From a credit card standpoint, the Lowe's card completely blows the Home Depot card away.
The Home Depot card offers 0% for 6 months with purchases over $299, with promotional periods where payments can be extended out to 24 months for larger purchases; keeping in mind that any interest is retroactive, so if your APR is 25% and you made a $1000 purchase with a 24 month 0% offer, then made monthly payments of $40, your remaining balance would only be $40 but since you failed to pay off the entire purchase in the agreed 24 months, you would then be charged $562.50 in retroactive interest! (Keep in mind that the retroactive interest is not exclusive to the Home Depot card. Many store cards work this way, including the Lowe's Card.)
The Lowe's card offers your choice of 5% off of your order or a similar 0% for 6 months on purchases over $299. Having had both cards, Lowe's offers 12-24 month deals more frequently than Home Depot and they also offer extended appliance deals at a lower purchase amount. Additionally, they offer project financing for very large purchases at low fixed APRs over periods up to 84 months, which is more of a loan with fixed payments rather than a promotional financing with retroactive interest if not paid at the end of the period.
Home Depot is backed by Citi, which can be more conservative with their credit lines. Any requests for a credit line increase will be a hard pull. Lowe's is backed by Synchrony and with a decent enough credit profile, it's fairly easy to obtain a $35,000 credit line in a reasonable amount of time. Requests for credit line increases do not result in a hard pull. My own experience is that I had a $1000 starting line with Home Depot, and after taking numerous hard pulls over 5 years with lots of spend through the card I could not get them to increase it. With Lowe's I got a $17,000 starting line and within a year it was at $35,000.
If you have no preference between the two stores and both are available in your market, I strongly suggest Lowe's over Home Depot, even though I personally like my nearest Home Depot store better.
Generally the same, although it's important to note that the two stores often carry different brands or models of the same items. Personally I find the paint to be better at Home Depot but the building materials to be better at Lowe's. For more common items, say a Dewalt lithium ion drill, the pricing is usually identical, even on sales.
Any requests for a credit line increase will be a hard pull. Lowe's is backed by Synchrony and with a decent enough credit profile, it's fairly easy to obtain a $35,000 credit line in a reasonable amount of time. Requests for credit line increases do not result in a hard pull. My own experience is that I had a $1000 starting line with Home Depot, and after taking numerous hard pulls over 5 years with lots of spend through the card I could not get them to increase it. With Lowe's I got a $17,000 starting line and within a year it was at $35,000.
Not a question about the HD but actually about the Lowes. Is $35,000 the cap on the Lowes card, or is a higher limit possible? I went from $2000 to $6000 to $17000 and just got bumped to $35000 last week. Just wondering if I should keep trying or is that the max.
