based on his daughter’s personal experience with…

…Furniture Village

Unfortunately, We can’t show you a photo of the retro look that this furniture brings to my daughter’s dining room. Why? BECAUSE OVER 28 WEEKS LATER, THE FURNITURE IS STILL IN THE VILLAGE AND NOT IN THE HOME! So as Christmas looms and the prospect of uninviting family, including her 90-year-old grandma, gets ever nearer because there is nowhere to sit, this has become more than just an annoyance. And not just because the table and chairs are months behind the promised delivery date. The level of customer service from Furniture Village is the real reason for this blog. And when we say level of customer service, we really mean A TOTAL LACK OF customer service. Here are the facts, we call it The Table of Terror Timeline, and can you make up your own mind and determine for yourself if Furniture Village is the company to buy your own dining furniture from? 02 May 2021 Ordered table Advised delivery would be 17 weeks - just before the end of August 27 August 2021 Phoned Furniture Village for update as not heard anything since order confirmation on 2nd May. Now advised that delivery would be a further FOUR WEEKS, i.e. by the end of September 27 September 2021 Still no communication from Furniture Village, so phoned them again for an update, only to be told…. Yes, you’ve guessed it, another FOUR WEEK delay on having a dining table, as the table was still ‘in transit to the UK.’ 05 October 2021 OVER 22 WEEKS since the table was ordered, and my daughter received the first - and only - official email from Furniture Village to say that, with regret, ‘your table will be delayed but will be with you by the end of October.’ 30 October 2021 Still no table and no further communication from Furniture Village, so my daughter phoned them for an update on tomorrow’s delivery [you know, that promise of ‘by the end of October’ thing]. She was told that “there are no further delays showing on your order, and that you should be contacted in a couple of days to arrange delivery.” 05 November 2021 Still nothing from Furniture Village. No email, no phone call, no text. No proactive customer service. So she phoned them - again. The table is in stock, she was told, but not the chairs. “Can we just have the table first then?” we ask. Computer says “NO.” Funny that, because presumably the table has been sent to their warehouse without the chairs? 12 November 2021 Still nothing from Furniture Village. No email, no phone call, no text. No proactive customer service. This time my daughter speaks with a supervisor at Furniture Village, and is now told that whoever she had previously spoken to had given incorrect information. They would speak to the supplier and call back early next week on 16th November. This was the most honest and helpful person at Furniture Village that has spoken to us. 16 November 2021 We received the promised call from Furniture Village. Such shock would normally be enough to need to sit down, but there wasn’t a chair handy! Today’s update was astounding. The Rocket Table was still heading to the UK on a slow boat from China!, but it was expected to dock at a UK port sometime soon. There was no qualification about their use of the term ‘soon.’ When you’ve waited over 28 weeks for a 17 week delivery, how soon is soon? Will I have to start adding 2022 to the dates of this saga before the table and chairs arrive? We requested an email stating that delivery would be before the end of November, and at least that has been received. We all know that Brexit and Covid have had a delay on manufacturing and shipping times, but that’s only part of the issue here. The main gripe is a total lack of communication and the harbouring of false hopes and lies around delivery and delivery times. The table is either ready for delivery [without the chairs], or it’s still on a boat. It can’t be both, even though we were told both. Back in September, as a gesture of goodwill, Furniture Village did knock £100 off the cost. But that’s not what was wanted. That doesn’t solve the issue, it only kicks it down the road giving more time for false hopes to be delivered instead of a Rocket Dining Room Table and Six Chairs. 30 November 2021 We will let you know if we have a picture of a new dining room and chairs and the retro look it has created to share with you, or if the saga with Furniture Village has entered its 31st week?

On 2nd May 2021, when my daughter ordered a Rocket Dining Table Set with 6 chairs, she was advised that it would be 17 weeks until she would receive the furniture that Furniture Village claim on their website would bring a “cool retro style to your dining room.” 17 weeks - the end of August - that was acceptable as she and her husband were still to move into their ‘new’ home that was currently undergoing modernisation and occasionally full of tradesmen, but rarely a plumber. Here’s a link to see what all the retro fuss was about.

If you did click the link to see the Rocket Table on the Furniture Village Website, you’ll see that they are currently quoting 9 weeks for delivery. Good luck with that! But it will still be too late for Christmas Dinner in cool retro style.

Within a few days of making this blog live and sending an email link to the CEO of Furniture Village, my daughter was advised that the delivery of her table would be before the end of the week. And lo, a star shone brightly in the East, and it was duly delivered. Had stock stuck at sea suddenly surfaced, or had a dining table and chairs destined for a different customer been diverted? Perhaps we’ll never know. But what we do know is that Christmas dinner wasn’t cancelled, either by Boris or because of the ongoing case of the missing table. And ‘keep ‘em peeled’ and you might just see Furniture Village featuring on BBC’s Watchdog in the New Year.