It's astrology 101 - do not sign papers or make large purchases when Mercury is retrograde. The backwards motion of the communications planet will cause delays, annoyances and confusion. Unfortunately, one happy day at the computer during this time period I merrily ordered a couch online. The advantages were great .. good price, nice colour, no Communauto organization required, no going to tedious shops to sit on various couches. All good, yes? Well, no ... After my merry clicking everything started to unwind.
I purchased my sectional from a place called GoWFB.ca, which seemed to me to be likely in B.C. or somewhere, good for avoiding paying PST. But as the days ticked on I started tracking my order and discovered my sectional was sitting someplace in south California (where, ironically, I had just been on vacation .. should have brought it back in my hand luggage!). It took many emails to beg people to please free it and send it along on its path. To make a long story short, it took 2 months.
And when it finally arrived, one piece was missing. And then the first piece was inspected, it was damaged. And when the second piece finally arrived, it was damaged too. So this meant waiting for two additional shipments to gather all the replacement pieces. The quantity of emails tracking all this was time-consuming and tedious.
The furniture itself is not bad, not especially high quality but functional. The sections tend to slide around a bit but the microfibre is a nice texture and an okay colour. The throw cushions have started unravelling and need to be resewn but frankly, I didn't pay any shipping or customs that I noticed from this long, journey these boxes took. Apparently the couch itself originated in Vietnam so it's really been all around the world. We had to catch a very bold mouse a day or two after the sectional arrived but I am hoping he was from our garden and not from these distant boxes.
Now, I did complain to the people at Wholesale Furniture Brokers and they were suitably sympathetic and offered me a coupon for a future purchase to make up for my bad luck. But I have tried a few different ways to actually use this coupon and failed. The code doesn't work, it requires quite a high minimum, they say they'll change the coupon and the minimum, then when I try to order the system rejects everything and I get emails complaining I haven't bought the minimum. Blah blah, am bored by the whole thing, frankly, and still have two couches (our old one and the new one) because we got so used to waiting and waiting for pieces to arrive that there was no 'hurray, new sectional!" moment, ever.
And now I see Mercury is going retrograde again this week so no, get me out of here. I am not a customer service experiment!
