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Our New Bookcase

Tue, 08/12/2008 - 23:52 — Dave

If you had been to our apartment recently, you would have seen that the amount of books Jenny has been bringing home was not equal to the amount of space we had for them. With piles of books in random places and nearly covering the dining table, we were in dire need of a new bookcase. Luckily I had an OfficeDepot gift card and a nice coupon so on June 1st I ordered the Realspace Soho Premium Wide Bookcase (5-Shelf, Classic Cherry) since it seemed to have a good quality and would be fairly similar to our current bookcases. The delivery date was two days away and just happened to be on one of my few-and-far-between days off from work, so I figured, great, it will get here quickly and I can put it together while Jenny is at work. Little did I know how wrong I was...

The day of delivery, June 3rd, I was sleeping at 10 AM and missed a phone call from the delivery guy, Steve. He couldn't find our apartment and needed me to call him back. Now, a little background: our apartment is not hard to find. There are big blue street numbers in front of each apartment building and there are only 16 actual apartments in each building. Each apartment is accessible directly from the outside and each door has an apartment number on it. I'll admit it was partly my fault for sleeping through the call, but if Steve had simply got off his lazy ass, he easily could have found us and knocked on our door, which I will always wake up to. When I woke up much later, he was gone and I tried calling him back, three times. Each time a different person answered, had no idea who Steve was or what was going on. Simply frustrating and irritating. Not sure why, but Jenny and I kinda forgot about the whole thing for a bit.

After a couple weeks, I checked the order status at officedepot.com and noticed that it was updated to "Canceled - Delivery Refused." WHAT? I hadn't received any kind of email or notification that my order was canceled. Nothing trying to reattempt delivery before canceling my order. No communication at all, and now the gift card I had used was wasted. At this point I wanted to contact someone who would actually be able to do something about it and help me get a resolution (i.e. not outsourced customer support). I'm an avid reader of the Consumerist blog, where people can share stories about both bad and good experiences with companies and how to get satisfactory resolution. I found a post on how to contact Executive Customer Service and fired off a short but thorough e-mail on July 7 about 8 PM.

At nearly 8 AM the next day, I got a very apologetic voice mail from Vera from Executive Customer Relations in Florida with many apologies about the lack of communication about order cancellation and lack of effort by the delivery company. She would be issuing me a new gift card (rounded up from the original balance) in the mail and would be more than glad to assist me with reordering the bookcase. I didn't anticipate quite such a quick response and resolution, and I'd like to thank Vera very much for her assistance. Our new bookcase arrived on August 1st, only a mere two months after the original order. Below are some links and pictures for your enjoyment:


I can never resist going for a "trip in the canoe" whenever I put furniture together...


Just some of Jenny's +1,100 books out in-between moving bookcases around. There are a lot more on the bookcases in the bedroom, on the shelves above the computer, and boxed up in the closet.


The new bookcase finished. I have my own "Dave" shelf on the bottom! :)


Our original bookcases together. I like the way this looks!