A man thought he was simply trying to track down a missing Home Depot order. Instead, Jason Chao says he ended up dealing with repeated delivery promises that never came true, confusing phone calls, and a customer service agent he suspected wasn’t human at all.
Chao, who posts on TikTok as @jasonthechao, shared his experience in a video. He claimed he had ordered a vanity from Home Depot and was initially told it would arrive on a Monday. When the delivery reportedly never showed up, he tried calling the company. “On Tuesday, I tried to call, and the automated voice message would just send me to silence,” Chao claimed, adding that “I would press the buttons, and then it would just send me to silence.”
Things didn’t improve when he went to the store in person. Employees contacted a hotline and reportedly told him the vanity would arrive on Friday, but that delivery date came and went, too. After going through the same cycle again, Chao returned to the store and apparently asked to speak directly with the hotline himself.
The agent could be AI
When Chao finally got through to the hotline, he began questioning whether he was speaking to a real person. He described the agent as unusually patient and accommodating, and said the person’s accent made him even more suspicious. “I swear to God, the agent is AI,” Chao said in the video. “They are way too patient. They are way too accommodating. Their accent is bizarre,” he claimed.
He apparently decided to test his theory by asking the agent where they were from. According to Chao, the person said Atlanta, but reportedly couldn’t answer his question about the Atlanta Braves. When he asked about the accent, the agent allegedly described themselves as being “from a Latin country.” An accent alone, however, says nothing about whether a caller is human.
Other Home Depot customers have taken service complaints to TikTok, including one shopper who was upset over a refused refund. That customer’s attempt to find support online reportedly backfired.
Chao found the exchange strange enough that he began openly questioning whether the agent was real while other people were nearby. Eventually, he learned that a third-party provider was apparently handling his delivery and that the vanity was reportedly in San Bernardino, which he described as being far from his location.
But calling that provider didn’t bring much relief. Chao claimed he encountered another agent he believed was AI, leaving him unsure about both the delivery process and the people he had spoken with. “I don’t know if my vanity even ever existed, or if any of these human beings are real,” he said. He ended the story by saying he would have to buy another vanity.
Chao’s experience comes as more companies experiment with artificial intelligence in customer service. Earlier in 2026, Home Depot and Google announced a pilot program across 50 stores using Google’s Gemini technology for customer experience. The companies said the system was designed to help customers bypass complicated phone menus and resolve home improvement questions through natural conversations.
According to the announcement, the technology could help customers resolve problems four times faster than traditional phone menu navigation. However, the existence of that pilot does not confirm that the agents Chao spoke with were AI, or that the system was responsible for his delivery problems. Home Depot’s side of Chao’s account could not be verified.
Online orders going wrong have frustrated other shoppers too, including a woman who said she received two bizarre items she never purchased from Amazon. She suspected the mix-up was part of a scheme.
Published: Oct 24, 2026 10:00 am