Easy as 1,2,3 ?????? (Furniture123.co.uk)

Member Name: bia49

Product:	Furniture123.co.uk
Date:	30/07/07 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: wide range to suit all tastes and pockets

Disadvantages: Abysmal customer services

I had to downsize last year and one of the consequences was that my old dining room furniture was way too big for my tiny new dining room.

I knew exactly what I wanted to replace it but it took many months of trawling through websites and visiting local furniture stores until I found what I was looking for.

I finally found the perfect dining suite at furniture123.co.uk. In their favour, the website is easy to use, informative and has links to the other items in the collection. The website did lack some of the more exciting features I had come across other sites - the best of these was a room planner which allowed you to input your room dimensions, select the pieces of furniture you wanted, place them in various positions and then see a 3D scale plan of your room. A fantastic idea for an online company, when it is hard to visualise the actual size of the furniture from a photo. However, I digress, back to furniture123. There is a very wide range on offer to suit all tastes and budgets. Moreover, there are portals to it from several cashback sites, giving up to 3% cashback. The furniture I ordered was in the mid price range and was competitively priced. I ordered a table, six chairs and a matching dresser (which came in two pieces, a glazed top and a lower sideboard). My credit card was charged for the full amount (over £1000) at the point of order and I was quoted 4-6 weeks expected delivery time. There was no option to pay a deposit and then pay for the items upon delivery. I think that this should be available for goods with long delivery times.

I was pleasantly surprised when, only 3 weeks later, I got a call from the couriers to say that my goods were ready for delivery. I was told to expect them late Friday afternoon - they turned up at 2pm (not what I would class late afternoon). It became immediately apparent that the lower part of the dresser was missing. When I mentioned this to the delivery people, they claimed to have no idea about it and told me to call funriture123. I was a little bit suspicious that the notion on the boxes (1 of 6, 2 of 6) etc had been changed to (1of 5 etc). At some point there were six boxes, but now there were only 5! I called the customer helpline right away and spoke to a very pleasant operative, who called the couriers and then told me that it seemed as if the package had been left in the warehouse and that the couriers would phone me first thing Monday morning to arrange delivery. OK, a genuine mistake and a rapid solution - or so I thought.

At this point I started to unpack the other items. The table needed assembling and according to the instructions there should have been two different types of legs. The legs have a wide face and a narrow face and the wide face should be on the long edge of the table. Anyone with even the remotest grasp of geometry would realise that you needed two sets of legs that were mirror images of each other. I was sent four identical legs. I assembled the table anyway and it didn't look too bad. One of the legs was an absolute nightmare to fit as the predrilled hole didn't quite align with the bolt!

Back to the delivery saga. When the promised phonecall didn't arrive on Monday, I decided it was time to switch to e-mail communication - I always like to communicate by e-mail rather than phone as I get a permanent record of what I have said, and when I have said it. I asked them to contact the couriers urgently and rearrange a delivery date and this time I also mentioned the asymmetrical table legs.

Two days later, there was still no phonecall from the couriers and still no response from customer services at furniture123. I wrote a second e-mail, this time stating that if I did not have a satisfactory response within 24 hours, I would be sending the entire lot back and demanding a full refund.

24 hours elapsed and still no response. Their website boasts that customer enquiries via e-mail are answered within 2 days. This is fine for a general enquiry, but when a customer has an urgent request, this is not a good response time and I was still waiting for a reply to my first e-mail, sent 3 days previously.
As it became obvious that they couldn't be bothered to reply to my e-mails, I decided to try and phone again. After more than 5 mins on hold (long distance, peak rate), I hang up in disgust - I was fuming by this point and didn't think it fair to give the person who was unfortunate enough to pick up the phone an earbashing. I wrote yet another e-mail, this time I told them that I would be reporting them to trading standards and to the police - as far I was concerned they had stolen my money. They were ignoring my pleas to have the missing piece delivered.

In the end, I decided to cut out the middleman and contacted the couriers directly. I was told that they would check the warehouse for the missing item and call me back by the end of the day. As promised, there was a message on my answerphone that evening saying that the sideboard had been found and would be delivered the following afternoon. Result! It would mean rearranging some stuff at work so that I could get away early to take the delivery, but at least I knew my furniture was on its way.

You can imagine my surprise when the doorbell rang at 7.30 the next morning. I dragged myself out of bed and looked out the window to see a big delivery van. Bleary eyed, I opened the door and my sideboard was carried into my dining room. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought afternoon meant just that - after noon. However, these couriers seemed to be working on Antipodean time!!

I guess I am just going to have to live with the table with dodgy legs. I have neither the time nor the energy to try and get furniture123 to send me a replacement. A week later, I have still not had a single reply to any of my e-mails. I think a stiff letter to the head of customer services is in order - fat lot of good that will do though.

Now, I accept that ultimately the delivery fiasco was down to the couriers - it was them who inadvertently left the package in the warehouse. However, my contract was with furniture123, not the couriers and so it was really up to them to sort out my problem. In the end I had to sort it out myself. I am totally disgusted with the standard of customer services and will certainly not be shopping there again. I am also posting reviews such as this one on as many customer review sites as possible to spread the news of my shoddy treatment.

Summary: Customer services ignored my e-mails and made no attempt to trace my missing delivery.