She’s Young and With It

Let me preface this by telling you that this is going to be one long entry. It takes quite a bit for me to get angry enough to write a whole entry about bad customer service, especially one complete with names.

Timeline of Events:

April 12, 2008: We ordered a new sofa in a custom fabric/arrangement from Urban Living. We paid a deposit of half of the total cost of the sofa.

Sometime in May: I called to check the status of our order since I had not heard one peep from Urban Living since placing the order.

June 24, 2008 - late afternoon: I received a phone call that our sofa was finally in the store.

June 25, 2008 - morning: I called Urban Living and spoke to someone about our delivery options. I told them that we would probably come in that weekend to pick up the sofa ourselves.

June 25, 2008 - afternoon: Just so that we would know all of our options, Clint called and spoke to the outside delivery guy (Urban Living does not deliver) to obtain the details about using him for delivery. Delivery dude reminds him, per Urban Living’s request, that we still owe for the sofa.

June 25, 2008 - evening: After discussing our options, we decide to pay the delivery person to deliver the sofa rather than deal with the hassle of U-Haul. Left a message for the delivery guy.

June 26, 2008 - early afternoon: Still no returned call from the delivery guy so Clint calls him again, finally gets him on the phone and sets up delivery for Sunday, June 29th. Delivery dude reminds him again, per Urban Living’s request, that we still owe for the sofa.

After he finalizes the delivery details, I call Urban Living and attempt to make the final payment over the phone with my credit card. She takes an enormous amount of information from me, questions me when I tell her the billing address is a PO Box (Yes, I have a PO Box. I know where my bill is sent. Why question me?) and tells me that she must have a signature so she will be faxing me the receipt to sign.

Approximately 30 minutes later, I receive a phone call from Urban Living. She tells me that my info does not match up and I will have to come in to the store to sign ($10 says she ran our physical address instead of the PO Box). I explain that I can’t get into the store until Saturday to sign but that I have already set up delivery for Sunday. I ask if that will be a problem. I am told vaguely that I just need to pay before delivery can take place. Since Saturday comes before Sunday, I figure I am OK.

June 28, 2008 - morning: I check my messages and whatdoyaknow? There is a message from Urban Living. The message tells me that the delivery guy has contacted them several times about delivering our sofa but that they cannot release the sofa until we pay. We are welcome to call in for a phone sale or come in to the store. At this point, I lost my cool…

Obviously I tried to pay, I was not offered any other option than to come back to the store and pay in person. I had advised them already that I would be in to pay on Saturday. We had dog training early Saturday afternoon and planned to drop by afterward to sign the dang receipt.

I made Clint return the call since I was at my wits end. His call to them ended up in an argument about how frustrating the whole process had been. He then tried to pay with his credit card, but they refused to accept any payment from us over the phone. They said that if it were up to whoever was on the phone, she would run his card, but “Missy” told them that we MUST to go to the store in person. Clint requested to speak to Missy and was told that she was on the other line. He asked that she call us back.

When Missy returned his call, she was very rude, unapologetic and argumentative. She stated that we were trying to arrange delivery without paying for the sofa. Um, we tried to pay over the phone - not once, but twice. I had also advised her already (I found out that it was Missy that I spoke to on Thursday when I tried to pay) that I would be going to the store on Saturday with my credit card to pay. She further said that Matt, the delivery guy, told her that we called him four times and begged him to deliver the sofa. By my count, we called him: 1) for information about delivery since Urban Living does not give you any concrete information about this outside delivery service, 2) left a message to arrange delivery and 3) again called to arrange delivery because he did not return our call. Begging? Hardly.

And all this crap about not taking my credit card… I used the same credit card to pay for the first half of the sofa, the same credit card when I attempted to pay over the phone and the same credit card in the store when I made the final payment. But somehow in Missy’s brain, we were trying to pull a fast one on Urban Living. I assume Missy is the owner and I now know that happy customers means jack diddly squat to Missy.

Since either Matt or Missy, whomever we shall believe, had so eloquently stated that we begged for delivery and since this had all turned into a huge argument, we opted to rent a truck from Home Depot and picked up the sofa on Saturday. Honestly, I was so fed up with them and their customer service, I was almost willing to lose the money I paid up front for the sofa. I knew there was no way Missy was going to do any kind of negotiating or refunding of my money for this whole ordeal. I really did not want to give them any more of my business. Unfortunately, I also did not want to be out the deposit that we put down.

Prior to this, I thought Urban Living was a nice cozy little local furniture shop. Supposedly, they also give a portion of their sales to animals. Win win in my book.

Now? Screw Urban Living. And if this entry makes even one person think twice about shopping there, then I have done my job. Oh, and *?@! Missy.

Last weekend we completed two projects that we had been planning to do for a while.

We finished the trellis project that we had been working on for a few weeks. The trellis is from Ikea and is actually four trellis packages put together into one large trellis measuring approximately 6′ by 8′.

We planted two small star jasmine vines at the base of the trellis. I contemplated quite a bit on which vine would be best suited for the space. I decided an evergreen vine was the best option because we put the trellis up in part for added patio privacy. I then narrowed it down to crossvine and star jasmine. A big benefit of crossvine was that it was a butterfly and hummingbird attracting plant. In the end, star jasmine won out because we love the waxy green leaves and I know it can create the dense look that we are aiming for on the patio.

Speaking of butterflies and hummingbirds, I have not seen too many butterflies (maybe one butterfly actually), but I do see hummingbirds in my garden! This morning one zipped from a sunflower to the purple coneflower, then flew around the other plants, landed in a nearby tree, flew away and I thought it was gone, and then it zoomed back in for more nectar. I was delighted! Hopefully at some point I will actually have my camera in hand when I see one visiting. My mom sent me a hummingbird feeder (thanks, mom!) that I still need to hang up and I am hoping that maybe someone might give me a bird bath for my upcoming birthday. Hint hint.

The other big weekend project was to frost the glass on our back door. We used to have blinds on the doors, but they banged and clanged every time you opened the door. Then we put a fabric blind on the back door, but it did not really fit well. The only option left was to frost the glass. It has a few bubbles, but overall I like the look.

In fact we liked it so much that we frosted the annoying window by the front door too.