Design Within Reach — Local services in Chicago

Potential customers: don't shop online here. Based on my online experience, I also won't be shopping in person, but that's up to you.

DWR: If you're reading this, listen up for some hot e-commerce tips circa 1999!

Step 1: Only list items on your website that you have in stock. If you do not have an item in stock, do not list it on your website or at least don't take potential customers' money without telling them the item isn't actually in stock and that you have no earthly clue when it will be.

Step 2: If you erred and allowed customers to purchase items that you did not have in stock, and you do not even know when you will get the items in stock, cancel their order. Or email the customer. Or call them. Do anything!* *Anything OTHER than charging their card, refunding the charge, re-charging without warning or permission, and inexplicably repeating that process for months so the customer never knows when you are withdrawing their funds.

Step 3: If you've failed steps 1 and 2 and the customer emails your customer support account requesting an order cancellation, respond to their email.

Step 4: If you've failed steps 1-3, consider getting the hell out of the online retail business.

Final edit to add that I know many retailers are still experiencing backlogs due to Covid-19. I took that into consideration when writing my review and I tried to cut DWR some slack due to that, but months of issues and charges to my account with zero communication can't all be...

Marc Frazier at DWR is a consummate professional when it comes to customer service. Not only was he extremely helpful and knowledgeable when it came to my wife and I selecting a classic work of modernist art/furniture for her studio/office, he was incredibly responsive outside of normal business hours. Marc recommended a delivery company (dolly) who was able to smoothly deliver our chair to us over the weekend. He also went out of his way to make sure the chair was prepped and ready for pickup.

The DWR online team is very knowledgeable and helpful as well. Even during the early days of the COVID lockdown, they were able to arrange for the delivery of several items in a timely manner...even when another competitor fumbled our order so badly we had to cancel it during a move between homes...six weeks after we placed the original order with the unnamed company.

DWR’s furniture lines are elegant and representative of some of the best furniture ever designed. Is it pricey? Yes, some of it is expensive....having said that, the furniture is well made. You get what...

We purchased eight leather dining chairs and three bar stools which cost over $1,000 each (all by the same designer). Shortly after we purchased them, we noticed the chair seam (between the back and seat cushion) on two of the chairs were exposing/showing the inside chair materials. We later learned that the chair seams were NOT in fact sewn together (as they appeared) - but instead used velcro to hold them in place - yes that’s correct. VELCRO!!!

We were shocked to say the least. We wanted to replace all the chairs . They offered to repair one chair and replace the other chair.

However we later found out the escrow separation issue simply continued to happen with other chairs.

I contacted our sales rep. Design Within Reach has now asked us to contact their customer service department to try and resolve the issue - being that the chairs are no longer under warranty.

This is really poor customer service for someone who previously was such a loyal customer!

Stay tuned on how DWR decides to handle...