I HATE ASHLEY FURNITURE!!!

And yeah I know it’s bad blog etiquette to capitalize the title and exclamation points.

But I don’t care.

Actually I guess I should clarify the title. That looks like I don’t like their furniture. I don’t like their company. AT ALL.

WARNING: THIS IS A LITTLE LONG BECAUSE IT’S THE WHOLE TRUTH

Image via Wikipedia

Now before I get in to this story understand that it is MY story. I will never say that you should or shouldn’t go to a place because I had a bad experience. To me that real, uh, snooty. Everyone is different and the following may or may not happen to you. Just venting my true story experience.

It all started at the West LA store on Sunday, March 4.

We get a sales man who you can tell is working on commission. He’s eager to show us furniture while simultaneously somehow seeming like he’s ready to move to another customer. It was odd.

We decided what we wanted and decided we would try to finance. The mrs has a better credit score than I do (I wouldn’t qualify for a stick of gum on credit right now) so we first tried the “in-house” financing under her name.

She enters all of her information in this little kiosk computer thingy and right away they give you an answer.

The answer was no.

So they had another option, which was to use an outside financing company. They had a desk in the store but the lady was out to lunch.

So we waited.

From then on, all updates on the whereabouts of the financing lady from the sales man were directed to my wife by name from the sales prick.

“Look, the furniture was going to be under her name for credit purposes but we’re both paying for the furniture. So I’d appreciate you not acting like I’m not sitting here next to her, and that you address us as a family, or as a couple.”

These words almost came out of my mouth but then I decided never mind. After walking over to the other financing place I wouldn’t have to deal with this jerkwad again.

I won’t bore you with the details of the meeting. But I will tell you one noteworthy part.

During the course of the number crunching, she tells us that the delivery fee will be $129 plus tax.

Naturally, I asked the same question you probably just did if you don’t already know.

This woman treated me like I was an idiot. She said there was always tax and that I should know that, since I’ve lived in California my whole life.

She basically was making herself look real stupid. But pissing me off in the process.

Figure that she’s financed many people before. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has asked this question. You may want to find out the answer so that in the future, you can be helpful and not look undeniably stupid on your own.

Once we were done with her we needed to go up to the Customer Service Station in the store and give them the paperwork and pay for the delivery. I asked the same question. The lady at Ashley told me how they get that question all the time (further proof of the “idiotness” of that financing lady), and that by state law if the deliverer is the same as the seller and they own the trucks they use to delivery, the Board of Equalization requires them to charge sales tax on the delivery.

Anyway, they told us the delivery would be on Wed, March 14. They stated that the company would call us 48 hrs in advance to give us our time window.

On Mon, March 12 they called us, as promised, and gave us a window of 12 – 4 for Wednesday.

I put in to take the day off at work.

For some reason when my wife sent the email to me, I thought it said 8 – 12. I must have a temporary case of dyslexia mixed with a little paranoia since I’m seeing numbers that aren’t even there.

So now it’s the delivery date and I get up early that morning despite getting over illness and still not feeling great. On my own I move both of our old sofas on to the curb before 8 a.m.

Then I wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

Around 1 pm, my wife calls Ashley to verify the delivery period. That’s when we discovered it was scheduled for 12-4. So that gave them another three hours. No big deal.

So I wait.

And wait.

And continue to wait some more.

Around 4:30 I call. After asking for an Order Number that I didn’t have I ask if they can look me up by my address. She said they can’t search by address.

Side note: I thought that was dumb. It’s a delivery. You deliver stuff. If there is one definitive item, it would be the address.

Anyway she finds me by phone number and put me on hold to check on the status. She comes back and tells me that the drivers are running an hour and a half behind and that she will try to get an ETA from the driver and call me back.

Ok fine.

So I wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

Around 5:45 my wife gets home and she’s, uh, perturbed to say the least. I still hadn’t heard anything back and neither had she.

She calls them again. Once again she was told that they would send an email to try to get more info on the status from the driver.

They also told her (and they told me this too) that the financing company was the one delivering the furniture. I thought this was strange. Why would it come from the financing place when they are the furniture store who we bought from?

Two different cs people at Ashley told us this at two different times.

So I called the financing company. He said that didn’t make sense. I said I know. He said that’s like calling Visa to find out when your Sear’s Appliance Delivery will be. I said I know and gave him cuddo’s on his smart aleckness since I’m a big fan of that.

He put me through to their rep at the store where we bought from. This is the financing company not Ashley.  I tell him the situation and he puts me on hold.

A couple of minutes later he comes back and here’s what he said:

“Ok Mr Garrett I checked with Ashley and they said they don’t know why they scheduled a delivery for you for today, because the items that you ordered are on Back Order until the 19th or the 29th”

M%^@&&^  F@%&*!!!!!!!!!!

I WAS LIVID!!!

Let’s look at all the reasons why:

• We’ve called three times and was told everything but the truth. I was told that they were running an hour and a half late, my wife was told that the delivery time was 12 – 4, and we both were told that the financing company was responsible for delivery. Probably trying to avoid telling us the truth.
• No one who said they would called us back.
• These bastards are the ones that called US on Monday verifying the delivery window. You knew you didn’t have the items then!
• This takes place 10 days after we ordered. You didn’t have time to get the furniture that we ordered AND PAID FOR that day in stock by our delivery date? Isn’t that why you set up our delivery date 10 days out in the first place?
• When in the asljdhfajdhajhajdhajo were you going to tell me that I didn’t have to wait 9 1/2 hours for furniture that wasn’t in stock? If I hadn’t called around I would never have found out what I found out and they would just not have shown up…..to a delivery appt that THEY set.
• Turns out our sofa and love seat are in stock. It’s the lamps, side tables, coffee table and other crap that isn’t. Why the dlafhdopjhaodpjhaopdh couldn’t you just deliver the furniture and we’ll get the other stuff later? Why would you decide it’s all or nothing and then not tell us? Shouldn’t that be our decision? I had put our old furniture on the streets for fair grab. We had nothing and they didn’t have the decency to let us know that.
• What do you mean the 19th or the 29th? That’s two different days, 10 days apart. Ironically it’s the same number of days from the day we bought the furniture to the alleged delivery date.
• They were not late on processing our payments on the 4th. Of course taking the money went smooth. Giving us our stuff….of course not!

Then my wife gets on the phone with the manager of that Ashley location. She tells my wife that she will “arrange an Ashley team” and get our sofa and love seat to us first thing tomorrow morning, which would be today.

After calling us back she said the delivery will be on Friday at the earliest. My wife asked what happened to assembling the team and yada yada. She said that she never said “tomorrow morning”. So now we’re too stupid to know the difference between tomorrow morning and Friday morning. Perhaps she thought yesterday was Thursday, but clarify that. That’s your fault.

Needless to say my vote was to cancel this order, pee on Ashley furniture and then set it on fire.

The manager offered us $200 off of a set that was already 50% off.  My wife’s thing is that it’s about the furniture that we wanted and it’s affordable, made now even more affordable with what I call a headache discount.And she has a good point. She said after that we never have to deal with Ashley again and we’ll still have the couches we wanted.

So we’re keeping it and we’re going to have the new delivery tomorrow. After that, I promise you I will never ever deal with Ashley Furniture again. Ever Ever. F&%$@ Ever!!!!

As I said before, you can do whatever you like. This experience may never happen to you. But it happened to me and I don’t even want to give them the money I’m giving them for this set. They don’t deserve a penny from us.

So if you decide to go with them, procede with extreme caution.

And stay tuned. There’s no telling what will happen with our delivery tomorrow and when the other pieces they need to give us come back in stock.