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| - This review is long, but you are likely to save yourself weeks of wasted time and frustration by reading it.
We wanted to replace our sectional and unfortunately stopped at this branch of Ashley Furniture. A sales associate noticed that we weren't really enthusiastic about anything and mentioned to us that there was a big sale coming up. We did the math and based on the savings, waited a few days for the sale and bought the sectional plus a dresser and a chest on December 18th.
We were in no particular rush to receive any of the items and asked when we could expect delivery of the furniture for planning purposes only. The sales associate checked the computer and advised us that Jan. 02nd would be possible. Just to emphasize a point here, this was her suggestion not our request. We made arrangements with a moving company to come in and remove our old, huge sectional before Ashley's scheduled delivery. On December 30th, 2013, a few days before scheduled delivery, we got a call from Ashley customer service (I think customer disservice is a more fitting name) advising us that they would not be able to deliver as promised, but would now need to reschedule for Jan 09th, 2014. The delay wasn't a huge issue. However, the agent had a disclaimer "subject to further delay". That caught our attention and we decided to revisit the store to investigate further.
Interestingly, when we called to cancel the pick-up of our old sectional, the lady on the phone was quite familiar with Ashley and their delays. Her exact words were "Oh, it's Ashley. It happens all the time". This is not an isolated event.
We asked for a manager and after a brief delay, we were introduced to Alex. He listened, checked the computer and then advised us of a few things:
- We'd need to call customer service (again) on our own. There was nothing that he could do.
- If he tried to use internal channels to communicate within Ashley, the company he works for, it would be of less use than if we called in ourselves. He said that they give us, the customers, higher priority. If that's true, I can't imagine how low his priority would be as it is clear to us that we don't matter to customer service. It felt more like passing the buck to get us out of the store.
As a last ditch effort before leaving the store, we asked which piece was not in stock. An agent checked the computer and realized that it was just one piece of the sectional- everything else was there. After some back and forth, we got them to agree that if there were any further delays, that we would be happy to receive the pieces that they already had in stock on the Jan 9th with the missing piece delivered at a later date. Alex gave us his word that we would not be charged a second $79.99 delivery fee. He assured us that the second fee would be taken care of and if there were any other problems, just give him a call.
On January 06th, 2014 my wife called Ashley customer disservice to see if everything was OK. They advised her that there was going to be another delay. My wife explained to the customer disservice representative what happened and asked about delivery of the pieces that they had in stock. She said she'd have to clear that with a manager and get back to us. When she called back, she advised that it would not be possible to make two separate deliveries.
My wife decided to go see Alex at the store. This chameleon showed his true colors today. He was gruff, irritated and even more unhelpful. He regurgitated his favorite line "there's nothing I can do", this time without the façade of caring about the customer. To make things worse, when he checked the computer system to see which piece was causing the delay, he advised my wife that now two pieces of the sectional were out of stock. My wife was shocked. She asked how was that possible. He did not give a clear answer. However, the inference here is that they delivered the piece to another customer.
That was the last straw for us. We realized that we might have waited until March 2014 (or later) for delivery if Ashley ever thought highly enough of us to eventually deliver the items that we paid for. I asked my wife to request a refund. While relaying the request to Alex, my wife started to say to him that even though I would like a refund, she is not quite ready to give up. Alex cut her off mid-sentence and without even the pretense of caring, Alex started the refund process. My wife, out of curiosity, asked what does he think about Yelp reviews. As he turned his back on her and walked away, he said quite clearly "I don't believe in those things".
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