Orchard Supply Hardware

I love OSH as its not so overwhelming as Home Depot and you get more special attention if you need assistance with a project or to locate an item. This location is well organized, stocked with great products, plenty of parking, and wide variety of indoor and outdoor plant selection.
This particular vist was for exterior, gloss paint… May, the associate in the paint section helped me with the different brands, advised that the items on the shelf were clear and when choosing a simple white color you need to get it tinted… as there were at least 10 various shades of white that you can choose from… who knew?! i appreciated the time, patience and ultra friendliness in helping me.
Great customer service!

Lot’s of great products, plenty of parking, good floor service. Fabulous Holiday Deals like no sales tax. Great selection of snacks. Slowest checkout ever!

Excellent selection on indoor plants and gardening stuff

I really want to like this place. They’re conveniently located and have good selection.
The recurring issue is that getting good service at this location is nearly impossible. It’s constantly understaffed: finding someone to help you in the aisles is an endeavor and God forbid you need someone at the workbench to cut something for you. Just today I requested help at the workbench 4 separate times from multiple employees. Apparently none of them could actually help me themselves because they would call for help which would never arrive. I eventually gave up and will cut everything myself at home. This was the worst experience I’ve had here but not entirely out of the ordinary.
Add to that the fact that the POS software they use is by far the slowest I’ve seen, the registers are also chronically understaffed, and nobody working here seems capable of working at anything more than a super leisurely pace even when it gets busy and a line is building up, and it becomes impossible to get in and out of this place quickly.

Nice new look since Lowe’s took over but same terrible customer service. It’s really silly that I have to get back in line if I want to return something and exchange it for something else. Why can’t they just do both transactions at once?

Came in for some flowers, not sure on what get, found something that caught my eye, 3 min in line and on my way after a good greetings from the manager. Now off with my first purchase of a hibiscus tree. In and out with no stress or headaches. Orchard never fails!

This is the largest, most impressive Orchard supply store I’ve ever seen. Had everything I could ever buy here. Bought some coaster wheels that nobody else carried and solved a problem with a custom gate I created.

If all you are looking for is nicely organized isles, and super friendly people this is your place! However, if you need reasonable priced items go to Lowe’s/Home Depot. I needed caulking for my tub– didn’t have it, window pulls — didn’t have it, vinyl molding strips or wood molding strips — NOPE didn’t have that either. Not coming back here.

Great selection of everything you would need. HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE customer service, and I don’t mean like returning something. They have tons of employees, but there is never anyone in the aisles to help. And they never have enough cashiers. Too bad, because as a local business, I’d love to shop at OSH more.

Although it offers a lot, the employees didn’t know the store or its products well. They kept steering me down the wrong aisles and they weren’t familiar with the products I was interested in.

I went in to solve some problems with an unconventional window screen situation in the hopes of ordering screens and mcguyvering something together. I was blown away by how knowledgeable and helpful one particular team member was. Everyone I dealt with was lovely and helpful but Galen really knocked it out of the park. Not only did he know the products and how to use them but his improvisational creative problem solving skills resulted in an amazing plan which I never even imagined. He solved one problem and his solution was so solid that it solved another (related but not the same) problem.
I’m very impressed. I used my neighborhood OSH in Los Angeles and was glad to see them here. I’m over the moon to have visited Berkeley and had the fortune to get Galen’s assistance on the first try!

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the Berkeley OSH. When my son was a newborn we brought him home to no heat in January. The heater died while we were gone. Anyway, we called OSH and they were closing in 5 minutes and we were at least 20 minutes away. Long story short — they stayed open for us so we could buy some portable heaters. Since then I’ve always cut them a lot of slack. I’d go if I was pretty sure they had something, and if in doubt, went somewhere else because that usually meant they wouldn’t have said item.
Now, big remodel, purchased by Lowe’s, the store looks great. I went in on Sunday and they had everything I needed. Put $ 50 to $ 60 worth of products in my cart, but I also needed some landscape bark. It used to be that one corner had the slips you’d pick up to take to the cashier, and then they’d charge you and you’d drive over to the warehouse to pick up heavy items. Well, no slips in the usual location or anywhere else I could locate. However, I noticed that the bark I wanted was $ 5.99 on the walkway out of the store, down the steps. I meandered out, confirmed that’s what I wanted and came back with the product name and price, thinking they’d just check me out and I’d pick up the stuff on my way out.
Here’s where it goes wrong — something like 6 registers open, almost no customers, I wheel into line behind someone getting checked out. Suddenly OSH employee swoops in to tell me that I need to get in the correct line to check out. It turns out that there is a big sign hanging high above the rear registers that says form single line here! Well, I was a bit humiliated because I felt like I was being accused of cutting, when in fact it is impossible to see that sign unless you are directly facing it and looking quite far up.
I approached the registers from an angle where the sign cannot be read. Slightly annoying but ok. I’ll know for next time. Oh, and by the time I got in line, there was no one else in line and the register I had originally gone to was where I ended up.
Big sigh… Put my purchases on the register and tell the cashier that I need some of the bark that is outside and that I couldn’t find the slips to request the product. He looks at me like he is completely confused and has no idea what to do. He pulls a blank slip out of his register and takes to the lady who seems to be supervising all the registers. She comes huffing over to me and loudly tells me I need to go outside and get the SKU number for them. I’ve already told the guy what product I need and the price, but apparently this isn’t sufficient, I need to supply them with their own SKU. (How many people even know what an SKU is?)
I say to her — so you’re telling me I need to walk out there and get the SKU for you so that I can be purchase this product? She says «yes, he can’t leave the register so you have to do it.» Later on all the great answers like «apparently YOU can leave the registers so why don’t you go walk 20 feet to obtain product specific number that you need to sell the product to me, your customer?»
Of course, I didn’t think of that. I just said well, I won’t do that and I don’t want the rest of my stuff. I’ll just go to another local store that will no doubt offer some customer service, and left. Steaming.
Oh OSH, I have for years defended you to all that will listen for that day of kindness for some crazed new parents. But with this big remodel and new ownership and customer-​unfriendly processes, I’m afraid I have to give up on you. And I don’t blame the cashier (been there, done that). He was not given the tools or knowledge to do his job. Huffy lady that loudly told me how it is and let me walk away when I didn’t like it, yes, I do blame you, and your supervisor and on up.
I hope they get their sh*t together, but I’m afraid the microchip has been implanted and they are going the way of the impersonal machine whose customers are here to serve them. It makes me sad.

Over the years this OSH has consistently failed to produce satisfactory customer service. Only one person is manning the paint counter on a Sunday afternoon so I am waiting around with nothing better to do than write this review.
Half the people are just standing there idle, not interested in helping, although there is the occasional exception. Be prepared to chase someone down and don’t expect much other than them possibly pointing you to the right isle.

Perfect hardware store for me. Everything is well organized and staff is friendly, I’ve been coming here often and I always find what I need.

Large
Clean
Organized
Very standard Hardware store. The staff is friendly and will help you get what you need. There’s free private lot parking in the Ashby Plaza so you don’t have to park on the street. The line for the register can get kinda awkward because you don’t know where the line starts forming. Items here are pretty expensive. This is pretty much a standard OSH. It’s pretty nice how it’s conveniently located by Ashby lumbar and right on the border of Emeryville off of I-​80

Are you ****ing serious? Called with a simple ‘is this in stock’ question. After 15 MINUTES and being put on hold at least 5 TIMES, someone picks up again and hangs up. Screw OSH and their garbage service.

Sold me a smelly, moldy Christmas tree, and would not refund my money.
Didn’t find mold until I snipped off the twine at home… a total bait & switch from the nice green tree they showed me, to a tied-​up tree that was supposed to be ‘exactly like it’. I learned my lesson I guess.
I don’t think I was asking too much in requesting a refund … the tree was awfully slimy.
Manager on the phone was brusque and condescending and continually cut me off during the short call, even though I tried to be gracious and understanding because I knew it had rained recently.
He told me bring the whole tree back, which I couldn’t do. I have no car and had rented a truck to bring home the moldy tree, and that cost more than $ 40 … renting a second truck was out of my means.
«Can I bring in just a branch, to show the mold?» «No».
“Can I take some photos of the mold and bring them in?” «No.»
As a special bonus prize, when we tried to remove the moldy tree less than 18 hours after purchase, all the needles fell off. It took almost 3 hours to clean up the huge mess, trailing through the house and down the hallway of my apartment building. I posted photos.
THANKS OSH, enjoy that $ 30.
You screwed over a young lady trying to buy her first Christmas Tree!
Home Depot would’ve given me a refund.

This osh is still my go to hardware store. It is small an be well organized. The small size makes things easier to find. Their customer service is not as good as it used to be though. My guess is that they don’t have enough customers to have someone waiting in the front to direct you anymore. The best times to shop here are during their sales. They often have great prices on end of season gardening tools. Also, their drip irrigation selection is quite comprehensive.

I love this store chain. I can always find what I’m looking for here. They have the craziest things in stock. I’ve shopped at the plant department, the hardware department, had keys made. Their laser cut keys are the most accurate you can get. I’ve never had a problem when I get a key copied here. Make sure you talk to an associate though, the key vending machine will make keys you can’t get copied.
I’ve asked many questions and always get a straight answer. They also spend the time to make sure they give you the right information.

I’d rather do without than shop at Home Depot, so OSH has been my go-​to place for years. Unfortunately, the Berkeley store isn’t as good as it used to be. The selection of plant material isn’t what it used to be, and they have stopped carrying several various things I used to buy there regularly. The customer service isn’t as good as it used to be, either.
Today was particularly disappointing: We moved a year ago, and we still have piles of boxes sitting in our garage, and I decided it was time to bite the bullet and spend money on some garage shelving. I looked onlne and found exactly what I wanted at OSH. I didn’t know it was a tax-​free weekend until we got there, so I was very excited.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have any of the shelving units that I saw online, and what they did have was about twice the amount I was willing to spend per unit. Sadly, we walked away without buying anything… and went to Home Depot, where we found what we wanted at a decent price, but not as low as what OSH had online. We even got good customer service, which was a first for me at Home Depot.
I’m not ready to give up on the Berkeley OSH yet, and I’m not going to run back to Home Depot anytime soon, but I do need more shelving for my garage, and I’m not willing to wait forever.