Ashley Store — Local services in Germantown

BUYER BEWARE!

Ashley used to be a brand I could trust. In 2016, I bought over $10,000 worth of furniture from them to furnish my new home. Part of that deal was if I did not make any claims against my warranty, I would get 10% of that back in-store credit. It has been nothing short of a disaster ever since.

I went to the store on Winchester in Memphis, TN on 12/31/21 to redeem my credit. I was told that I could not use any in-store sales with my credit, nor would they allow me to redeem my credit online, nor would they price-match what was online (online prices were up to $200 less depending on the furniture piece). Many of the pieces we saw on the floor were damaged, which has me really questioning if the quality is not what it used to be. The store associate was extremely unhelpful and kept disappearing when I was trying to get her to help me. When I asked to speak to a manager, she told me she WAS the manager (which I later found out to be untrue by calling the store).

We finally gave up and just picked out our $1000 worth of furniture, which ended up being a cocktail table, a small storage bench, and two barstools. We were told that the barstools were in stock at the warehouse and that we could go pick them up on the following Saturday (1/8/22). We confirmed this multiple times because the warehouse is a good 40-minute drive from our home. When we arrived, we were told that we had been misinformed and that it would be April before we could get any of our items. The woman working at the warehouse would not give us any further information and actually walked away from the service window and put in her headphones back at her desk across the room to ignore us.

Fast-forward to last week. I finally received a call on 4/26/22 saying that all of my items had arrived and they needed me to tell them the exact date that I would pick them up from the warehouse. I confirmed that I would be there on 4/30/22. When we arrived, the lady at the window this time was actually quite pleasant, but we waited almost 25 minutes for our items to be pulled. There were at least 5 workers hanging out on the dock chatting and clearly not working - it is possible that they were on break or that pulling my order was not part of their job responsibilities, but Ashley needs to know that the perception is that they were not trying to get my order together and I was the only customer waiting. They finally loaded the boxes in the back of our pickup truck and confirmed with us that we had 2 barstools, the cocktail table, and the bench. We drove the 40 minutes back home and realized that the box labeled as the barstools only had one stool in it. After multiple phone calls where we were told there was no way to contact the warehouse without driving back over there, we loaded up again and drove back to the warehouse, where they apologized and loaded us up with another box labeled as a bar stool. We noticed the box size was different, so we opened it in the parking lot to find that it was the completely wrong stool. We took it back inside and were told that we would have an update by 5/2 via phone on what the next steps would be. 5/2 came and went, and today (5/3) I received a phone call that they can't get us another stool until August 4th. Over 8 months to get my order in... (and who knows if it will even be correct by then). I will NEVER shop with Ashley again, and am only typing this whole story up to hopefully save someone else the trouble. If I had not purchased this on store credit I would have returned the whole thing and taken my...

Very Good Experience in Memphis, TN. Our sons are working & in school out-of-state and will soon complete one part of this journey in a couple of months which will require a move to another City, so at a recent visit we decided to visit an Ashley Furniture Outlet nearby the city they are presently working. Our intent was to look a possible purchases for a sofa & chair in the near future in conjunction with their move. Sinxe we have an Ashley Store in our Hometown as well we could also visit our l9cal store and order furniture for them, getting a look at the same furniture locally.

We were very please with our experience at the store we visted in Memphis, TN. We were able to find a very comfortable leather recliner in a nice shade of Grey AND also a fabric sectional sofa which complemented the Grey leather chair.

Both pieces were "floor models" so we were able to purchase both at a greatly reduced price.

Perhaps the most amazing thing especially to our salesperson John E. (Memphis, TN) was that we were able to load & haul ALL of the pieces of the chair & four piece sectional sofa "in one shot" in our two vehicles, a late model Ford Explorer & Ford Escape.

Though some of the pieces were a bit heavy and awkward to carry up to their upstairs apartment (since this is "solid" furniture made of heavy metal & wood framing), both sofa & chair were simple to assemble, requiring just a little strength & common sense to figure it all out and attach each piece in its proper place.

Again, we are very pleased with our purchase and glad we chose Ashley for our furniture store.

I wish I had pictures to post, but suffice it to say the two pieces look great in their apartment.

I am posting a couple of pictures of the interior mechanism on the two side sections of the sectional sofa, both of which recline with the flip of a manual switch. These types of mechanisms have a small plastic clip towards the end of the wire cable that snaps into place on the metal frame. When the switch is pulled it pulls the cable and activates the spring loaded mechanism, lifting the foot rest of the recliner section. Unfortunately, these types of clips tend to pop out on some models. The pictures illustrate a very simple fix for this problem that costs little or nothing. You just need one plastic cable tie (white in this photo) which you simply slip into the inside of the inserted clip (which is black) before engaging/tighting the cable tie. This simple fix will effectively hold the clip on place & help avoid malfunctioning of the mechanism.

Also, I was very happy NOT to be pestered by our salesperson to buy extra packages we did not need (insurance, cleaning products). We have experienced this at more than one furniture retail outlet and was pleasantly surprised not to get the same experience...

Lacassia was wonderful and incredibly patient with me as I made the decision on the sectional for my new home.

EDIT: 1 month later, I’ve edited down my initial review from a 5 star to a 1 star based on an exceptionally awful experience after leaving the store.

1. My original delivery was cancelled by Ashley with no explanation or communication. I called when I saw that I was no longer expected to receive the item when I checked the link that was sent that morning. I was told “oh, they must have cancelled the wrong order”. As a result, my order was received over two weeks later, after a substantial number of calls, totaling over 3 hours of my work week time (often during my lunch) since the customer service hours were only during work hours.

2. When my furniture did arrive, it was both dirty and damaged, with no explanation as to why it arrived with literal dirt on it, an issue for a couch that is off white. For the tear of the material, at least they have offered to replace it, of course, it will take 7-10 business days to replace their initial error.

3. Be aware that if you opt for a furniture delivery, there are absolutely no returns, even if you contact them 1 day after delivery. This was never communicated to me unfortunately, other than in a long and convoluted terms of service document. To make matters worse, when the furniture arrived and I recognize that the end tables would not likely fit the space, I communicated this to the team conducting the delivery and they instructed me to “see how it fits first and you can work it out later if it doesn’t”.

Altogether, my experience with Ashley has been an extraordinarily poor experience outside of the initial interaction with Lacassia. They have been incompetent, slow to respond, and have demonstrated poor follow through without me prompting them individually nearly every time. In particular, the front line customer service staff were wildly unprofessional, neglecting to place the call on mute while talking to their immediate supervisor about the call, saying things like “bro, I’m so tired and don’t want to deal with this” or “that escalated guy is calling again”.

I will never even consider working with this company again and don’t recommend anyone else take this...