west elm — Local services in Emeryville

Believe the reviews about poor customer service!! Here's my experience: I'd been keeping an eye on a swivel chairs hoping to catch it on sale. Finally on Saturday I got a promo email about a sale, where I could get the chair for $200 off, with free shipping. I was ready to jump on it but since the item is not returnable because it's custom ordered, I decided to go to the store to see it and get a fabric swatch. I called the store to confirm I could see the chair and get a swatch. The first rep to answer was rude and hung up on me quickly after telling me the chair was NOT in the store, and not giving me a chance to ask a follow up question. This didn't make sense to me since the chair seems to be a featured item, so I called again. This time I got a courteous rep who confirmed I could see the chair at the store and get a swatch. Despite the fact that I rarely go shopping during the pandemic, I made a point of going into the store on Saturday evening to check it out. (I figured I could see the chair, get a swatch and leave very quickly). I found a friendly sales rep who showed me the chair and got me a swatch. It looked like just what I wanted! Before leaving I asked her how long the sale would last. She told me they were extending the Black Friday sale due to covid and it would be on sale for a while. If she had told me otherwise, I would have come home and placed the order Saturday night!

Instead, I went home thinking I didn't have to order immediately to take advantage of the sale. Sunday was daughter's bday so I put off ordering till Monday. When I got online Monday morning, the same sale price and free shipping was no longer available to me. This represented a $200 difference. I called customer service and explained what happened. I was asking for the sale price offered though Saturday's email, that I would have taken advantage of if I had not received the wrong info from their sales rep. I mentioned I had documentation of my call to their store and the fabric swatch. They apologized but told me they could not give the sale price I saw on Saturday. Lots of apologies but no satisfactory resolution. While on hold, I searched reviews & found they consistently fare poorly on quality and customer service. At this point I'm thinking I was spared spending money on a product from a company that is not trustworthy to resolve issues. There are plenty of other stores I can go to, and fortunately, I'm in no rush ... except to finish this review and unsubscribe...

West elm does not has an account manager for handling large order. I ordered from them I became a full time coordinator, coping with their logistical nightmare, quality control fail, communication mess, terrible customer service, A working professional will be losing their job before they receiving all the pieces. -West elm is for patient rich door keeper can wait forever.

I spent 14K here. 25 days passing by, I only received 20 % of what I order. 15% of them have quality issues. Table surface isn't flat, sofa, chair has one leg shorter than the other 3 legs, the fabric under the chair has fallen off. And the wooden legs of the counter top chair have dens and paint coverage issue. I also ordered a dining table set: bench cushions sold out after the Bench has arrived, the whole look has been destroyed. The customer service representative can't see what has been successfully delivered by delivery companies in their systems. The customer service representative does not know what has been taking back by the delivery companies due to the quality issues.

All their free delivery marketing materials can not be applied in furniture delivery. I paid nearly 2k for delivery charge.

The whole system is not well integrated. You are the only one knows what's going on, please document everything, so you can explain your case to 10 different service ladies. Please make sure you are taking the notes of every conversation you had with any west elm staff and record their voice. Because nobody is taking notes here. They are robotics, using their bad system. You will be talking to different people every single time. None of them will follow up, none of them will keep their promises, nobody can see what other people...

I typically don't go out of my way to write reviews. However, I felt I had to specifically call out the customer service at this location.

I have a background in managing sales in a similar industry. I'm going to assume the reps don't work on a commission. That would be the only explanation I could think of for why I wasn't greeted when I entered and why I wasn't approached by a rep for about 20 minutes. If I'm walking in on a Wednesday afternoon and hardly anyone is shopping in the showroom, that is unexceptional. Wal-Mart has greeters that are more welcoming.

When someone finally checked in on me, I told them that I was looking to buy a bedroom set. Their response to that was "ok, well, let me know if you have any questions" and then walked away without offering to show me anything or see what questions I did have. If one of my sales reps did that on my sales floor, we would be having a one-on-one conversation later that day.

I came in to buy today. I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted to buy based on my research. It's my day off and I made an effort to drive a ways to visit their showroom. It's a shame for them that they didn't see my buying signal and help me, because I won't be purchasing from this location.

As someone who does work on commission, I prefer to go into a showroom and work with a sales rep so that I know my money helps them make their sales goal or compensates them for their hard work. Otherwise, I could just buy online and no one gets a commission - it just goes to corporate. Based on my experience today, it's clear that the employees aren't incentivized to make sales. I won't feel guilty for a sec if I purchase what I wanted on...