A comparison of two purchase experiences.

New Item - Purchase one
I needed a new chair for my computer usage. I am 18+ stone and hard on furniture. So when I was working for someone else I would buy what are known as “operator chairs” - chairs that are specifically manufactured for 24/7 use by corpulent computer cowboys.

Now I am at home, it was time to replace my 7 year old “office chair”, so I started looking for suppliers who sell operator chairs. My usual supplier that I had used for many purchases was out of stock and had a backorder notice with a 2 week delay noted on the web site. Not to worry, there were at least three other suppliers on the search page.

I chose 925 Furniture arbitrarily, and proceeded through their fairly pedestrian web-site. It was a bit worrying that there was no indication of stock availability, but I thought “Hey, they must not advertise a product when they are out of stock” ‘cause anything else would be really silly, wouldn’t it?

So I completed the sale. I received two emails, one which said they would be in touch asap about my order and one from SagePay, their third party payments processor. All good so far.

Skip forward to Monday afternoon. I have not heard from 925 Furniture, so I gave them a ring. Their lines were busy. I called back a little later. Chatted to someone who took my details (order ID, name, phone number) and said they would call back with the stock situation.

Two hours go by. I called again. I gave my details (name, phone number) and was told that they were waiting on a call back from the supplier ( I thought they were the supplier, but I guess I got it wrong…). Within 15 minutes I had a gentleman call me back to tell me that they couldn’t release the chair because they had redesigned the arms and they needed me to approve that change. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they probably would have contacted me that day, although by this time it was after 4pm. The gentleman assured me the chair was in stock and would go out asap on their standard delivery (which is buried in the terms and conditions on their web site and is stated as “2 to 3 days”).

Fast forward to Wednesday. I have had no tracking number, no dispatch notification - in fact no communication from 925 Furniture at all. I phoned and got the same person as last time ( I gave the details - again - and was told someone would ring back. Hmm…. ).

Two hours later, I had heard nothing from 925 Furniture. So I rang them again. I got a different person this time who said they couldn’t help me, and he would “take my details”. I am afraid I lost it a bit at this, and gave the guy a controlled blast describing the woeful track record of 925 Furniture with regard to this sale. Give the guy his due, he was professional, said he would make sure something was done and that someone would get back to me - and I had to give my details - again!

Some time later a gentleman did call back to say that the chair was being dispatched that day for delivery the next day, and that they deliver up to 5pm, but if it wasn’t there by 2pm to give him a ring and he would look at the tracking information. When I asked for the tracking number, he didn’t have it to hand, but did offer to get it for me and that he would call me back. Been down that route before, so I said don’t bother, and I was sure it would get here by Friday. ( I needed it by Friday as I had gifted my current chair to someone else and they were picking it up on Friday.)

Long story short, the chair arrived on Thursday - it was covered in fine dust and damaged. The dust I cleaned with a bit of effort, and the damage was to a cosmetic part of the chair that no-one would notice, so I wasn’t going to send it back and go through what I was sure would be “chair hell” for the sake of a broken plastic cover.

New Item - Purchase Two
I have been looking for new two specific lenses for my camera for some time now - a Sigma 10-20mm zoom and a Sigma 70mm macro lens. I have watched the second hand market for a while and these lenses attract quite high prices due to the demand for them (and their reputation!).

So after an orgy of selling on eBay I finally could afford to purchase these brand new. My lens supplier of choice is SRS microsystems I checked their web site on Wednesday and both lenses were showing as “in stock”. I made a phone call to check on the returns policy, and had a chat with Nikki (hope that’s the right spelling!) who cleared up the point, then went into the stock room, found both lenses and offered to hold them for me for the day. As I was going to purchase anyway, I said “Fine”. I duly ordered both lenses from the SRS website. It combined postage so I paid only one lot of postage, took my money and sent me an email detailing what I had ordered, the expected dispatch date and the expected delivery time almost immediately. Time was 12:40pm

At 13:40pm I received an email from SRS to say the order had been dispatched. At 14:05pm Parcel Force sent me an email telling me my purchase from SRS was due to be shipped that day on the Express24 service, the address that it was going to be delivered to and a tracking number. I also received the usual emails from pay-pal detailing the transaction etc.

I didn’t need to call and I didn’t need to worry. I knew exactly where my goods were. Now they are here.

I know that a chair and two camera lenses are not exactly equivalent, but we are looking at the experience of buying here, not what was bought - so I think the comparison is valid.

So, the question I pose to you is: “Which company will I use again?”

Give yourself a score of one if you said SRSMicrosystems, and a “Seriously, dude!?” if you said 925 Furniture.

P.S. 925 Furniture were asked to comment on this blog post a full 24 hours before I posted it. They didn’t respond.