Ethan Allen, Montclair, CA - unhappy experience with furniture quality

Complaints.com received the following consumer message on November 6, 2002:

From: RE: Ethan Allen, Montclair, CA - unhappy experience with furniture quality

This all happened during 04-2002 to 11-2002. My wife and I went to Ethan Allen, Montclair-California. We received the best service. We ordered a leather chair, a couch, an oversized side chair, a wood/leather chair, an end table and some pillows. We ordered our furniture in April and were told 10-12 weeks for delivery. That was fine. The only thing that showed up to the delivery warehouse in June was the end table and 2 leather chairs.

They immediately wanted to deliver because as soon as you accept delivery on any portion of the order you will start making payments on the entire order. They are very anxious for you to accept something. We refused and told them we would wait until the entire order was in. In June, we were told that they had a high demand for the fabric we picked on the couch and the order was pushed out another 6 weeks. In August we took a vacation expecting our furniture when we returned only to find out that the fabric they received was damaged so they had to send it all back. Now we were told that our new delivery date would be in late September.

In September we got a call saying the couch had been shipped to their delivery warehouse. After a few days of not receiving any calls to schedule a delivery, I called and found out that their records were wrong and that the couch had NOT been shipped. The new delivery date was for November 17. In early October, we decided to take all the furniture that had come in minus the couch as the holidays would be nearing and we needed some furniture. It came, only to find repaired holes in one leather chair and white stains in the other wood/leather chair accompanied by scratches in the chair and end table. Someone was sent out to fix the furniture on site 2 weeks later.

The leather could not be fixed and the scratches were "touched up". The one leather chair with repaired holes were explained as "cow hide scarring" and the other chair which could not be fixed, will be picked up on November 9th when our couch is finally delivered! A miracle, we get the couch on November 9th instead of the 17th!!!!!!!! Here's my point - I did receive great service and everyone had good follow up with my wife and I, so no complaints there. BUT, my wife and I are not rich by any means and decided that when we were going to get furniture for our house, that we were going to invest in some excellent quality furniture that would last us throughout the years.

What we got is service and quality of what you would expect from a typical furniture warehouse pushing furniture made in China. I will not be purchasing any more furniture from Ethan Allen due to this experience. Thanks for listening,

Karl

Comment On This

Karl, I can totally sympathize it can be so frustrating when you can't get the simplest things done right. Then to make matters worse, no one is willing to accept responsibility for the failures.

I usually read things like your post and do my recently developed little old lady cluck and snort and move on to the next post. As a consumer, I feel it's my duty to always evaluate the overall tone of posted comments before I would consider using them to help with my decision to purchase from a vendor. I believe you would have continued to be a loyal EA Customer despite the delays had the quality been worth the wait. Your post is not the one that moved me to comment.

Nearly 6 years after your post, someone wrote a comment/reply. I'm not sure if this person believes he is defending the company or offering support to your cause. I hope for EA's sake he is not a representative of EA.

Please indulge me while I break down his reply.

I understand sir that you were very upset with the service, however you had to consider that all mistakes with the fabric, holes, and whatever else you mentioned were coming from all different ends. (Sub par quality is to be expected from all levels of manufacture.) It's not like one person in the warehouse is in charge for your merchandise, it's coming from different states & being handled by different people, that are in charge of doing different tasks. (Products pass through many hands on their way to the consumer but no one ever takes the time to check the quality. Be assured your merchandise was delivered to you as quickly as possible without a single person considering your ultimate satisfaction.) That's just the way furniture is, and like all other things in life, it's not perfect. (Just keep on paying higher prices for quality merchandise and don't complain when the manufacturer fails to deliver. Nothing in life is perfect.)

I am really bothered by this person's attitude. To suggest that the world is doomed to mediocrity or worse is offensive to me personally because I am one who has always taken pride in my work. If there is anything in this world with my name attached to it you will not see an attached disclaimer regarding the inferior quality of workmanship. Does no one follow the old credo, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right." anymore?

To say that nothing in life is perfect is inaccurate. Not everything in life is perfect and it would be naive to expect it to be. However; when we fail to take the opportunity to make the absolute best from what there is we cannot blame life.

As annoying as they are delays are acceptable, especially when there are quality control issues from suppliers. But billing a complete order before you've accepted delivery of all components almost seems illegal. What if you never get your complete order how would the credit be broken down? If they refunded the cost of the undelivered item and interest paid you would still lose money. I doubt you would also be compensated for interest you might have earned had you put your money into a short term, high yield savings certificate or interest you might have saved had you used the money to pay off another loan. Once it's spent there is no way to calculate the value of a dollar unless you can guarantee the outcome of an alternate use. It could be worth millions if used to buy a winning lottery ticket.

I hope Ethan Allen has done something to make up for your unsatisfactory experience. You deserve better and have every right to expect it.

Julia

Comment On This

I understand sir that you were very upset with the service, however you had to consider that all mistakes with the fabric, holes, and whatever else you mentioned were coming from all different ends. It's not like one person in the warehouse is in charge for your merchandise, it's coming from different states & being handled by different people, that are in charge of doing different tasks. That's just the way furniture is, and like all other things in life, it's not perfect