The Furniture Mart — Local services in Becker

Apparently I gave this place 5 stars in the last week, which I don't remember doing. However, my real rating is 1 star. (My dad had a similar experience as well with furniture he bought from here as well.) Here is why:

I ordered a couch in late November of 2016. It was a nice sectional priced at about 2,000 dollars. They told me it would take 16-20 weeks because the color I wanted had to be special ordered. No big deal as I was warned beforehand, but maybe that turns some people off right from the start. I thought my delivery date was 3/30/17, so when that date passed I called to ask about why it had not arrived yet. They told me that my date on their paperwork is 5/7/17 with no notes about a change from the expected 5/5/17, my paperwork did state 4/30, but no explanation. Again, not a huge deal, it is all estimates anyway. They called me last week to tell me my couch would be in. "Awesome!" I thought, "I'm going to get the couch in next week!" Set up it up for a Tuesday delivery. They told me they'd give me a call the day before to tell me when to expect it. That call never came, until I got a call from my mother saying that my couch was at my house. No missed calls on my phone and no voicemails. Now I'm rushing home from work to try and clean up the area and let the delivery guys in.

Now is where it gets bad.

I had ordered the sectional with the sole intention of having power outlets in the armrests so I could avoid having cords going from wall to couch, a luxury I'm aware, but one that I also paid for. The sectional arrived without the arm piece all together. Before I had even realized this, on my way out the door (my mother was home to give assistance, if any was needed) I had asked if they were going to plug in the power chairs (I had two ends that were power recliners) and the answer I got was "Yeah, just to test them to make sure everything is working." When I came back home, I tried to recline in the chair myself, only to find out that one of them does not function. So unless the chair happened to have gone bad in the time that they "tested" them to the time I came back home half an hour later, it was laziness that prevented the couch from being tested. It was at this point that I realized the power outlet armrest, or whatever you'd like to call it, also was not in my order.

I called about this and eventually an assistant manager called me back. The assistant manager offered to order the couch again (which would take 16-20 weeks again) and replace it for free, while letting me use the couch they delivered until the new one arrived. I told her that I would rather just have my money back if that was all that was going to happen. The assistant manager told me she would talk to a manager to see if there was anything else they could do for me to keep my business. It was discovered that the original salesman had not placed my order in correctly (even though we were sitting on the couch when I said I want this couch). The assistant manager followed up with me today (two days later) and offered me the exact same deal....This part annoys me, because it shouldn't take 2 days to get the same offer back. In any case, I told her the same thing I did last time. I told her that unless I'm getting a discount refunded back to me, I don't want the couch. She said that I got too good of an original deal on the couch so they would be doing this deal at cost for them already so they couldn't refund any money back to me. I told her I paid exactly what was on the sticker, but she basically said I was lying because she said there's no way to verify that.

I think they're probably going to end up losing at least 800 dollars in this whole deal. I figure with the money they're losing with the labor to send two guys out to deliver the couch and pick it back up again, they're going to have paid out around 300 dollars in labor, fuel, time etc. depending on where their warehouse is. Now this couch that they claim is valued right now at $2,500, is going to have to be sold as used for maybe $1,500-$1,800. Seems like poor...

Long review – I personally believe this is worth the read .

Quick Summary - What you read in other reviews about their communication – All very very true. You WILL have to initiate every conversation/update; and their phone lines are a complete mess (i.e. long holds, dropped calls, nobody checks the voicemail inbox). To Becker – Focus less on your sales goals, take ownership, and control things that you can control (specifically communication and taking care of your customer’s experience). We had to omit many items due to character restrictions.

May 18 - Our order placed for a custom couch

June 25th – Called in as we hadn’t heard anything regarding our delivery yet. We were told that they would have Justin get back to us.

July 2nd – Long story short. No response from Justin so we called again. We were told our order was never placed due to “not enough pillow fabric”. Justin said he would call and place the order w/o pillows. We requested confirmation.

July 15th – Called back to get an update since Justin wasn’t doing his part. Donna said that she couldn’t quite see what was going on but that she would talk to leadership and get back to me by the following Wednesday, July 22nd...To no surprise, she never called us back.

July 23rd - We called back again and this time we talked to Sarah. Sarah made it happen and talked with Drew who informed us that to this day, nothing had happened with the couch and the order still was not placed (9 weeks after our initial purchase of the product). We were told that the order was now placed on a rush order (3 weeks - middle of August).

August 19th - Now 4 weeks after our last conversation, and we still had not heard anything on a couch update. We called in to get an update and got Donna again. She said that the expected delivery date is now the week of Sept. 13th. We inquired about our pillows and whether or not they would be available. She said that she would follow up with us in regards to an updated delivery and the pillow fabric status. We asked when we would hear back, and she said it is hard to say just with how busy everyone is.

August 25th - After another round of Donna not following up with us, we called in again and talked to a new rep that we again explained our issues to. She looked at our order and said our most recent delivery date is the week of OCTOBER 11TH (~22 weeks after we had paid in full for our couch). She said she was going to get in touch with someone on this. To our dismay, who else but Donna returned our call, apologetic. I told Donna that we NEED to hear an update by Friday, Aug. 28th, but that the update had better not be that the delivery date was still the middle of October…completely unacceptable in our eyes considering they "rushed" our already severely delayed order on July 23rd.

August 29th - Friday came and went without a call, and she ended up calling Saturday with another excuse as to why she didn’t get back to us and ultimately said that she has no update for us. In no mood to talk, I said we would be coming in next week to talk to someone in person.

September 3rd - We came in to talk with the manager Drew. We stated that we expect compensation back to us of whatever Becker's markup would have been, as they have actually taken value away from us with this experience. Drew said he would talk with the finance managers and add us onto a weekly check in list to be informed of updates.

September 7th – Drew emailed us and informed us that he was unable to get in touch regarding compensation and that delivery date was still Oct. 11th.

September 18th, I sent an email to Drew to check in on compensation status. Didn’t hear back until Sept 25th informing us that delivery is still on schedule and that we still won’t know about potential compensation until furniture is here.

October 9th - After Drew ceased communication with us after our attempts to reach him, we called in to get an update. We were informed us that our order is delayed until Oct. 19th (more than 5 months from purchase date).

Will we ever see our...

Update! On April 20th my chairs were delivered. Around that time my kitchen began undergoing a remodel, so I hadn't had the opportunity to use the chairs. Today I set them up around the table, and I noticed two of the chairs have an exceptional wobble -- like the legs are uneven. I initially thought that maybe they were missing a no-scratch pad on the tip of a leg or two, but it turns out that's not the case. It seems that two chairs have uneven sized legs.

I spent around 15 minutes setting them in various places around the kitchen and wobbling them back and forth just to make sure it's not my floor, and then I brought another chair in that's level just to be certain. There is indeed about a one inch difference, or at least when a chair is leaned to one side, the gap is around an inch.

This means that neither the vendor nor Becker Furniture have a quality assurance threshold that needs to be met prior to selling or shipping a product.

I should also mention that another set of wooden stools (that I bought with another table) also have issues. The cross-support planks that hold the chair together toward the bottom of the legs have pocket holes that are missing screws. I discovered this one day when I was working and a chair was wobbling more than usual.

Becker, QA your furniture when you get it and before you deliver it. Create a formal follow-up process where your employees add reminders to their work calendar. Show a bit of integrity toward the people who shop in your stores.

Original post: I've ordered furniture from Becker on several occasions. My advice to anyone looking to buy from them is this: spend your money somewhere else.

If they have to create an order, you're going to have a bad time. I managed to buy a table and chairs, but the chairs had to be ordered. First, they were supposed to arrive in November. Two weeks beyond the ETA and I hadn't heard a peep. Had I not reached out, I'd wager I never would have heard anything at all. They gave me a new ETA of early December. Early December rolled around and the chairs were a no-show. Again. And not a peep from Becker.

I emailed them. Again.

This time I requested a refund on the table and chairs. They declined my refund request on the table, but said they can refund the chairs.

Well dang, I want a matching set, so I decided to let them string me along to the next ETA -- February. The ETA passed, and several days later, in a surprising turn of events, the Becker sales rep emailed me. Granted, he could have emailed me five or six days earlier to temper my expectations, but I'll take it.

Sadly, it was not good news. My "not guaranteed" ETA was moved to late May, which is also not guaranteed. Again, I requested a refund on the table and they didn't budge.

So here I am today -- eating dinner in my living room at the coffee table, as I did yesterday and the day before, contemplating whether to throw out the notion that having a matching dining set is important, and if I should indulge in the refund and get chairs that look "close"? Or if I should just cut my losses and buy a dining set elsewhere?

This is my experience so far, and it's not a stretch to say it could...