COUCH DRAMA

On Tuesday my couch was delivered with what I thought at the time was minimal fuss or complications. Someone phoned my at 9am to say my delivery window was between 10am and noon. That’s actually pretty good compared to some delivery services.

Around 11am the delivery driver phoned again and said they’d be there in five minutes and I should come downstairs to meet him. I went down right away and didn’t have to wait for an elevator. Just as I got to the front door, the delivery van drove right up. What awesome timing, this was gonna go great I thought.

Two guys helped delivery my couch, which is one of those combo ones, with a chaise part so you can stretch out your legs. So the two pieces were the big couch part and then the chaise part. There was no wait for the elevator going up, which can be a problem in my building but we lucked out this time.

The delivery dudes were nice enough to get the couch almost right into place in my living room. The two pieces, however, were still covered in plastic wrap and some cardboard. I didn’t pay extra for them to handle all that stuff, so it was left to me. Before the dudes left, they said it was up to me to put on the stubby wooden legs of couch and the chaise part. That’s not a tough job at all, you basically just screw them on.

So, I got to the task of removing all the plastic wrap and cardboard. Wrapped up with the couch was the first set of four legs for the couch. I opened up that package and in less than five minutes, I screwed them on. I then unwrapped the chaise part of the couch and looked for its legs. There was none. I went through all the packaging and there was nothing. I was missing four legs.

I immediately called the furniture store to tell them what happened. I got the delivery coordinator I believe, on the phone. They were fairly nonchalant about hearing that my product arrived incomplete. I’m not even sure they even apologized for having this happen to me. All they said was that I’d have to wait two full days for the legs to be delivered to me because they didn’t do deliveries to my area the next day.

I asked the person on the phone how this could have happened and this was pretty much their reply:

“Oh yeah, sometimes the manufacturer forgets to pack all the parts before it gets shipped out. It happens.”

It happens? Yeah sure, stuff happens, but don’t make it sound like this is an unheard of occurrence. Tell me this doesn’t happen at all or this is rare. Apologize to me and tell me this isn’t the level of service they strive to give their customers. Let me feel like they are doing everything possible to make it right.

I even asked them if I could come down to the store and pick up some legs there. I was told this could not happen. I would have even been fine with taking the legs off the display model. They did not offer this solution.

The only option I was given was to wait two full days while a third of my couch was not usable. At this point, I usually don’t do this type of stuff but I left a Google review. I wanted to be fair because the Internet is full of hyperbole and over reactions. My first thought was that I’d leave a rating of 3/5 stars. Leaving a 1/5 star over some missing legs would be unfair. The couch itself looked great and had no visible defects. It also was delivered in the time frame that the salesman said it would be, eight to ten weeks. In my case, it got delivered in about nine weeks.

So, in my 3/5 star review, I said that after waiting over eight weeks for my couch, it came with some missing legs. I called to get it resolved and it seemed like they weren’t too surprised to hear something had gone wrong and it would take two full days for it to get resolved.

At that point, I submitted the review and had to get back to work because there was something important I had to attend to and also I had some meetings to be at. While I was in one of those Zoom meetings about 40 minute later, my phone started going off. I couldn’t get to my phone because of my meetings.

Once the meeting was over, I checked my phone and I got two separate voicemails. One was from the furniture store from some dude I’d never heard of before. He told me to call them back. Another voicemail was from the original sales dude that sold me the couch in the first place. He also texted me to call him back.

I decided to call the sales dude back. He answered immediately and said they saw the review. Alright, so my review lit a fire under them for some reason. To summarize the conversation, sales dude wanted me to change my review and in exchange they’d actually put some effort into getting me those missing legs as fast as possible. Like it was very clear that the current state of the review was the motivating factor in trying to make things right with me. He even mentioned that he wanted all of this resolved before his boss saw the review.

I told the sales dude that if he got me the legs today or tomorrow, I’d be willing to change the review. He said that he would delivery the legs to me personally and he’d take them from someone if need be. He didn’t give me any time frame, so I just left it at that. He did say that he’d contact me once he got the legs.

After that, I just went about my day and early evening. After the store closed and I didn’t hear anything, I figured that this would probably get resolved tomorrow. At around 8pm I got a text from sales dude and he was gonna swing by my place in fifteen minutes to delivery the legs for me.

I was home, so I told him to come by. I went downstairs fifteen minutes later and he drove by not long after that. He had a box of wooden legs with him, which he gave me. I thanked him for his level of customer service, especially at this hour, well after his working day. I also promised that I’d go upstairs and edit the review that he was so concerned about. After I said goodbye to him, I did indeed go upstairs and changed the review.

I edited to say that there was a problem with the delivery but they went the extra mile to make it right. I also added another star to the review.

In the end everything was ok but a customer shouldn’t have to write an Internet review to get a company to increase their level of customer service. I know I am being naive because everyone understands that a single Tweet can cause a company to care when they wouldn’t have given a damn about a regular phone call.

Anyways, I’m just glad I have somewhere to sit (and stretch out) in my living room.

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