white tags are regularly priced, and yellow tags are for clearance or specially marked items.
He records a box with a yellow tag and adds that yellow tags “should never go on just a plain box.”
“As you can tell in this store, a lot of mislabeled product,” he says, recording a shelf full of plain boxes stamped with yellow stickers.
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Next, the TikToker shares the four departments that he says are most prone to penny deals. He thinks this is because “they don’t have enough staff to run the department, or there are certain limitations, like a desk, that prevent people from taking care of their overhead.”
He says plumbing is the first department you should look for a penny deal in. “Plumbing is typically where you’re gonna get your biggest savings,” he says, “because they have a combination of big and little items.”
The second area the TikToker says you can find penny deals is electrical. “Home Depot is open for over 160 hours a week. For 40 of those hours, they have someone working in the electrical department,” he says. For the rest of the time, he says they just have someone in a floater position checking in.
The third place to check for penny items is “No Home.”
“When a new item comes in, and they don’t have a place for it down here on the shelves,” he says, “they are supposed to stick it in the no home base until corporate tells them where to put it.”
However, he says that “MET teams,” the ones that stock the shelves at night, often “don’t look at those reports because they are busy putting stuff overhead.” This makes the items sit there long enough until they get pennied out.
The next staffing issue he notices is in the paint department. “Those people don’t come out from behind that desk typically,” he says. “So all of this stuff doesn’t get pulled down or stocked out.”
He records the shelves in the paint department and says to look for items with codes that include 252.
“Put that into your app. If that number doesn’t come up, chances are it’s gonna be a penny,” he adds.
The last department where he says customers can find penny deals is the garden section. He says this department is understaffed because they usually “have part-timers working back here.”
In the comments section, many viewers thanked @toolswithsoalz316 for sharing the information, but some still had questions.
“How do you check the price?” one commenter asked. “You have to ask a floor associate,” @toolswithsoalz316 responded.
“Putting this HD on blast, expose them! Which location?” another questioned. “They asked me not to mention their location,” @toolswithsoalz316 replied.
One viewer joked, “they gonna hire you to run the store lol,” to which @toolswithsoalz316 responded, “They couldn’t afford me.”
Other commenters accused the TikToker of lying.
“Your video is very inaccurate,” one said. “Prove it,” @toolswithsoalz316 challenged in response.
“Penny items aren’t to be sold,” another wrote. “Yet people buy them daily and I have shown several of my penny purchases,” @toolswithsoalz316 replied.
The Daily Dot reached out to @toolswithsoalz316 via TikTok direct message and Home Depot via email.