Trust me when I tell you how wildly privileged I am aware I am to have been able to purchase a new sofa during a time where people were being laid off and furloughed and quite poetically run over by the struggle bus. That reality is not lost on me in the slightest, but the story I’m about to tell you is such a comedy of errors that I couldn’t keep this one to myself.
Two months into quarantine was enough for me to realize that the mid-century couch that had served me well at my first “place of my own” in Oklahoma and made the journey to Montana with me had outstayed it’s welcome.
It was time for a replacement. Something bigger. Something more lounge-y. Something the generally just made more sense for my current living room.
As things go, there was a Memorial Day sale at Ashley Furniture HomeStore so I made my way into the local store and browsed their offerings.
Victoriously, I fell in love with a 10-foot long, chaise-style sectional that had my name, my style, and my comfortability requirements all in order.
Plus, the price was just right. I hadn’t walked in with a budget, but a budget found me when I found it if you know what I’m saying.
I worked with an incredible salesperson who let me know that, due to everything, the sofa was out of stock but that we could expect a call to schedule delivery in about six weeks.
I paid for the couch, thanked the awesome rep, grabbed my receipt, and went on my merry way.
Fast forward to two days before I should have expected a phone call from someone about delivery. The scheduling person let me know that they still didn’t have my couch and did not have an estimate on when it would be arriving at their warehouse.
Curiouser still, she let me know that they didn’t have any plans to proactively call me to let me know. Uh oh. Customer service faux pas numero uno.
However, I was unbothered since hello global pandemic and privilege and empathy.
Fast forward to mid-July and we’re getting some traction here on when the couch will be delivered. It looks like early August will be the magical delivery window. As a concession for the trouble, they offer to provide free, in-home delivery. Obviously, I graciously declined because um, global pandemic and strangers in my home, no thank you.
It’s the first week of August now, creeping up on Labor Day, and I get the call.
We are ready to schedule the delivery of your couch tomorrow!
They give me a window to expect the truck since I’m an out of town customer. Seemed a bit odd when they mentioned it, but I don’t know the inner workings of Ashley Furniture HomeStore’s Montana warehouse situation. Local could be Billings (most places are) and I’m in Bozeman. Seemed fair enough to me.
9am the next morning I would be the proud owner of a new sectional.
I get a call at 8:45am from the driver letting me know he’s having a hard time locating my address. Not a first-time occurrence as our neighborhood still shows up as a dirt field on Google Maps. I start to explain my major crossroads to the drive and there’s a long silence.
“You live in Bozeman? The address we have for you is in [some Montana city I’ve never heard of but would later learn is roughly 1.5 hours from me].”
It dawns on me at that very moment, that my delivery address was never confirmed after providing it to the store in May when I bought the couch.
The driver assures me that they’ll still be able to deliver to me that day, just at the end of the day instead of the beginning. No worries. I had some good, hard belly-laughing to do while you made your other deliveries anyway.
Ultimately, the sofa arrived and is perfect, Ashley Furniture HomeStore gave me an additional discount for all of the trouble, and I’d still shop there for other furniture if I needed to.
