Reperch — Local services in San Francisco

TLDR: I really wanted to like this place and tried to give them multiple chances for my sale while looking for a futon, but I consistently encountered very poor customer experiences that eventually resulted in them losing my business. They seem like they have a good selection of items and an interesting business model, but with such a poor customer experience they simply lost the opportunity for my sale. I would look elsewhere if you are in the market for a sofa, unless they dramatically improve their customer communication. I do hope a manager reads this and does something to address these issues, as everything below is easily avoidable - but in this case it lost them an easy sale.

Read on if you want to see my experience:

1. On a Wednesday I make an online reservation for that Saturday afternoon to come look at futons in their warehouse. I receive a confirmation email right away, and all seems set to go. I proceed to plan my Saturday afternoon entirely around this trip to their warehouse and am intent on likely making a purchase. TWO FULL DAYS after making the appointment, on Friday, the DAY BEFORE my appointment, and after planning my whole Saturday afternoon around this visit, I receive an email stating that sofas are not able to be viewed on the weekends and to please reschedule for a time M-F. **Why was this not told to me when I first made the appointment, rather than waiting two whole days and after I made plans around coming out?

2. I decide to give them another chance, and change my appointment to Monday. While making the booking I enter the item ID's of the futons I want to look at, as it requests. On Monday morning, the day of my visit, I receive another confirmation email, asking for the item ID's of the sofas I want to look at, even though I have already done this during my booking. I have to go through and find the item ID's once again.

3. I drive all the way out to their warehouse for my appointment, and when I arrive the woman at the front desk says "Oh you must be Derek, here to see sofas, right?". She proceeds to tell me that sofas are housed in a different warehouse and unfortunately, for some reason, are not able to be seen today and that the earliest I can go see them is probably Thursday or Friday. Factoring in everything else that has already happened up to this point, I am pretty upset to say the least. Here I drove all the way out to South San Francisco, only to be told I can't do what I had made an appointment to do. Not only was I not told this before I drove all the way out there, but I even received a confirmation email that morning asking for the item ID's of the sofas I wanted to see. Absolutely terrible.

4. I ask how I will know when I can come look at the sofas, and she says she will take down my number and call me as soon as they are ready for me to visit - "probably by Thursday or Friday". Thursday and Friday come along, and sure enough, I receive no phone call. In fact, I now write this one week later, and I still have not heard anything at all. My business was lost the moment I drove all the way out there and was told I couldn't see the sofas, but still, I was curious to see if they would at least actually follow up and call me. Unfortunately, they did not.

So all in all, my customer experience with the Local Flea was just very poor all around, and while I continued to give them a chance despite the bad experiences encountered early on, at a certain point they just flat out lost my business. Moving forward I'll be looking elsewhere...

The Local Flea is UNBELIEVABLE! We came across them after reading an article at SFGate and went and checked out their online catalog. Immediately found a large framed painting and ordered it for delivery. Just the frame was worth more than they were charging for it. They got back to us immediately and set up a delivery time. In the meantime, we looked around some more and came across a beautiful 55" round granite table. We wrote them immediately and asked if it would be possible to get it delivered at the same time as the painting. They agreed and, despite the table being huge and weighing a ton (almost literally), they didn't charge more for the delivery. When the delivery arrived, on-time, the granite pedestal for the table was damaged and taped together. It would take some work, but it was fixable, so we accepted delivery since the table was so beautiful and a steal at the price. It did appear to us that the damage was probably caused by the delivery company. We wrote to The Local Flea and explained the problem and sent photos of the damage. They got back to us immediately and offered an extremely generous adjustment. They are obviously willing to go well above and beyond to make the customer happy. We were able to get the table repaired and it is beyond beautiful. The Local Flea is an honest, reputable, and customer-oriented business that we look forward to purchasing from again. We cannot recommend them highly enough. Tons of high quality merchandise at rock bottom prices and the best customer service we have found anywhere. Do yourself a favor and...

tl;r Great idea, poor execution. Very disorganized, lousy customer service and communications.

We ordered online for local pickup. After coordinating date/time with a customer service rep via email (who apparently was based out of state?) we drove an hour into the city to pick up the order.

We were made to wait 20 mins in the back before any of the floor staff acknowledged us, at which point someone walked up to us, said "oversold" , and then walked away...

Presumably to search for our item? unclear, because he just straight up walked away..

So we chased the guy down to get clarification - he mumbled something about the item not being available...Okay?

"So now what?" (we wondered out loud, to ourselves, because we were left alone again without anybody having explained anything).

Another 10 mins or so of standing around unsure of what was actually happening , another staff member approached us and asked why we were still waiting..."hadn't they already told us they didn't have the item?"

At this point we began to make a stink and pushed for an explanation (the item we ordered was sold months ago, womp womp), because if not then they may have just let us stand there the rest of the day or until we started growing roots.

There were some good folks on the floor that shared our frustration, but the experience overall left a sour taste in our mouths. We took the refund and ran.

Recommendation: DON'T OUTSOURCE YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM TO ARIZONA WHEN YOUR WAREHOUSE AND OPERATION IS IN...