Holidays and wayward furniture

So I’m not back in the land of the web-living after a week of annual leave involving several vodka tasting sessions, searching for lost ping pong balls (Norman’s favourite toy at the moment),  bonding with Seymour the Wonder Cat and his arch-nemesis Norman the Newbie Cat, avoiding the particularly nasty bout of late autumn weather that invaded our lovely province and wondering why the hell buying a new bedroom suite ended up being such a long, drawn out drama.

Way back in the mists of time (January-ish) I spent a week or three traipsing around town, trying to find a new bedroom suite to buy. Eventually, I found one at Big Save so ordered it, along with a new mattress. Both in super king size because with Grant and two warring cats sharing the bed I was finding myself sleeping perilously close to the edge every night.

It would take 12 weeks for the suite to arrive, I was told, because the bed would have to be a special order … normally they made it in king size at most. When I went back the next day to confirm I wanted to order it along with the mattress, and have everything delivered all at once I was told that it would be 12 to 14 weeks. At the very most.

Fast forward to a few days before we we due to hit the 12 week mark and we popped in to Big Save to check  on progress and were told it was on target to be delivered on April 23 (14 weeks after ordering).

A couple of days before the 23rd I phoned Big Save, only to be told that no, it wasn’t there yet and that they received a fax to let them know each week just what is in the shipping container that lands in Wellington. Our furniture wasn’t on that list. A tad disgruntled, I asked if they could please phone me the next week when they got the fax so we could organise things (having an entire room full of furniture arrive means having to move another room full of furniture elsewhere … in our case, to our wee home away from home on the Mataura River).

Hadn’t heard from anyone by mid-week the following week, phoned again, was told no … it hasn’t arrived. Again, I asked PLEASE CALL US when you get your fax next week because moving out one lot of furniture so there’s room for the new lot isn’t a two-minute job.

A week later I still hadn’t heard anything. So I phoned. Again. Do you see a pattern?

Eventually, after 17 long weeks the damn thing arrived and was trucked down from Wellington. By this time, the Big Save people had offered to drop the delivery fee to make up for all the messing around.

So there I was, day # 1 of my wee stay-at-home holiday: we’d dismantled our bed, moved out most of the furniture, had loaded it up and taken it away and (drum roll please): the fabled bedroom suite and mattress arrived.

My bearded offspring happened to be at home so we set about unboxing the parts of the bed to assemble it. Hmmm … another problem: the slats were missing.

I phoned Big Save and they sent out a bloke with a bit of wood to see if some spare boards they happened to have on hand would do the job in the mean time but no, it didn’t fit.

Then I started to grow a tad suspicious/worried/ready to rip someone’s gonads off and make ear-rings out of them: I’d be spitting sparks if after all this time they’d sent a king size instead of a super king I said.

He asked for a tape measure and checked.

Yep, they’d sent a king instead of a super king. So not only did it take 17 weeks to get here and arrive incomplete, it was the wrong fecking size!

And that, of course, meant the mattress wouldn’t fit. And that we no longer had a bed.

Eventually, Big Save offered to lend us a bed until it was sorted, which we sort of had to accept. Being bedless and all.

While the Big Save bloke was here assembling said bed, Grant and I decided we should unbox the rest of the furniture to check it was all as it should be. And guess what? Scratches on the duchess. Then there was the tallboy: scratches and a dodgy looking router mark.

So now they say they’ll replace those, too. But we need them in the meantime.

It took a further six days to get a definitive answer on how long it would take to replace everything: six weeks, they say. At the very most, they say.

So that will take it to 24 weeks … it takes the best part of six months to get a bed! Impressive.

I was sorely tempted to tell them to sick their bed in a particularly unexpected orifice but the problem is I really like the suite.

Oh, they have also given us a $500 store credit but I’m not really sure I’d class that as any sort of compensation: we don’t actually need any more furniture and if even if we did, there’s not much in the way of furniture you can buy for $500 these days so it would mean spending even more at Big Save. And if this experience is anything to go by, I’m not keen to repeat the performance!

So there you have it: 24 weeks to get a suite with a bed that doesn’t match the rest of the furniture. And that furniture’s damaged. If I’d wanted mismatched, scratched furniture I’d have gone to the second hand shop and paid a whole lot less.

And I’d probably have got it the same day.

Wish me luck!