Today I was searching for a “paint mixer” – one of those twisted metal screw things you attach to a drill and stick in a bucket, to mix paint / grout / whatever. There’s a picture below, for those who are imagination-impaired like me.

Now, I’m generally pretty impatient when it comes to projects. If I have to wait a couple weeks for shipping, I will have likely moved on to something else. However, most big box stores in my area have updated their websites to specify whether an item can be found in-store, or if it must be ordered online.

Home Depot is usually pretty good at this. But today they weren’t. Have a look at the page for the mixer:

This particular page specifies “SOLD ONLINE & IN-STORE”. But how do we check the stock level at our local store? The button to check stock seems to be missing! Have a look at another page:

There’s clearly a “Check Store Inventory” link visible here.

I wonder if we can make it work for the other item?

Open Chrome’s Developer Tools and go to the Network Tab. After clicking the “Check Store Inventory” link, we can inspect the request that’s made.

Success! We can clearly see a skuNumber specified – we should be able to change this to the SKU of the first mixer, the one with the missing link. This should be 1000427837 as per the first image.

Right-click the request, and choose “Open Link In New Tab”. Then simply change “skuNumber=1000145918” in the URL to “skuNumber=1000427837“. Hit enter to visit the newly crafted URL.

You should be greeted with the response, which indicates…

No stock. Anywhere.

Darn. I guess there’s a reason the link is hidden. Perhaps they should hide “[available] IN-STORE”.

Better luck next time.