A Bed From West Elm

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down - A post about my Dad each Sunday, named after a song that he loved.

This is more of a post about West Elm than it is about Dad. However, off and on during our interactions with West Elm, Jason and I felt a bit overwhelmed and talking with my father would have helped. Here is the story:

Over a year ago, before Jason moved into Rrunuv Bayit with me, we decided we needed to purchase a bed. In fact, it was a major request of mine, in terms of Jason moving in, that his king-size mattress, a the very minimum, be put onto a bed frame. We decided not get a headboard and bought a bed frame from West Elm.

It took us a long to find a bed; we looked at a lot of places. We had a fairly tight budget but at the same time with a king-size mattress we needed a bed that was high quality. Then there was the small room to think of and the desire for storage. We choose West Elm because they have good quality furniture that is made of solid wood (instead of a composite or worse.)

When we got the pieces of the bed frame back to the apartment to put together, the metal joining element at the top of one of the legs was bent a bit. We decided to just go with it and that leg never quite sat right, Jason tried to rejoin it at the correct angle a couple of times over the past year but it didn't really work. During the summer the leg completely broke off and we had to stack old university textbooks under it to support the bed.

During a visit to West Elm this summer to pick up some plants, Jason mentioned our broken bed at the check-out. It actually happen to be the store manager checking us out and she gave us her card, telling us to email her photos. It took us a while to find the time to take the bed apart enough to get good photos of the broken part, but Jason emailed her a month or two later. We didn't hear back and Jason sent another email about a month after that. The manager replied and asked us to schedule a time to come in and discuss options. She mentioned that the bed frame we had was out of stock and not anticipated to be available in Canada for a while.

When we got to the store a week or so later we were told that they would exchange our bed frame for a new one and that we should go look at the options. However, we really like our current one and were concerned that we wouldn't find an appropriate replacement, especially since it took us so long to find the perfect one the first time. We tried to explain this, and we had brought the broken leg asking just for a replacement piece. The manager took the broken bit to go see if they had anything in the back and in the meantime asked that we browse the bed options.

West Elm has a few bed frames; and the one we had originally chosen and currently have was the more sturdy and expensive one. The options available at the moment in Canada are either too flimsy with thin legs or too low, eliminating our much needed storage space or in a style Jason and I aren't very keen on. However, the manager had said we could consider the beds as well but even the cheapest bed costs considerably more than the bed frames. We liked two styles and determined that one of them would be a better choice for us (of the two, the first is three times the cost of our bed frame and the one we ultimately decided was best is around twice the price of our bed.)

We had questions about the offered exchange, since we couldn't afford the price difference and were not interested in any of the frames currently available. When we were told it would be a straight exchanged we replied that it felt "overwhelmingly generous." I has been a really amazing example of excellent customer service. The whole thing just feels like something I would like to share with my Dad. He worked in retail for his entire professional life and really appreciated when companies worked hard to maintain customer satisfaction.

Jason and I are excited about getting a new bed, that won't be supported by text books. We will have it in a few weeks. (I will post pictures.)