Complaint Review: Nebraska Furniture Mart -

We’ve been doing business with Nebraska Furniture Mart for years out of Kansas City, KS and have spent nearly $27k on merchandise and have bought about 30 items. Over the last four years or so, we’ve experienced numerous problems.

The first major problem was on our Kitchen Aid dishwasher. It was overheating the water and was breaking glasses, plastic, and dishes. It even broke one of the machines’ internal parts. Their warranty company, Assurant, repeatedly sent out servicemen; they stated nothing was wrong with it. We finally filed an attorney general and BBB complaint. Only then did the dishwasher get properly fixed; they replaced the heating unit, and we didn’t have problems with it after that.

The second major problem was a custom furniture order. The sofa was ordered incorrectly by the salesperson. Soft instead of firm cushions were ordered and the wrong upholstery was on it upon arrival. When we complained, NFM customer service tried to argue with me, stating we had ordered it wrong and that they were not correcting the order. I had to get the sales manager in custom furniture involved. He contacted customer service, advised them the salesperson had ordered it incorrectly, and that the items would need to be remade. Obviously, customer service should not have argued with me and should have proactively contacted the department to verify that my story was accurate.

So, when the furniture came in again, the delivery men broke the red leather recliner; the chair had to be remade. When they went to deliver the new chair, they damaged it again, scratching the wood and scuffing the leather. They sent out a furniture repairman to fix the damages. By this point, we had 3 problems and it took almost 9 months to get our order resolved, so I filed another attorney general and BBB complaint. I requested a 15% discount on the order due to all of the problems. They gave it to us.

The third major problem was on a Samsung dryer. Within one year, the dryer had gone out twice and all the parts had been replaced it in. Again, Assurant and Samsung were both terrible to deal with. So, more complaints were filed. I asked NFM and Assurant to extend the warranty on the dryer (we bought a three year and I asked it to be extended to five), because I was concerned it would go out again when the warranty had expired. Thiswas an arm wrestle, but they finally agreed. About two months later, the dryer went out again, so they had to replace it. But the warranty through Assurant on appliances is shady.

The problem is we were told they would replace it at 100% of what the item cost when the warranty was originally purchased. This isn’t exactly accurate. This is only the case if they send you a check in the mail. They do not offer this if you go in to shop for a replacement unit. For example, if you paid $800 for your original unit but decided on a $700 unit the next time around, Assurant/NFM would not compensate the customer for the lost difference. Assurant does not relay this to customers and neither does NFM at the point of sale. I’ll go as far to say that Assurant encourages customers to go directly to NFM to find another unit and discourages checks.  We only found this out because corporate was wise enough to tell us. I’m sure the employee told us at that point in order to ward off another attorney general complaint which would have been filed if they shorted us the difference.

The fourth major problem involved the purchase of an LG convection range. The salesperson stated it was a convection range and that all convection ranges are the same. Not true. LG uses fan convection. GE is the only true European convection oven on the market. In addition, the LG oven repeatedly burned food over the course of a couple of months. This time, I did not file a report. Instead, I contacted the person at corporate directly. He stated he would be willing to get it exchanged and I asked that they honor the pricing on the new stove that was offered during the same period (Black Friday sale). I think that was more than fair. They honored the pricing and took the stove back.

When we went in to look for the new unit, we shortly dealt with another sales person. I told him the problem with the LG convection not working correctly. He decided to mansplain the oven to me. He asked me if I was using the right part of the convection oven, stating the top oven isn’t the convection unit. He even went as far to ask me if the right part of the oven was turned on. FFS.

The experiences with corporate were the only reasons why we decided to make a carpeting purchase with them. Big mistake.

We paid to have furniture moved during the installation. They completed paperwork prior to installing stating there was no property damage. If there was property damage, they were also required to take pictures of it. None were taken. After they left, I found they had damaged our red leather recliner (scuffs all over the red leather and scratches on the wood) and scratched the top of an inherited Ethan Allen Baumritter cabinet. On the latter, they had taken an item with a sharp bottom and had shoved it across the top of the cabinet, leaving it on the top of the cabinet which covered it up. As for the chair, I believe they dragged cut carpeting by it and the sharp edges made contact with the leather and the wood, causing the damage. The installers covered this damage by throwing blankets over it, so I didn’t find damage to either items until after they left.

I contacted NFM about the damage and they sent someone out to inspect it, the owner of the sub-contracting company. He barely spoke English and was literally clueless about the binding document they left me that stated they had inspected prior and no damages were found prior to moving the items. He stated we could not prove they did it because there was no video. I was so irate that I kicked him out of my house and called NFM directly. It only got worse from here.

When I called the location in Kansas to complain about the installer, I asked for Jerry Baysinger, but I was transferred to Ro. She asked me in a facetious tone why I wasn’t supervising them to make sure “my precious furniture wasn’t damaged”. First of all, if I needed to babysit and to micromanage the installers through the entire process, I clearly could have saved the money and could have moved these items myself with my husband. There is no reason why I should have needed to stay on top of them through the whole installation, beginning to finish, even furniture moving. So, I am totally done with the Kansas location. And even though I clearly left a follow up message on Ro’s v-mail stating she was not to call me back, that I was only going to deal with Jerry Baysinger or corporate from this point forward, she blatantly disregarded my request and called me back anyhow. So when she identified herself when she called me again, I promptly terminated the call by hanging up on her. 

They have offered us a $500 discount on the carpeting purchase, but we have decided the amount offered is inadequate.  We contacted a repair company about the furniture. They stated it can be repaired, but the damage will still be noticeable upon close inspection. Instead, we are asking for a 25% discount on the purchase or $1000, whichever is less, because the red leather recliner retails for $1200 and the Baumritter has a value between $500 and $800. Both pieces are devalued at this point. We have filed a complaint with the attorney general of Nebraska's office and the BBB for a solution. We have filed reports against Berkshire Hathaway.

They have been virtually impossible to deal with on this problem. First, corporate actually wrote in a BBB reply that they were letting the Kansas City location handle this complaint because I had written derogatory online reviews about the problem. If you go to the their BBB page and read the complaints, you will see their reply. Then, when I continued to complain that they needed to handle the complaint due to lack of communication from the Kansas City store, an employee named Curtis responded to the complaint through the AG’s office and implied somehow the common denominator in this problem is myself, stating I have a habit of routinely asking for discounts. Uh, no. We’ve bought nearly $27k in items over 10 years, and I have asked for a discount on two purchases due to their incompetence. These discounts would have never been needed if their employees were more careful with customer property. The stove was not a discount; rather it was a return where the previous pricing on the new item was extended. Any company would have honored this and certainly would not label it as a customer discount but honoring previous pricing. And extending a warranty on a crappy dryer isn’t a discount either. It might be helpful for a corporate employee to review a customer’s buying history before making an assertion like that.

Curtis also stated he would happily help us to close out the Nebraska Furniture Mart account (we stated we would never do business with them again after this last interaction) once the balance was paid in full. WTF? You’d think they would make an effort to avoid attrition with a customer that had spent this much money in a 10 year period. They obviously don’t care about retaining customers.

Finally (and this is kind of old), we have made other purchases outside of our NFM card. Several years ago, my ex husband and myself went into the store because he planned on making a purchase. At checkout, he provided his visa/mastercard to pay for the purchase. The back of the card was signed, so per the visa/mastercard service agreement, a merchant should not ask for id. This is common knowledge amongst visa/mastercard employees who are familiar with the merchant contacts (we both used to work for Citibank), but also, if you remember, the cards were advertised this way back in the 90s with Bob Dole as the commercial’s spokesman. I personally don’t care when I get asked for id (makes me feel a bit safer), but my ex husband gets belligerent and a bit anal and will never show id due to the contract terms. So, as a result, the cashier stated she would not sell him the merchandise, a breach of the merchant contract. So, my ex asked to speak to the store manager. The store manager apologized, told the cashier he didn’t look like he had “stolen anyone’s credit card,” and stated to us they will ask for id at this location because it is in a bad area of town and they have a problem with stolen cards at the location. Wyandotte county has a heavy African American and Latino population. My ex and I gasped, and my ex told the store manager that policy was not any better, specifically because it then looks like they are racially profiling customers if they are asking for id based on who they think looks like a credit card thief.  I certainly hope they are not doing this anymore, because with the potential to record interactions on phones now, they’ll likely get a viral video and will need to do a house cleaning like the Old Navy in Des Moines and the Applebees by Independence Center.

So, I would recommend if you have similar complaints to file your own reports. You’ll need to do it with the Attorney General of Nebraska and the BBB of Omaha. Don’t bother to do it against your local store. Also, file reports against Berkshire Hathaway. I will list their addresses below:

Nebraska Furniture Mart Corporate office:

700 S 72nd St

Omaha, NE 68114-4614

Berkshire Hathaway corporate office:

3555 Farnam StSuite 1440 

Omaha, NE 68131