Adventures in Couch Purchasing . P.S. Screw the homeless...

All this hassle over something I'll probably get drunk and ruin by pissing all over anyway.










Dear L*vitz Furniture Company (1),

I must congratulate your entire organization. In this day of 'the customer is always right' and 'doing whatever it takes to keep someone's business', it takes an incredible amount of courage to run your business with completely opposite goals in mind. From bewildering beginning to unfortunate end, you recently rammed several piping hot rods of 'customer service fuck-you's right up my tight virgin asshole. I have to admit to being caught quite off guard by your insistence that I take my quaint ideas of 'desiring a quick and easy transaction' and 'expecting apologies and/or compensation for gross mistakes' and shove them all the way up my ass.

But let's not judge this sodomy by torn rectal tissue alone. After all, that's how Kobe Bryant got off. Let's look at a brief timeline of what happened;

- In late October of 2004, me and my wife went through the seemingly unneccesarily bewildering process of picking out one of your couches and ordered it through one of your poor, beaten down, Willie Loman-esque salespeople. Because we didn't want it in the 'shit-brown' color of your showroom model, we were told it would take 6 weeks. Ok, whatever.

- In late November, our salesman called to set up a delivery appointment. After setting it up for early December, he called back to say he should never have done that and that he'd call back later. Thanks for the time waster.

- In early December I called your showroom to find out where it was. Your showroom response was "2 days after ordering it, we've got absolutely nothing to do with it. You gotta call the 800 number". Fine, I did, was put on hold for 45 minutes and then put on hold for another 10 minutes. I was then told that the order had never been placed and that it would be another 2 months. At this point, I asked if there was any way to rush it. "Absolutely not. We have no control over the people who manufacture the sofas. They can't rush anything.". When I threatened to cancel, I was put on hold for another 20 minutes. I was then told you could take $100 off. Still recovering from the shock of your '3 levels of non-culpability', I reluctantly agreed.

- In mid January, our salesman called back to set up another appointment. We set it up for the first weekend of February.

- In late January, I called back to see if I could push the appointment up a little, as I could now receive it during the week. After 45 minutes on hold, I was once again told that the salesman shouldn't have made the appointment as the couch was not due in until mid-to-late February. I then asked how our credit card would be credited the $100 refund promised as our card had already been charged the full price. After a pause and several accusatory questions, the person responded, "Oh, you'll get a gift certificate". A few choice words and another 10 minutes on hold to talk to a supervisor, and that changed to a refund that could only be done after the couch was delievered. Once I received it, I would then have to call back, hold for another 45 minutes and talk to a supervisor to get the $100 credited back. Fuck that, I said, and cancelled the order. Actually, I couldn't cancel the order through the 800 number and had to call the salesperson back to cancel. The fight from the salesperson to keep the order consisted of him saying, "Wow, that's horrbile. I don't blame you.".

And just so you know, yesterday we found the exact same couch at a furniture superstore in Oakland for half as much, in the color we wanted, and they're delivering it TODAY, for free, and disposing of our futon (which Levitz wouldn't do).

So in closing, I wish you a lot of luck. You must have very patient salespeople. I imagine it must be difficult to sell anything with a corporate structure that guarantees that half of the people they sell to will wind up crying on their stomach with a jizz-covered back. I plan on throwing a party the day you file Chapter 11, and a bigger one if I hear that your CEO has cancer.

Lotsa love,
Drew

(1) You don't know who it is. It could be owned by Jon Lovitz, right?(2)

(2) Apologies to Jon Lovitz