Hi all
after more than a year, my furniture has finally been delivered.
Result? While I'm happy with the quality of the furniture, I AM NOT HAPPY WITH THE SERVICE.
my sofa and dining table chair cushions are all of the same beige colour, therefore if you were to choose, like me, the bed frame would naturally be beige to suit the entire theme right?
WRONG!!
My bed was delivered of the WRONG COLOUR. THEY WROTE THE WRONG SERIAL NUMBER ON THE RECEIPT. the throw pillows that were attached were beige while the bed frame was of a weird brownish purple colour. So when i called Cellini, I was brushed off and dismissed with the following remarks:
(1) my husband was the one who'd signed the receipt so indirectly, they blamed him.
(2) We'd paid to change the colour from black initially to beige. So you would think now that since the bed is of the wrong colour, all they have to do is to re-deliver right? HA! wrong! i was told to PAY AGAIN if i wanted the beige bed.
WHAT ON EARTH?!
(3) when i told Cellini that i'd paid initially to Change the colour, she said that I'd paid $50 ONLY. I wanted to scream at her, but i controlled myself. If i don't recall wrongly, we'd paid more than $100 or so (?) just to change the colour in the ORDER FORM , meaning that it wasn't even being manufactured yet and we'd already paid just to alter some words in the order form.
(4) She was insistent that I would have to pay another $300 or so to change the colour from that brownish purple that was delivered, to the beige that i wanted. I said that i wasn't happy coz I'd already paid earlier on. wouldn't that mean that i would have paid $400 in all for nothing?!!!!!
(5) Irritated by her refusal to even hear me out, as well as her screaming at me, I was pissed. EXTREMELY PEEVED. At a certain point, i said something to clarify and she, in exasperation, had screamed "YES!!!!!!!" as if i was the world's most stupid person.
(6) after a few calls, we were still on a war of words. Finally, i couldn't take it and when she was yelling, i yelled back "Now don't YOU shout at me. i am the paying customer over here. I didn't pay you so much to have you shout at me. if anything at all, this is MY FURNITURE that was delivered WRONGLY. if anyone has to shout, I AM THE ONE TO BE SHOUTING AT YOU. SO STOP SHOUTING AT ME." Grrrrrrr! I didn't mean to be so rude, but how can a customer service personnel YELL AT A CUSTOMER?!!!!!!!!
(7) She claimed that my husband was alone when he signed the receipt bearing the colour code. I told her that even if he was alone, the colour code was for cellini's admin work. HOW WOULD WE KNOW WHAT IT STOOD FOR?! If i were to throw a mind-boggling number of acronyms I use at work at her, would she be able to decipher them? Absolutely not , right? So WE ARE TO BE BLAMED FOR NOT KNOWING THE COLOUR CODES. Right.
(8) with regards to point (7) above, my husband wasn't alone. I WAS WITH HIM AND MY MUM WAS WITH US! ALL OF US recall that we'd pointed the beige colour at the showroom (it was on display for goodness sake!) and said that we'd wanted all of the items to be of the same colour!
(9) That aside, I had chosen a zen lamp for the bedroom. what was delivered was an awful purple clay lamp that was HUMONGOUS and SO UGLY. the gold plating at the bulb area was also peeling off too. When i told not one, but TWO of the personnel, the y asked me if the lamp was FREE OF CHARGE. I was enraged coz we had paid for the lamp! What were they trying to imply? that it was free, so take it or leave it and shut up?
(10) still on the topic of the lamp, When i said that i'd paid for the lamp, i was met with suspicion. She said that it was the lamp that i'd ordered. I told her, "please. if the theme of your house was entirely beige and brown with zen-like tinges , WOULD YOU CHOOSE A HUGE PURPLE LAMP thAT DIDNT MATCH ANYTHING?!!!!!" I said that if it had matched my stuff, i can still accept it. but i had PAID for it and it was the WRONG lamp with NOTHING TO MATCH IT. HOW DO U EXPECT ME TO ACCEPT IT?!
(11) AFter haggling for a while , i cut her off by saying I would bring the lamp down personally to exchange. And so i did yesterday. Guess what? When I brought the lamp to her, she promptly took the lamp, walked to one of the showroom displays where there was a distinctive gap and PLACED IT THERE. Then i realised that the lamp matched the showroom display to a tee, which meant that THAT LAMP WAS A DISPLAY SET. that was the only logical conclusion, coupled with the fact that the gold-plating was peeling off! A new lamp wouldn't look like that, right?
(12) And by now, you would have thought that my woes are over. Far from it. She replaced the ugly purple lamp with the correct one. but when i checked the lampshade just as we got into the car, THE NEW LAMPSHADE HAD A STREAK OF DIRT ACROSS that could not be cleaned off. It looked like a dried stain of streaks! And so, in we marched again, this time she was serving another couple and she told me to choose a lampshade from the display sets in the showroom (there were 2 displayed) and she would change for me. I WAS SO ANGRY. WHY SHOULD I ACCEPT A DISPLAY SET LAMPSHADE?!!! i had brought it down personally , wasting my time and effort and now, the new lampshade is dirty and you're telling me to accept a DISPLAY SET to replace the NEW DIRTY ONE?! I don't see the logic. I was prepared to rage on but my husband was tired of her silly antics and told me to just take the lampshade and go. he said that it was only a lampshade, a minor feature, and that he couldn't be bothered with her anymore since her service was so lousy.
(13) Surprisingly, throughout it all, she was all smiles and acted so sweet. Gone were the scathing remarks and the scream fest she had embarked on during our phone conversations. Guess why? There were a few customers at the showroom. It was a drastic change in attitude. What a hypocrite!
(14) Now, to avoid complicating matters, my husband had decided to change the colours of the pillows instead of the bed frame (his logic: "What if they intentionally delay the delivery and by the time of our wedding, we are without a bed?!"), so we changed the colour of the pillows. Guess what? My husband will have to GO DOWN PERSONALLY to get the pillows in a wk's time to exchange the TWO BEIGE pillows for the new MAROON ones.
I'm spewing inexplicable furore here because of the culmination of all these events in less than a week.
I'm still sore about the insinuation of us being cheapskates and wanting to complain about the lamp which they'd thought it was free initially. I told her that we'd bought EVERYTHING POSSIBLE in the home from them, an ENTIRE SET even the lamps we'd gotten from them. WHAT MORE DO THEY WANT?! I said that we've spent a significant sum of money on Cellini, would we need to cheat them of a miserable lamp?! Additionally, on the same note, since we'd spent quite an amount, I noted sarcastically that Cellini should be able to absorb that miserable amount of money (300) even if i'd been insistent on changing the bedframe to beige and after all, i HAD PAID for a colour change in the first place!
So, in summary, NOTHING will be changed except the pillows. That means that my initial payment of $100 to change the colour of the bedframe from black to beige WILL BE NULLIFIED. in OTHER WORDS, that $100 is paid to change the colour of TWO PILLOWS.
HA! HA!
WHAT A JOKE!
If it weren't for the fact that my AD is drawing near, i would pursue the matter all the way to the top. I hate being shortchanged, blamed, made to feel like an idiot and having responsibility deflected onto me all by the same person.
If you were me, after purchasing a full set comprising of: dining set, sofa set, bed, side table, coffee table, lamp,...
..... would you be able to swallow all these events with a mere tinge of salt?