Steinhafels — Local services in Madison

STEINHAFELS BAD BAD BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE – OR MORE APTLY PUT - NO CUSTOMER SERVICE AND THEY JUST CHARGED US AGAIN FOR OUR PURCHASE!!! THE PROBLEMS WITH THEM NEVER END!!! Initial purchase was 8/6 now on 11/5 they charged my uncle again for the entire purchase!!! We contacted the bank and was told he would get his money back, but it might take a while. Is this their way of scamming the elderly? UNBELIVEABLE!!! And, I'll bet I won't get a response from Steinhafels. I don’t often write a bad review. I just won’t go back to a business that has treated me poorly. But, after a few weeks, this interactions with Steinhafels still has me feeling a sense of outrage. My 91 year old uncle and my 81 year old aunt (who is recovering from a severely broken leg) went to Steinhafels to buy a mattress. They went there because I had shopped there before and was pleased with the service. However, this experience was, by far, the worst customer service experience I’ve had in a very, very long time. When we were shopping, we repeatedly told the salesperson we were looking for a mattress for a hospital bed. My uncle is 91 years old and relied on the salesman to guide him on the size mattress he needed. The mattress, when we got it home, was 6” too short. I have since researched hospital bed mattresses and every single site I checked stated a hospital bed mattress is 80” long. The size of the Twin XL, not a regular twin. They have a 15% ‘restocking’ fee that I was asking to have waived as we had just picked up the mattress; it was unused and still in the original packaging. I called Steinhafels (it goes to a central system, you can’t even talk with the actual store where you make a purchase) and the person, John, was so rude and arrogant I was actually speechless at one point. When I called the number listed on the website as the local store number, I was put through to a “customer service” center. I asked to speak to a manager. The representative, replied, “What is this concerning?” I told him it was concerning a product I purchased and had picked up an hour ago. He said he needed more information. I told him I would give the information to the manager and repeated that I wanted to speak to a manager. He said he needed more information and would not transfer me to a manager. I then said, “So you are refusing to allow me to speak to a manager?” He said, in a very arrogant, nasty and rude manner, “WELL, YOU’RE REFUSING TO GIVE ME THE INFORMATION!” I then told him my issue and asked to speak to someone who had the authority to help resolve the issue. He then replied, “I have the authority but I’m not going to waive the fee.” I asked if he was the. CEO of the company. He said no and I said, “Well, there is someone above you.” I then asked to speak to his manager. He refused. He said he would need to email his manager and have the manager email me. I asked him for his name as the connection was not great and I missed it when he answered the call. He said, again in a very arrogant and rude manner, “John, like I said when I answered the phone!” I asked if he had a last name or operator ID. He said, ‘NO, just John.” I said, “So you are the only John in customer service in the entire corporation?” He said, “Yes.” Clearly, he did not want to be held accountable for his rude and unacceptable behavior. The manager never emailed me. I did receive a voicemail from the salesperson who said the fee would not be waived. The mattress was $1599 so the restocking fee is around $240. If they had been willing to waive the fee, we would have repurchased a mattress that fit the bed. Instead, we have purchased a mattress at MATTRESS FIRM and will be returning the mattress to Steinhafels. We will NEVER NEVER purchase another item at Steinhafels!!! After several phone calls and an in-person promise to waive the fee (which was subsequently revoked) they FINALLY gave a full refund. But now, 3 months later, they have charged us AGAIN for the full amount of the purchase. When I called, I was told our bank had to solve...

My recent experience with Steinhafels has been awful. I ordered a chair and ottoman October 2, 2020 with no end in sight for when I might receive them. When I purchased the items, I was working with a new employee. She was struggling with entering items in the computer along with applying the financing and was frequently asking her manager for help. He never once got off the chair he was sitting at behind the desk to help her and was very dismissive of her. At the end of the transaction when she asked him for help checking everything, he stated “well we will see if you did right eventually won’t we?” And again didn’t even get up to do what she was asking. At that time, after checking with her manager, she told me I would receive the items at the end of November/beginning of December because of the holidays.

I get to mid December, and still have heard nothing about when my chair and ottoman will be delivered. I call customer service, who then tells me that the order was never placed because the financing was wasn’t entered correctly into the system. They told me to go into the store to have them correct the funding, and they would place the order effective that date, which would put my estimated delivery at early February. I went to the store that night, explained the situation to the sales manager that was on. She corrected the financing, entered it correctly, discounted my items by $100 total for the initial mess up, and told me she would contact the warehouse to she if she can get me bumped up to a sooner delivery date than early February since it was their error. Great!

Two days later I receive a call telling me the times will be available for delivery mid-late January. Again, great! However, then I get an email at the bery end of December saying “actually your items won’t be available for delivery until early February”. Okay, whatever, I have waited this long, what’s one more month....

Yesterday, I check the status online to see if they know yet the exact date, only to see the expected delivery has now been pushed back to late February! At that point it will be nearly 5 months since I ordered the chair.

I emailed the manager I had been working with for an explanation and was forwarded to the manager who was there when the order was originally screwed up! He tells me, “sorry there isn’t a good explanation for why it’s getting pushed back, let me know if you want me to cancel it” I contact customer service today to see if I can be in contact with the store manager or really any manager but him about the issue and they tell me “no” and read what the website says. At the point I told them to cancel the order and they finally agreed to forward on a message to management asking for a call back, and if I want to cancel my order at that point I could. I’m this is where I am now. Waiting for a call back.

I know the pandemic is slowing things down, I get it. BUT, I just bought a house during the pandemic and have been buying furniture like crazy to fill my new 3 bedroom home. I’ve bought dressers, beds, dining tables, side tables, office furniture, a couch, rugs, counter stools, and an entertainment center from 3 other stores (WG&R, Ashley’s, and Bob’s Discount Furniture) none of which took longer than two months with the pandemic. Steinhafels has extremely slow delivery and even poorer customer service. I recommend going to one of the other stores I listed above.

*Belated Update: No one from the management team ever called me back. I cancelled my order and am purchasing a chair elsewhere that won’t...

Let me start by saying that I realize COVID-19 has had far reaching impact that people couldn’t have foreseen. We ordered new living room furniture on 7/3. At the time it was ordered, we were told by our sales representative that it should be delivered the week of 7/20. This worked perfectly because we were in the middle of some remodeling and so we took the week of 7/20 off work to prepare for the new furniture. However, we were not informed that there were any delays in manufacturing, and we weren’t getting our furniture anytime soon. In fact, I had to call Steinhafels several times to get an estimate on when the furniture would be available. In my first call, the representative told me that they would have someone from the store call me directly— I’ve still not received a call from the store a week later. On Friday 7/24 I called the customer service number. Now that some of the order is in I wanted to get at least what was available delivered. That’s not their normal process but they “made an exception”. Delivery, however, will not happen until 8/15 and I can’t schedule the remainder of the delivery until the rest of the items are in— probably late august, so we may have the remainder of our furniture sometime in September. Until then, 1/2 of a sectional will have to do. As I mentioned in the beginning of my review- I realize the COVID-19 has had impact on things that no one could have foreseen. However, I think that Steinhafels fell short from a customer service perspective in the following ways:

1. They never told us that the furniture was taking longer than expected. Proactively teaching out would have been a disappointment, but understandable.
2. we instantly got communication via text to leave a review when the first part of our order was scheduled. It would be quite simple to incorporate that kind of automatic communication to customers. We get communication like that from other vendor all the time.
3. Steinhafels didn’t suggest any form of compensation for our trouble. We took an entire week off work for this- we obviously should have also been more proactive in finding out what was happening with our furniture- but this is not something that we do often and didn’t realize the process. It would have cost Steinhafels absolutely nothing to throw in the stain warranty they tried selling us when we bought the furniture and would have gone a long way from a customer service standpoint.
4. I commented to the customer service rep I spoke with on Friday about how ironic it was regarding how quickly I was texted to leave a review, but there was no communication about the delays in our furniture. He suggested that I wait a few days to leave the review so that I could “cool off”. Note- I was nothing but kind and collected throughout my conversation with customer service as I realize it was not his fault that we were not getting the furniture when we expected. The bottom line is that we spent a lot of money and, while we thought the selection and prices were relatively good at Steinhafels, the customer service has fallen short in every sense and a few easy things could have changed my opinion...