We shipped a piece of furniture from California via FedEx last month. It was a fairly sturdy side table/shelf from Ethan Allen that had been in my mother-in-law's home. In other words, it wasn't some IKEA particleboard do it yourselfer with some bizarre monosyllabic name. We used the same local California company to pack this item as we did other items such as glassware, mirrors, and framed paintings. All of those latter items came through just great. However, this piece of furniture, whose packaging for some reason also had "Fragile: Glass" all over it, came to us in an altered state.
Specifically, it had been shipped in the third dimension and arrived in DC in two dimensions, having been flattened somewhere along the way. I mean flattened. All four shelves were separated from all four posts. The furniture was in 8 pieces.
To make matters worse, the piece had been delivered to my wife's workplace and the cleaning crew had thrown the packaging away after my wife had unpacked it, making a claim especially difficult. So now I'm trying to put it back together. It seems like a simple task, but none of the parts want to stay together the way they used to. Additionally I discovered that even supposedly quality furniture outfits like Ethan Allen use "nails" that basically amount to staples to secure the furniture pieces. In fact, of the pieces I've managed to reassemble so far, there have been two screws and 16 staples. Very disappointing to me.
At least it can be fixed (I think). It would have been far worse if the mirror had been destroyed or if the humongous box of assorted legos had been lost. Now that would have been tragic.
3 comments:
Oh, quality. Does it even really exist anymore?
Did you call Ethan Allan? A friend recently broke an Ethan Allan chair, and they sent someone out to fix it. At no charge.
I thought that was pretty cool. It wasn't broken because of moving, but it's probably worth a call.
It sucks, though, that it broke.
You should see how craptastically this Ethan Allen piece was put together. The shelves, which are to have four screws per side, had only two screws (the other two pre-drilled screw holes were empty), and the two screws they had -- in all cases -- were not put in straight so that they barely attached themselves to the support legs.
The good news is I've got it pretty much reassembled and it looks passable.
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