west elm — Local services in San Antonio

If you actually want to purchase and receive (undamaged) furniture within a timely period (or at all), DO NOT order from West Elm. While the in-store experience was nice and the local staff were helpful, we experienced issues with their order process, furniture scheduling/delivery group, customer service, and products. Their behind-the-scenes is a total mess. We gave West Elm every chance to fix the issues and spent significant time on the phone with customer service over the past month, but West Elm was unable (or unwilling) to remedy.

Specifically, we were given a 3 month turnaround for a piece in a "quick-ship" fabric and 5 months for another piece, each to be delivered when available. West Elm put our order in the system incorrectly and so the first piece sat in a warehouse for over a month, didn't ship when it was supposed to, and required significant time with their unfriendly furniture scheduling group to get it scheduled for delivery. It showed up damaged and we were told it would take another 4 months to get a replacement (so in total, a 7 month wait). We wanted to see if West Elm could expedite production or shipping for the replacement, but customer service informed us they have zero power to do that as the production and furniture scheduling groups under the parent company have no accountability to West Elm. I heard the production group has 7-10 business days to even read requests from West Elm customer service and has no responsibility to take action. We talked to the local store and the solution they offered was both them and us calling customer service daily until there was so much activity on this order that production might notice and take it seriously, which was not an acceptable or feasible fix. At one point, we thought we had a temporary solution, but customer service reneged on what they promised. Overall, customer service was hard to reach, they provided inconsistent info about what could or couldn't be done (or what was or wasn't being done), and failed multiple times to call back (e.g., one rep experienced technical issues and the call dropped, another promised to call back with more info).

We wanted this to work out but had to cut our losses at some point. We aren't willing to wait 7 months for a piece of furniture and don't trust that West Elm will even be able to deliver it then, so we have requested a refund. Apparently it may take over two weeks even to get our money back as it has to go through different groups and approvals and then a call to us to confirm even though we just want our money back on the same card. As my card was charged almost two months ago, I almost feel I should be charging them interest for a small business loan.

Overall, our experience with West Elm was a frustrating waste of time. I'm still trying to get our second piece scheduled for delivery and don't have high hopes for how that will turn out. I'm not sure how their business model works (or whether it does based on the reviews out there) and I would strongly advise people to buy...

Massively disappointed with our experience at West Elm. We read reviews about poor customer service, especially with delivery but figured we would have better luck. My wife and I purchased a couch and loveseat in September of last year with the understanding that our couch would be delivered early December and the chair by March. A long turnaround time but we were okay with that given that we expected the furniture to be high quality. Fast forward to mid-December and no word from furniture scheduling, We were told our order had been incorrectly entered in the system and that the couch had been sitting in a warehouse for over a month. After fighting through customer service, the couch was finally delivered in December, but was visibly damaged and was taken back by the delivery company. We again contacted customer service to find that they would not be able to supply us with an undamaged couch until March at the earliest. Even with these issues, customer service maintains it is impossible to expedite production or shipping as they do not have control over their own production vendor or delivery service. We requested that the damaged couch be re-delivered so we would at least have something in our living room temporarily, and they agreed, but we never got the confirmation call and now the delivery arm of West Elm refuses to deliver the damaged piece. DO NOT make our mistake and waste your money and time with this company. We will be working to get our money back and recommend avoiding West Elm...

HIGH END IKEA - was in there recently for a sale. I found a couple of pieces I liked that were reasonably priced, but there were several issues. The lady helping me f*ed up the coupons for the sale and ended up over charging me more than 100 dollars which I did not even notice ( had kids with me) and had to go back to have corrected which took almost a half hour.

Oh and they apparently don't deliver, lady told me that the items would be shipped to the store and I would have to come pick them up. That they would call me to let me know, too bad I never received a call or an email; however I did receive 6 promotional emails while waiting for my items.

Finally I got the pieces home, the boxes were extremely awkward and heavy (Yay for apartments) and took me not too long to get set up. =/

I'd recommend going someplace else. Funny story the same day I bought these from West elm I bought a dresser and night stands from L.S. you may spend a little more but they'll deliver it pre-assembled without a...