Miss Berrie vs. Sofa Mart

When The Black Belt and I moved from furnished apartments into an unfurnished house, obviously we needed to buy some furniture. My sister has been happy with furniture she purchased at Sofa Mart, so we went to check out our store here. We found a couch we liked for a good price and told the salesperson we wanted to buy. We paid extra for the kit of cleaning supplies/warranty and even more for everything to be delivered. It was a nice chunk of money, but the inconvenience of having to go back and get it ourselves would've been worse; trust me.

A few weeks later, our couch arrived, and I luxuriated in it by sitting on all the cushions, rubbing the "Eurosuede" material, and stretching out from arm to arm. (If you could've seen what we'd been sitting on before the couch arrived, you'd understand.) It was very exciting. But, as I made pictures in the fabric by rubbing the threads different directions, I realized that we hadn't gotten any cleaner. I called our salesperson to ask if we were supposed to have gotten it, or if I had misunderstood. She said, "Oh no, you should've gotten it." But instead of continuing with, "I'll make sure it gets to you as soon as possible," she said, "You can just come back and get it."

Ok, so it wasn't a HUGE deal, but I didn't think it was very cool that I'd paid all that money to have everything delivered and ended up having to go back to the store anyway. I mean, if I'd ordered a couch and a chair, and they'd forgotten the chair, would they have told me to just come back and get it?... So when we went back, I asked the girl if we could have a partial refund on our delivery, since we'd had to come back in the end. I was very surprised when she said no, because it was "just a mistake" that the driver had forgotten to give it to me. I pushed back a little, because I felt like a company who makes a mistake should do something to make up for it. She said she needed to go talk to her manager. Of course.

The two ladies came back after a while and looked at a bunch of things on their computer. (Probably their latest Facebook updates...) The manager did not speak to, look at, or even acknowledge us, and left as soon as she was done pointing at the screen. Our salesgirl then spent about 15 minutes typing furiously into her computer. (Probably Twittering about the stupid people she was having to deal with at work.) Finally, she handed us a receipt and said very sarcastically, "For the inconvenience of having to come all the way back here."

The receipt showed a refund of $5.42. I am not kidding. The Black Belt and I said, "Well, that concludes our shopping experience at Sofa Mart!" and left. It was obvious that the situation could not be resolved locally, so I went online and found the contact information for their corporate headquarters and the name of the national sales director. I wrote him a letter telling him about our experience, including dates, invoice number, and name of our salesperson, and asked him for help resolving the situation in the manner in which it should've been resolved already. I was not rude or angry; I simply explained the situation and what I needed him to do.

A few weeks later, the manager, who had previously ignored us completely, called and said she'd be issuing a full refund of our delivery fee. Two days later, I received a phone call from the national director himself, thanking me for my feedback and apologizing for the trouble we'd had. I thanked him for his professionalism and generosity and let him know that we would, of course, continue doing business with Sofa Mart.

I don't tell this story to brag or laugh in an, "In your FACE, Sofa Mart!" way. I'm just trying to show the good that comes when people act reasonably. I sent a reasonable, fact-based letter to the director, and by responding in a reasonable manner, he restored our good opinion of his store. If the original salesgirl had listened to the situation in the first place and responded appropriately, I would've been perfectly happy to have my request granted and receive a partial refund. Instead, she was rude and emotional, and look how it ended: I got all of my money back, PLUS $5.42. And I have to admit--that does kind of make me laugh.