DO NOT ORDER ANYTHING FROM WEST ELM. I ordered a Jensen coffee table from West Elm in Nov. of 2021. The estimated arrival date was April 2022, a few months off, but, hey, pandemic, right? April came & went with no update, but eventually I got a call telling me the order was going to be late--after doing some online research, I came to understand that one should add several months to whatever delivery date West Elm provides.
In late May, my credit card was charged for the item that had never arrived. WE justified this from an accounting perspective by providing me a bogus email indicating that my item was at a warehouse and provided me with an updated delivery date range. WE of course blew through that deadline and provided another meaningless date range for delivery, all the while keeping my $600.
At this point I acknowledged what WE was unwilling to do: that there was no coffee table waiting for me and there never would be one. Accordingly, I called WE to have my $600 refunded. Of course, they could not do this without an hour of arguing over the obvious: WE had taken my money, was benefiting by employing it in its working capital, but had not provided me with any product or service in exchange. Moreover, WE could not point to any date whatsoever that I might expect to receive that which I had fully paid for over two months ago. This pattern, I would note, is not atypical of a business organization that is on the brink of bankruptcy.
With respect to a potential delivery date, the discussion descended into the absurd. The WE rep. explained that my current delivery date range was valid; I pointed out that multiple delivery dates in the past had not been honored. She then explained that my coffee table had actually arrived at the warehouse during the last shipping range, but West Elm had delivered it to someone who was not me. I was like, WTF?--that you gave my table to someone else is of no use to me! I do wonder if many angry customers respond positively to this idiocy--"I might be out $600, but someone, somewhere has a nice coffee table I paid for.") (It also conjures up memories of the "Seinfeld" rental car reservation episode). She then declared--seriously--that my item was backordered (um, I may not have an Ivy League degree, but I had figured that part out some six months ago). I asked, if it was backordered, how could it be at the warehouse? She said that the email that I had received indicating that MY coffee table was at the warehouse merely meant that SOME coffee tables of the model I had ordered had arrived at the warehouse, but that didn't mean I would get one of them (again, notwithstanding that I had fully paid for it). (I was also, incidentally, told that whether any coffee tables had arrived at the warehouse would not be known for 2 - 3 weeks--a shipment of some sort--it could be elephants, brick of cocaine, sex toys--had arrived at the warehouse, but for WE to determine what exactly the shipment contained would take weeks: again, why the F did you charge my credit card, WE, if you are so very uncertain about the very existence of the thing you are charging me for? ).
After more of this Ionesco-inspired back-and-forth, she agreed that West Elm could release my money that it was holding hostage. But they couldn't reimburse the shipping or taxes--FOR AN ITEM THEY NEVER SHIPPED! I informed her I thought retaining taxes in this situation was illegal and she "clarified" that they were only refusing to refund the shipping costs. I told her in no uncertain terms that WE would fully refund my money & was placed on hold while "the supervisor" character in this drama was called in to consider. She kept me on hold for 10 mins to extend the believability that WE had to engage in intense deliberations over whether or not to refund the $150-odd in shipping costs for a product it had not delivered (and clearly never would).
In the end, I got all of my money back. To be fair, the customer service rep. was not unpleasant, and I do sort of feel bad that she had to parrot all of this stupidity her employer insisted upon. After my call concluded, a review of the WE website revealed that my coffee table had been discontinued--I suspect this actually happened several months ago.
I do hope that half of what the rep. told me about Williams Sonoma/West Elm's accounting practices is untrue because they would, it seem, have to be illegal. I can't imagine you can book revenue for for sales of 1,000 coffee tables when only 500 of those tables exist, yet this is exactly what the rep. suggested West Elm does.
The upshot of this unpleasant experience is that, having nowhere to put it, I've given up drinking coffee! read more