Complaint Review: Ashley Furniture - Plano Texas

January 1st, 2004 I ordered a set of Manchester Vintage furniture, reclining couch, love-seat and chair as well as a coffee table and side-table from Ashley during their big blowout sale. I gave Ashley a check for $371 as the deposit for the furniture and was assured the furniture would be delivered in 3-4 weeks.

February 11th, I called Ashley having waited twice as long as expected for delivery. After repeated calls to Ashley they finally called me back to inform me that delivery should be another 3-4 weeks or more! I asked to have the Manager call me back as I was not willing to accept their non-responsive answers as to why the furniture would take 3 months to deliver rather than 3 weeks as expected. Manager never returned my call.

February 15th, I went to the Plano Ashley store where I had purchased the furniture to speak to the manager. Ken, the manager basically re-iterated the 3-4 week delivery time again. I asked if they were going to do anything about the lengthy wait and Ken responded "what do you want from me?". I stated "an apology would be a good start". He wasn't willing to apologize so I told him we might as well just cancel the order and be done with that mess. Ken said they would cancel the order and when I asked about my refund of the deposit, he said I would get the refund in a few days.

My wife wanted to get whatever they could deliver in a timely manner even though we had already waited more than twice as long as they had communicated because we needed the furniture. Ashley said they could get us the love-seat and chair in about another 3 weeks, not sure how long it would take to get the couch so she said send the two items.

March 9th, Ashley delivered the wrong furniture. The color was burgundy, not brown. Additionally, there were numerous defects with both pieces, they appeared to be "seconds" that were riddled with defects. My wife called Ashley that day to notify them of the issues, they said they would call us back with an ETA on replacing the wrong furniture with what we actually ordered.

They never called back to schedule the switch-out so I called and finally spoke to Najala (sp?) after requesting the most senior manager in the Company. Najala said she would check to see when they could get the right furniture delivered and said she had no idea why no one called me back with an ETA.

March 18th, still no word yet on when they would bring the right furniture so I called Najala, she said she still had no idea when they could deliver the right furniture so I said to cancel everything and give me my $371 they'd been holding since January 1st. Najala said she would get the order cancelled, process the refund request paperwork and have the Delivery Dept. schedule pick-up of the wrong/defective furniture.

April 1st, two weeks had passed and still no refund, nor call to pick up the wrong/defective furniture. I called Najala, she said Delivery would call to schedule pickup, she assured me they would call.

April 6th, delivery guy called to schedule pick-up of wrong/defective furniture, I was out of town so referred them to my wife, they never called her.

April 7th, delivery calls to BRING us the right furniture. I said no way, explained what they'd already put us through and that the order had been cancelled weeks ago. Delivery people said they saw nothing in the system to indicate the order had been cancelled. I asked them if anyone had even looked at the new furniture to see if it was the right furniture, they said no! They said they don't look at the furniture until they deliver it. I asked again that they collect the wrong furniture, they said they would have to have someone else in Delivery schedule that.

Having not heard from Ashley about collecting the wrong/defective furniture, decided I would call delivery and schedule the pick-up myself. I spoke to Teddy, explained the situation and he APOLOGIZED, first apology for their repeated failures came from Teddy, thanks man, I needed that! Teddy said he had everything scheduled and again said he was sorry for the fiasco and the furniture would be collected on 4/9.

Later that evening, a girl from Ashley Delivery calls asking me who authorized the return. I said Najala had authorized the return and cancelled the order weeks ago, told her to call Najala so she did. I then called Najala to make sure she spoke to the girl I had spoken to about the approval to return the wrong/defective furniture, Najala said she'd have to call me back.

Najala called me back and informed me that "since there were no manufacturers defects, Ashley was going to charge me 30% of the original order price"! More than a $1,000.00 for nothing but a nightmare. I told her that even SHE had said their was no need to send a technician to look at the furniture for defects that could be corrected because it was the WRONG furniture to begin with. I reminded Najala that SHE told me weeks prior that the order had been cancelled and my refund would be on it's way in a matter of days. Najala called me back again and confirmed everything was fine and they would be collecting the wrong/defective furniture 4/9, no 30% fee.

I won't even bother you with the pick-up debacle, they repeatedly scheduled and missed their appointments, 3 times, never called. And, lied to me repeatedly about those occurrences as I discovered after numerous calls to their most senior management. Apparently the Ashley staff has been well trained at avoiding customer contact because no one was available, I finally had to just hold on the line until Najala came to the phone about half an hour later.

I finally spoke to a Dana Lee (sp?) at the Ashley Corporate offices who was able to get the furniture collected the day we spoke. The only issue I have now is I still never received my refund. Ashley has held my $371 since January 1st, it's now May 5th and the last time I spoke to them about receiving my refund they said it would be a few days.that was April 8th, about a month ago. Funny, I called them yesterday and they said the check is in the mail! Right.

Of note: Ashley billed me considerably more than the "Sale price", even the invoice I had reflected a much lower price than what they billed me, Citi said I would have to speak to the store, the store referred me to Citi, total runaround.

The furniture had serious flaws, leaning, terrible construction, etcmuch less being the wrong furniture. A nice, honest salesman at the store said they'd been having problems with the manufacturer shipping the wrong color on the item we bought, he had lost numerous sales. But Ashley management would not verify that.

Keep good notes, you may need them. All I want now is my money back, and to make sure no one else gets burned.

David

Plano, Texas
U.S.A.

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