Furnitureland South Repeated deliveries of damaged furniture Jamestown (near High Point) North Carolina

We purchased a beautiful brand new Bernhardt sleigh bed at the Furnitureland South showroom on January 7, 2007, for $1699. We were required to pay 50% down and were told we would need to have a CERTIFIED check ready when the furniture was delivered. As the story unfolded, it became clear why FLS does not accept credit cards - credit cards give the purchaser some recourse when their is a dispute. But, read on...

Our bed was delivered on March 16th. It arrived with damage to both the headboard and the footboard. The drivers told us that the damage had occured on the truck. We called the company and were told that they would take care of the damage. They also urged us to accept the bed and let them repair it because (they said) even more damage could be done to the bed if they had to truck it back to their facility. Given this and the fact that they already had half our money we gave them the certified check and accepted the bed with the belief that they were dealing with us in good faith and would make good on the damage.

We described the damage in writing on the delivery man's form and were told to contact customer service the next day, which we did. They told us that they would send someone to REPAIR the damage in our home, not replace the damaged items. This was not only inconvenient - we had to make an appointment and let someone work in our bedroom with chemicals such as lacquer based spray and such, but we also felt that getting a repaired bed instead of the new bed we paid for was a bad deal, and weren't convinced that a repair done in the home would even be as good as one done in a repair shop. We expressed all these concerns to the FLS people but after discussing at length with the customer service rep and his supervisor we reluctantly agreed to let them try the repairs. They did agree that if we weren't satisfied after they made the repairs they would replace the bed with a new one.

The repairman came and repaired both items on April 3rd. The headboard repair was visible but not too bad, but the footboard repair was just awful. So we called the company again and they agreed to replace the whole bed. They supposedly were ordering a brand new bed from Bernhardt - their web site even indicated as much on our order status. The delivery of this replacement was eventually scheduled for May 26th. We spoke with at least three different people who called to schedule the delivery and told them that this was a replacement for a damaged bed and could they please ask the delivery people to take extra good of it? They all said they would certainly do that.

The replacement bed arrived and, you guessed it, had worse damage than the original. It had several gouges in the wood as well as a couple of what the driver called 'season splits' - cracks in the wood. The driver even told us not to accept it. They had arrived around 7:30 p.m. - after business hours - so we couldn't talk to customer service at the time of delivery, but we did refuse it and the drivers put it back on the truck and left. The next day we spoke with customer service and they apologized and promised to order yet another brand new bed.

After a few more weeks our bed, now the third bed, was scheduled for delivery in July. But the day before delivery we got a call from the driver who told us that when he went to pick up the bed at the FLS facility that he found it so badly damaged that he didn't think we would want it, so he suggested that he not even deliver it. So we said OK and he said he would call customer service and have the bed replaced again. By now it was six months since we had first ordered our bed.

Another bed (the fourth) was finally scheduled to be delivered on August 7th - seven months to the day from the date of our order. When the truck came we had the truckers take the bed so we could inspect it outdoors in full daylight. The headboard was again damaged and so was the footboard. By this point though, we were so very weary of this whole epic saga and convinced that FLS was never going to actually deliver an undamaged bed. FLS of course had our money - half since January 7th and all of it since March 16th. We could come to no other conclusion that they were deliberately sending us damaged beds - probably ones that had been returned by other customers - and this was their standard operating procedure - even though they kept telling us they were ordering new beds from Bernhardt.

So we contemplated continuing this battle or cutting our losses. The footboard of the bed we were inspecting was damaged, but the damage was less extensive and conspicuous than that on the original footboard which we still had. The headboard, on the other hand, was awful - scratched and with deep gouges in several places. So we took the footboard, giving back the old one, and kept the original rails and the headboard which had been repaired in our home back in April.

To review, we paid for a brand new bed on January 7th and after an ordeal of 7th months duration consisting of dozens of phone calls and emails and several scheduled and actual deliveries, we ended up with a headboard with a decent but definitely imperfect repair on the front of the top (it isn't terribly conspicuous but can definitely be seen in good light) and a footboard with a distinct 1/2' long deep gouge in a conspicous spot on the top of the rail.

We also ended up with a strong distaste for FLS and the deceitful way they run their business and will never buy from them again. The only reason we finally accepted the bed in the condition it was is that they wore us down. We were tired of the battle and felt we could never win. And that is what they count on. Judging by the other stories I have read on this site it would seem that this is a deliberate business practice of this company.