A Confederacy of Dunces!
Written: Jul 27 '06 (Updated Aug 01 '06)
| Ease of Ordering: |
 |
|
| Customer Service: |
 |
|
| Selection: |
 |
|
| On-Time Delivery: |
 |
|
|
| Full Review |
We have spent close to 4 thousand dollars with S&N, in 3 separate orders going back to Dec/05, for our new home. All have been bamboo, Roman flat-fold shades for windows and French doors. About 2/3rd have been loop control (so the cats could not get to the cord when the shade is open) and the rest the normal raise-lower 'pull & lock' cord.
I ONLY WISH we had CHECKED HERE FIRST!
Both order #1 and order #2 arrived without incident and within 2 weeks. Over the course of the past 4 months, almost every living room continuous loop cord has broken -- they are glued together at the ends to make the loop -- so the shade had to be returned to be fixed. That's a 2 week turnaround with no window covering. In addition, the strings in the back that raise/lower the shade have snapped, which results in another 2 week return-turnaround a second time. They pay shipping both ways via FedEx, but you still have to box it up and wait. And you still have no window covering.
I sent a letter to the President, who had a very nice person named Manuel contact me after all this. He was most gracious and wanted to know how they could make customer service better. I said, bottom line, "give them some authority to make decisions." "Speed up the return process." "The CSRs are nice, but they can make no decisions."
For example, a return shipping label takes 6-10 days to reach you after you call because the call-center CSR has to notify the factory BY FAX, NO LESS, and if they miss the fax at the factory end, you wait. Then it's sent to you via snail-mail. Why can't they just give you an RMA on the phone and let you go to FedEx with an authorization number for collect-shipment?!
In spite of what Manuel pledged to do, it is still this way, as you will read next...
The 3rd order was a fiasco, even more-so. We (stupidly?) did this one more time because we had only 3 windows left and we were given 20% off and free shipping for our past troubles. First off, the 20% off code was not accepted online, and shipping was being charged, so I left the order on hold and had to call Manuel back. He told me to enter a referral code in the 'order remarks' section and it would be picked up manually. So I did that. It wasn't reflected in the confirmation email I got so I had to call (again).
Guess what I encountered? A nice, friendly, POWERLESS CSR again, who said she had to check and call me back. Two days later, no callback, so I called again. I was put on hold by yet another nice, friendly, POWERLESS CSR, who then came back and said that for all my trouble, *she* was authorized to grant me the 20% + shipping I was referring to, even though she had no resord of it!! Talk about annoying... but I was totally cooked and done by then, so I thanked her and left it at that.
Next...
They obviously do not have their back-end, factory order system tied to your online web-entry. As a result, someone entered the wrong shade-type and 2 of the 3 were incorrect when they arrived 3 weeks ago. Here's where CSRs are powerless again: They would NOT ACCEPT a fax copy of my CONFIRMED order-email FROM S&N. They had to wait 4 days to confirm it at their internal factory-order end that someone had screwed up vs. what was entered on the web by me. Then they called me back to say it would be fixed.
So, we waited from Monday till the following Monday before the order was re-entered at the factory again. What a bunch of hooey. We just got replacements this past Monday the 25th.
In the meantime, while waiting for those 2 re-orders, another of the strings on the back broke on a once-repaired item from order #1 -- the same string they replaced 2 months ago! So now, we are back to waiting for the FedEx label to arrive so we can ship it back to them a second time.
Aug 1 update:
We are still waiting for this label. They called me yesterday to ask if it had arrived. I told them "no, when was it mailed?" Now get this: I called them on 7/20. It was not entered in the factory side for an RMA till 7/24. It was not snail mailed till 7/28. It finally arrived 10 minutes ago.
Obviously every single concern I left way back with Manuel has gone for naught. He is obviously yet another powerless person at S&N who is very nice, but ultimately has NO impact over their pathetic, slow, non-customer focused repair procedures.
End Update.
Their entire customer response and quality control is sorely, sorely lacking.
We like the looks of their bamboo flat fold shades, but they are not worth this ongoing torture by a thousand drips. The CSRs are always nice, but they are POWERLESS to make a speedy decision to resolve and expedite repairs. And I'm calling Manuel one last time and likely emailing the President to let them know.
S&N is part of Cornerstone Brands, which runs Ballard Designs, Frontgate, Garnet Hill, Improvements, Smith+Noble, The Territory Ahead, Isabella Bird and TravelSmith. They were bought by Barry Diller's IAC/Interactiv Corp in April 2005 which also runs Ticketmaster, Home Focus and Match.com. He is renowned for squeezing every last dollar of profit from a company while increasing efficiencies. Barry Diller obviously has completely forgotten about quality products and customer service along the way.
Avoid S&N like the plague, for your own good and the good of your privacy. For you shall have none -- the shades are always en route to be repaired.
Recommended:
No
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Bamboo flat-fold Roman shades
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
billusa99
|
|
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.