A few months ago I had the displeasure of going couch shopping. It's
not just that I hate shopping but shopping for furniture is
particularly terrible. You are buying an item which will serve as a
centerpiece for your living room and one you'll hopefully have for a
decade. And by the way it's going to cost a fortune and oh and there
is no way to do this reliably online
We went to Huffman Koos, Raymore and Flannigan, Bob's discount and any
one of ten different Italian leather dealers on the local highway and
yet finding a couch which looked decent and didn't feel like you were
sitting on a bean bag or stone steps seemed impossible.
We finally found one that served most of our needs (light brown
leather, low back, modern style, small profile etc.) but were told by
the Huffman Koos guy that we'd be looking at a six month delivery.
This sounds great if you are planning a trip around the world but for
somebody who needed a place to park my ass tonight, it just didn't
work.
We found a similar, albeit not as perfect a couch at Macy's a few days
later and when the told us it had a 10 week delivery it felt like we
were stuck in an endless loop. I spoke with a few people and most
agreed that furniture from a place other than Ikea would take that
long to be delivered..and I should expect delays
I spoke with the sales guy at length and he assured me up and down
that the 10 week lead time was realistic. He said he sold hundreds of
these couches and the delivery date was always met
Fast forward 5 weeks. I get an automated call saying delivery had
been pushed back by a month, so our 10 weeks all of a sudden turned
into 14 weeks. I'm annoyed but with little desire to go out shopping
again, I eat it.
Fast forward another 5 weeks and another automated call comes in
saying that on-top of the first month flea they were pushing it back
another six weeks. On the day I was suppose to get delivery I was
told to expect it in 10 weeks which was the same timeline they have me
when I showed up 10 weeks earlier. So in two and a half months, I am
back at square one.
I called and complained to the Indian call center girl who read
directly off of a script about how bad and personally felt and said
"if I could deliver the couch myself, I would do it today" fifteen
different times as if she was caught in a script loop.
She offered me a $100 gift card which for a delay of $800 worth of
luggage might have been acceptable but when talking about a nearly
$4000 couch is like throwing in a free cup holder on a Lexus
F you Macy*s, your crappy delivery, your Indian call center, your
cheap suit wearing sales-staff and that stupid * in your name
$4K for just a one-piece couch? Sounds like you are buying quality stuff nowadays. That is a positive sign.
ReplyDeleteGood stuff takes a while to make. Ask any drug dealer, pot farmer, or girl putting on makeup. Be patient, grasshopper.