West Elm

Full review
The time had arrived for my husband and I to replace our dining table. Obtained three years ago from Ikea, it was full of unsightly scratches, dings, and gashes. The only problem was: I was fond of this particular table. I didn't want a different table. I wanted this table, only sturdier.

Since Ikea isn't known for top-of-the-line wares (kitchen cabinets aside), I wasn't going to hold my breath.

Another problem: Do you know how difficult it is to find an all-white dining table? That is affordable?

That's where West Elm entered the picture. In June I received a catalog full of their summer line, and I was excited to find that they were offering the Round Dining Table with Cutout Legs (a design they've had for several seasons) in white. WHITE! This was my chance to upgrade to a white table that was affordable ($399), and hopefully it would be a better quality than my Ikea heap of crap.


The Good:

In July, I placed my order through www.westelm.com. Their website features a very simple layout. On the front page is a featured product, with links to different departments (Furniture, Wall Decor, etc) along the top of the page. When you hover over these departments, drop downs appear to further minimize your criteria. Along the bottom of the page are all of the links to Customer Service, Store Locations, etc.

I navigated to furniture, then dining tables, and was able to find my table right away. Clicking on a picture of the product pulls up a page full of the product's information, such as colors, size, and care. This is also the page where you can add the order to your shopping cart. I selected "White" from a dropdown, and placed a "1" in the quantity box, then clicked "Add to Shopping Bag". Very straightforward.

My shopping bag was easy to understand. It showed my table, the price, the price for shipping (in my case there was a surcharge for in home delivery since it was a furniture piece), and then the total charge.

Checkout was also a breeze. I was able to log into an account I already had established, but if you don't have an account you're able to easily create one.

West Elm asks for all the typical stuff: Shipping Address, Billing Address, and credit card information. The site is secure, so I had no worries about entering in my personal information.

When I clicked the button to process my order, I received a confirmation screen with an order number, which was also emailed to me.

All told, it took about 10 minutes to order my table. Very easy.


The Bad:

That’s where all of the good points I have about West Elm end. Yes, it was incredibly easy for me to order the table. When I placed my order, I was informed on a screen prior to adding it to my shopping cart that it was backordered and would ship in four weeks. I could choose whether or not to accept or deny the product. I chose to accept, thinking that four weeks wasn’t that long of a week. I was also required to pay an extra $65 for in-home delivery, a small fee for my item’s safety I figured.

For the next two months I received an email every week, pushing back the ship date one more week. I finally stopped receiving these emails, so I figured that maybe my table would actually ship in the beginning of October, as promised.

One evening in early October we received a call from our bank, concerned because West Elm was trying to push through three large charges all at once. I was confused because we had only ordered one item from them, a table. Our bank chose to place a hold on our account while we worked out the issue with West Elm. A call to West Elm’s customer service department was fruitless; they had no idea why we were getting charged for one thing, let alone three, considering the table wasn’t even in stock and now wasn’t due to ship until December. We called our bank again, who said that they’d take the hold off of our account and hopefully the charges would drop off. They did. We also received another email from West Elm at that time confirming our new December ship date. It was less the $65 in-home delivery fee, and I figured that perhaps they had just refunded it for the problems we were enduring (I’m a silly naïve girl).

After the episode in October, I noticed that when I logged into my account I was unable to see the new status of my order (before I was able to see the ship date as it was pushed back every week). This didn’t concern me because I had the email promising the December ship date.

November floated by without a peep from West Elm.

December 2nd arrives and our bank calls. Once again, West Elm is trying to push through charges, this time two: one for the amount of the table, the other for $320. My husband called West Elm, who once again had the same story: We shouldn’t have been getting charged for anything because the table wasn’t in stock. It wasn’t shipping. Nothing was happening on their end.

Not satisfied with this answer, my husband asked to speak to a manager. After an hour on the phone, they were able to figure out that our original order had been cancelled in October, and a new one was reinstated, which is why we couldn’t see our order on their website. This would also probably explain why we were charged for an order in October. She still had no explanation as to why we were being charged twice presently.

Later that night we received a ship notice from UPS from West Elm. “Wait”, I thought, “Didn’t they say our table wasn’t in stock? And didn’t they originally say that it would be shipped via in-home freight?”

Sure enough, two days later we arrived home to find our table sitting on our front lawn in the snow. UPS hadn’t required a signature, and it arrived a full two days before the scheduled delivery date. We live on a very busy street. Anyone could have hauled off with it.

I will make an admission here: The table was easy to put together and it is beautiful. But what happened next upsets me even more.


And the Ugly:

I decided to write West Elm an email (given the utter cluelessness of their customer service department), detailing our grievances. I wanted to know why it took five months to receive a table that was originally promised in four weeks. I wanted to know why a charge for an extra $320 is still sitting in my bank account (my bank is currently disputing the charge with West Elm). I wanted to know why their customer service seems to have no idea what’s going on. I wanted to know why I was told it would be delivered via in-home delivery only to be dumped on our front lawn by UPS (checking on their website today, 12/6/07, it still says that you have to pay that extra $65 fee for in-home delivery).

Fifteen minutes after I pressed “send”, I received a form email in response stating they were “disheartened” by our experience and they would forward our email to the appropriate department, but these departments were unable to reply directly. Instead my feedback would possibly be used to make changes to their systems.

In other words: Big middle finger. So that’s when I decided to take this matter to the internet, and to Epinions.


Bottom Line:

You want to place an order with West Elm? Their stuff is beautiful, I don’t blame you. But there's a good chance you'll never get it, and if you do you’ll be made to wish that you had never placed the order to begin with.

I will update this review if I ever receive any more feedback from their corporate offices. Until then, I can’t recommend West Elm to anyone.