On Memorial Day (which, for those of you who can’t remember, happened on May 28th this year), Felicity and I went to the San Jose Levitz showroom to buy a couch. They gave us a sweet deal on a lovely leather number and, as part of the sale, threw in free delivery. Before taking our order, the salesperson warned us that they would have to backorder the model we wanted, but that it would arrive within a few weeks. It was a good enough deal that we were fine with that.
A few weeks later, I got a call saying that the couch would take a little longer than expected due to heavy demand. The salesperson assured me that we’d have our couch within 90 days. He gave me the option of canceling my order and getting my deposit back, but I decided to wait it out. I didn’t think I’d be able to find a similar couch at that price, so I figured it would be worth the wait.
Time continued to pass. The Levitz website happily informed me that the estimated delivery timeframe for my couch was early September. We waited. Our living room waited. Our Netflix rentals waited.
Finally, late last week, I got a call from the salesperson saying our couch had arrived “early”. I paid the balance of the order and scheduled a delivery for the 19th — today. He tried to charge me an $80 delivery fee until I reminded him that I had ordered the couch during a free delivery sale. He agreed to waive the fee and confirmed that our couch would be delivered on the 19th.
When 5:00 rolled around today and the couch hadn’t appeared, I called to see where it was. The San Jose store told me to call the 1-800 number. The 1-800 number told me the couch had been scheduled for pickup, not delivery, and that I would have to call the store and reschedule. I called the store again and waited about 20 minutes before someone finally answered. I started to explain the situation and the woman on the other end interrupted and said, “You need to call the Santa Clara warehouse, they handle deliveries.”
Finally, after I said “please stop talking and listen to me” three times, she shut up and let me explain the problem. She transferred me to the original salesperson, who apologized but for some reason thought it necessary to inform me repeatedly that “the ‘d’ for ‘delivery’ somehow got changed to a ‘p’ for ‘pickup’”. As if that made everything okay.
He rescheduled the delivery for Thursday, which he swore was the earliest day they could possibly deliver. Wonderful.
Thanks Levitz. I guess we’ll be buying our furniture at Ikea from now on.
Update (2007-09-20): I got a call today from a gentleman who identified himself as Levitz’s head of store operations. He apologized for the problems I experienced, assured me they would be addressed, and offered me a $150 gift certificate (which I turned down).
It was a very nice gesture and I’m glad to hear that they’re making an effort to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. I’m not sure whether they learned of my dissatisfaction by finding this blog post or by reading my post-delivery feedback, but either way I’m grateful that they tried to make things right.
Update 2 (2007-09-20): A few hours after the last update, I got a call from the CEO (!) of Levitz. He reiterated their apologies and assured me that they’re working hard on improving things to make sure mixups like this don’t happen. He also asked if there was any way they could make it up to me, but I politely declined.