west elm — Local services in Phoenix

West Elm - 2 (Al Capone Style), Customer - 0

Nothing short of criminal on part two of West Elm Review. (The first was regarding their inadequacy on scheduling, delivery, and customer service.) Up-to-date, we will be looking at reporting West Elm to the Better Business Bureau after our recent visit to the Phoenix store, realizing we’ve virtually been swindled out of THOUSOUNDS of dollars by West Elm. Here’s the skinny:

•We made a large 16-piece furniture order on June 17th – we were able to put 1/3 of the purchase on our West Elm Credit Card (we signed up for the points), and since we met our maximum on the card, we paid for almost 2/3 on my personal debit card (signing up for Key Rewards also). This is called a “split order,” because we did one large order, under one bulk $250 shipping fee, and split the order between two different cards.

•Come to find out, the part we paid out with my debit card went towards a “gift card” without my knowledge. Let’s clarify this again—I paid by phone, and was buying furniture, not a gift card. The sales associate did NOT notify me that my purchase was transferred to a gift card during this time. His reasoning was to keep the order as one and save a second ($250) shipping fee.

•When we recently went to the store to return some of the chairs we had received on the order, we found out that 2/3 of our order had been purchased through this “gift card,” meaning we cannot get any real refunds. If you’re following this—it means that West Elm locked us into thousands of dollars to THEIR store without our knowledge or consent. Our money is essentially bound to the “gift card” we had no knowledge of purchasing. This is fraudulent.

•Not only did we find out our money was locked into a “gift card”, we also could not do a straight forward exchange on the chairs, our only option to get new chairs was to pay out of pocket again, despite all of the “rewards,” “points,” and event money we should have for an exchange. Here’s the breakdown:

EXCHANGE: West Elm doesn’t do exchanges, they credit the money back on whatever card you use, which takes a few days. In our case, they could not track where the money would actually go—to our West Elm credit card, or this mysterious “gift card” they implemented without consent. Nevertheless, the money we spent is unable to go back into my bank account thus far.

CREDT CARD “POINTS”: We were not completely informed that the “earn $25 for every $250 spent” comes in the form of coupons you receive in the mail. This means that you cannot go to West Elm and use the credit card to track and redeem your points. You have to go through ANOTHER hoop and receive these “reward dollars” in the mail. With our experience, they won’t ever come—trust me.

KEY REWARDS: We signed up for the Key Rewards the last week of June, and three weeks later, still no reward points/dollars. The sales associate said, “It can take up to 30-days, and knowing this company, it will take the full 30-days.”

So let’s review: We are unable to get a legitimate debit card/bank refund on the thousands of dollars we spent at West Elm, it is put on a gift card that can only be spent at West Elm. We cannot exchange any items, but have to wait for the funds to go back to either our W.E. credit card or “gift card” (which they are unsure where it will go). We cannot use our Credit Card Reward dollars because we have to look for those in the mail. We cannot use our Key Rewards dollars, because supposedly three-weeks is too soon for them to “kick-in.”

Overall, this is the WORSE experience I have ever had in purchasing anything, and the issues don’t’ seem to stop. We hope that no other customer has to go through this kind of experience at this corporate store again. I did have West Elm’s social media representative reach out and offer to be a point person, I have sent her an updated email, and will see if there is any resolve to this fraudulent issue. At this point, we will be sending back our order and starting again with a reputable local...

I hope anyone who is buying furniture from this place sees this review first and stays away. To make a long story short, this place is a joke and will not treat you as a customer or even make sure you receive your furniture. I ordered 3 things from here and only received one of them. One of the items was a $1,439 mattress that they left on my front porch during the work week at 3:00pm while I was not home. Furthermore, they did not require a signature when they delivered the mattress even though I literally paid a delivery fee. I never gave them permission to do this with my mattress. Their only way of notifying me that I received my mattress was via an email that got lost in my spam, so I only found out that my $1,439 mattress had gotten stolen when we called to see what was going on with my mattress and the other package that I also had not received. I could go on and on about how they treated the mattress situation. But to make a long story short, they refused to take any responsibility for mishandling my $1,439 mattress and would not provide me a new one or refund me. Their reasoning was that “it was their partner Leesa Mattress that mishandled the package” and there was proof of delivery. This proof of delivery was never sent to me by the way. It was only sent to me after the fact so they could argue they didn’t need to refund me or provide me a new one. Again, despite the proof of delivery, they left such an expensive item on my front porch without ensuring a signature was required to make sure I received it, or even properly notifying me it was delivered. As I mentioned, I did not authorize them to do this and I was also charged a delivery fee. They still refused to take any responsibility for this even though I did not give anyone permission to do this with my package. They also seem to have no issue partnering with businesses that do not treat their customers’ expensive purchases right, so that alone should say a lot about them. I am now having to dispute this charge to make sure I do not get charged for something I never even received. Even then, for all I know this may not go in my favor and I may be responsible for a $1,439 mattress I never received. The other item was a $600 table that was literally never delivered. This was not one of their partners so they have no excuse for this. The day my bed frame was delivered, my table was also supposed to be delivered. The people that delivered it said they did not have the table and that I needed to call West Elm. Again, I could go on and on about how they handled this situation. But again to make a long story short, literally no one knew what was going on with my table and where it was at. I also got conflicting answers at one point as someone tried to say it was delivered while multiple people had already said it wasn’t and that they didn’t know what was going on with it. After finally canceling this item, it is now being treated as a return. This makes no sense as I can’t return something I never even received. The issue with this is that they are waiting to receive the item first before they do anything about refunding me the charge. They don’t even know what’s going on with the table or where it’s at, so I doubt they’ll try and resolve this in my favor. I will most likely have to do another dispute to get the table resolved too. Bottom line, do yourself a favor and stay away from this place.

Update: I am now being forced to be fully responsible for this $1,439 mattress I did not receive. Unfortunately, capital one was incredibly negligent in handling my dispute and overlooked important details I thoroughly explained in my dispute. All it took was West Elm sending proof that I ordered the mattress, then a picture that it was delivered (before being stolen). After encouraging me to submit a dispute, West Elm went out of their way to make sure it did not go in my favor. West Elm is incredibly crooked. Stay away...

Two of my friends have been recommending me to check out West Elm in general, but especially since my husband and I have been searching for a 6-8 person table and they both purchased their tables from West Elm.

Walking into the store, my wife and I immediately fell in love with the decor and we were greeted promptly. The colors matched our home and the style was exactly what we were looking for. Good news, we even found a dining room table and chairs that would fit our house. Unfortunately, our excitement soon dissipated. We had a few questions for the staff, most of them were unable to be answered. Regardless of the unanswered questions, we wanted to purchase the dining room table, a bench and four chairs, finding out that we could take three chairs today, the table would have to be ordered online, one chair would have to be shipped to the store from another location plus we would be charged a $30-$40 shipping fee and the bench had to come from another distribution center. What a crazy, inefficient and frustrating experience! Frustrated by the lack of knowledge on products, pricing and the way to get our furniture, my wife and I left the store without the beautiful set.

After rethinking our decision, I returned to this location a couple of hours later, hoping my experience would be better. I will say, the gentleman that helped me was super sweet and truly cared about every customer that walked into that store! Sadly, West Elm’s processes are broken and truly cause an unpleasant customer experience. While I ordered the dining room table, the bench and four of the same chairs, I had to pay four separate transactions. The poor guy that helped me and I had to use two cash registers (on opposite sides of the store) and the four orders will all arrive on different days. In addition, I was charged $129 for shipping on the table which I was not told about the first time I was in the store. I was also notified that I shouldn’t call the distribution center asking about my table because they’ve had customers complain about the lack of customer service and you can’t get answers you need. To finish the poor experience off, we were told to pull around to the back of the store to pick up our chairs. When we arrived, nobody answered the service bells and we had to call the store for someone to bring out our chairs.

I have to say, my wife and I are unbelievably disappointed in this store and are seriously concerned our table, bench and one chair will not arrive in time for Christmas Eve dinner. I was truly hoping for a great experience with how my friends raved about West Elm, but instead there was a lack of knowledge, infuriating processes and had to pay more than what we were originally told. I don’t know that I will ever return to this store and really hope that these broken processes are fixed. Not only do the customers get irritated, but the employees have to go through inefficient processes to help...