At least KD didn't require any Easter dinner. 

April Fool's Day from the sofa

I hosted an unexpected visitor to my family Easter eve dinner this year, a big, boxy arrival by the name of KD Graphite.

It all began a couple of weeks ago, when I optimistically decided that a new sofa would be just the right finale for my spring cleaning. My existing sofa, a queen sleeper, would be much more at home at my daughter’s house, where a sectional couch was way too much dominating her living room. Plus, the fold-out bed would help with her occasional overnight guests.

I naively assumed it would not be too difficult to find a basic brown sofa in a city once known as the furniture capital of the nation. I was wrong. Driving around to the few furniture stores left after economic downturns and big-box competition, I discovered two disconcerting facts:

 1. Inexpensive sofas are not intended for comfortable sitting and the colors and fabrics offered are less than ideal if you’ve got three cats and a dog who shed.

 2. Expensive sofas are, well, too expensive and often too big and fancy for a casual cottage.

So, I began online shopping for my sofa. I figured I could assess comfort by reading customer reviews and would just have to take a leap of faith that the color depicted onscreen would be accurate.

I wound up at Walmart. They had a lot of sofas in my price (cheap) range and also offered free shipping. My eventual choice was a button tufted sofa in a color called coffee. As I love to drink coffee, this seemed like a natural fit. The sofa was also offered for nearly $300 more on Amazon, so I figured I would be getting a good deal.

Well, maybe.

Order placed, I received an email letting me know that the sofa would arrive before April 1. That’s April Fool’s Day, which should have been a tipoff.

I then received a call from the delivery company that transports Walmart products locally telling me that the sofa would arrive on April 1. Still in time for my Easter festivities but, again, April Fool’s Day.

Bright and early on the appointed day, the sofa arrived. I should have listened more carefully when the driver told me the most common issue with such deliveries is that the wrong color gets dropped off.

The sofa arrived in one big box and as I dragged it from the garage into my sunroom, I noticed that the box was labeled “KD Sofa Graphite.” Uh oh. Opening the box, I discovered that not only was the sofa gray and not coffee but that it was also the wrong sofa. Completely incorrect.

So I called Walmart.com customer service. The representative was very apologetic and refunded a handling cost of about $40. My main question was, can I get this thing out of my house before my guests arrive for Easter eve dinner? He said he would start the process for getting the correct sofa delivered and that the delivery company would receive directions to pick up the incorrect one.

The only thing he neglected to tell me was that it can take several days for the delivery company to receive the directions.

Meanwhile, I received an email where I needed to confirm that I was returning the incorrect sofa. Only problem was that the incorrect sofa listed was actually the correct sofa that I had ordered. So I had to call customer service again, explaining that I was very confused, because it appeared I was now returning my coffee sofa. The representative assured me that their paperwork showed that the wrong sofa was delivered, but admitted “if I didn’t work for Walmart I wouldn’t understand this either.”

I decided to give it one more try to get KD Graphite out of my house before Easter so I called Walmart.com customer service again and was again told that it would take several days for the shipping company to receive the paperwork. They refunded another $40 or so for my inconvenience. Which didn’t exactly get the big box out of the house.

So now I’ve decided to just wait until the correct sofa arrives before KD departs. Might take a week, but who knows. Maybe I could ask Walmart to just let me  donate KD to my daughter.

April Fool, that’s me.

Postscript (and kind of a long one), but at least it's not lost in transit
Well, as it turned out, KD really wore out its welcome. Optimistic that the boxy intrusion would be gone before a second weekend, I received an email from Walmart confirming that my coffee sofa would be delivered on a Friday.

But this was a very suspect assertion, as I hadn’t heard from the delivery company. When I called them, they said the sofa had just arrived at their dock and wouldn’t be leaving for my house until after the weekend. Oh, and they had received no request from Walmart.com asking them to pick up KD.

So, thus ensued a more than hour-long call with a number of employees at Walmart.com., all who told me that my original idea – to send KD packing to my daughter’s house – wouldn’t work because they needed it returned. No exceptions. The final person I spoke with gave me a 30 percent discount on the sofa I had ordered and shortly thereafter the order to pick up KD mysteriously arrived at the delivery company.

Along the way, I really wanted to email the CEO of Walmart.com to let him know that his organization could use a healthier dose of employee empowerment. But not only was his email address not available on Walmart’s website, his own employees didn’t seem to have it. One employee suggested I Google him to try to locate it. Huh? Isn’t this guy your boss but you’re asking a customer to Google him?

Anyway, everything seemed set for a Monday delivery. It was the 13th of the month, yet another unlucky number. But I was pretty confident that it was time for "coffee" and that KD would finally be evicted. 

It didn’t take long for Walmart.com reality to rear its ugly head. During the weekend, I received an email ordering me to return KD by May 1 or I would be charged for it. Well, that wasn't very nice, considering I'd been trying so hard to get it out of my house.

But the grand finale in this comedy of errors came from some hapless employee informing me that "coffee" had been lost in transit, with a refund for the entire amount being processed. My response to the email was brief but to the point: “Lost in transit? It’s being delivered tomorrow.”

And sure enough, the sofa arrived bright and early. I was relieved to see “coffee” written on the box because it meant that it was likely the correct sofa. And I was delighted to bid a not so fond farewell to boxy KD.

But I needed to call Walmart.com yet again to let them know that there was no lost sofa, just a few lost minds. I knew to ask for “Tier 2” customer service, which is apparently where the snafus go. Just as I suspected, when the sofa wasn’t delivered on Friday, coupled with KD being picked up at the same time, it had short circuited Walmart.com’s inefficiency process. Or, as Mr. Tier 2 explained it, when an employee saw that the sofa hadn’t been delivered on Friday he or she assumed it was lost in transit. Who could have imagined that a delivery AND a pickup could actually happen on the same day! 

But aren’t there notes on all the screw-ups, I asked Mr. Tier 2. He muttered something about reminding employees to read the notes before issuing refunds. Then he huddled with his supervisor to figure out what they should do. That turned out to be another partial refund for me, plus I haggled for a $65 gift card.

Which brought the amount I paid for the sofa to around $50. Which would have resulted in far fewer missteps if Walmart.com had just agreed in the first place with my proposal to send KD to my daughter’s house. But hey, they made $50, which will probably be just about enough to tape up KD’s box again.



Sofa, so good

At least the new sofa arrived with no damage and I put it together in about 15 minutes. So far it is holding up well, but I’m keeping all the paperwork in case it ever decides to become lost in transit. And as for me, I'm pretty sure Walmart.com and I are never ever getting back together.