This post is dedicated to Bolagret, a Swedish furniture company from hell.
Compared to Bolagret, furniture shopping at IKEA is a zen-like experience.
But let's start from the beginning. In March I decided to get a new couch. After browsing the 2,7 furniture stores in Sweden with acceptable offers I finally ordered a very nice couch at Bolagret, a Swedish furniture store I back then was very fond of - probably since I had never bought furniture from them before. When looking back now, I should have seen the signs already back then that something was wrong: It took the lady at the checkout for example 'only' half an hour to process my order (yep, Sweden is unfortunately the country of service snails...), including a very rude "You don't have enough money on your account." comment when the first payment try did not work. Later it turned out that it actually was their creditcard reader that did not work. But nevermind. Being insulted and accused is actually one of the less bad things that happen to customers in Swedish shops.
So after some struggle the couch was ordered and paid and I was told delivery time would be 4-8 weeks. Yes, I know, you could wonder why that takes soooo long, but as I said before, we are in Sweden here, you are not surprised by such things. I was actually happy they were able to deliver the couch at all and that it was not sold out like so many other things (alcohol, bread, winter jackets, etc) in this banana republic. So we waited patiently for the couch. 4 weeks. 5 weeks. 6 weeks. 7 weeks. After 8 weeks we were still sitting on our temporary "couch" - an air mattress. Yes, that had white trash written all over it, but hey, we were willing to sacrifice 2 months of comfort for our dream couch.
When I was about to contact Bolagret after 8 weeks to ask where the hell my expensive couch was or if they maybe already had left the country with my money instead I suddenly got a note from the delivery company, stating they would come that Wednesday and deliver the couch between 8 and 12. Great that they only needed a 4 hour-window for this delivery. Who doesn't like to take vacation to get his couch delivered? But anyway, this is Sweden I tried to remind myself. So that Wednesday we waited patiently for the people from DHL. We were actually so excited that we already deflated our air mattress couch in ecstatic expectation of a real couch. At 12.15 the DHL people 'already' arrived. So we went outside to greet them and tell them which floor exactly they would have to bring the couch to. After all, we paid 50 Euro (FIFTY) for the delivery.
Well. Let's say that did not work out as expected. Instead, the DHL guy dropped a gigantic couch wrapped in a lot of very dirty plastic foil on a EUROPALLET right in front of our appartment building and just left. It took some minutes until I understood that he would not come back and that we would have to carry the couch upstairs on our own. That was of course very easy. I don't know if it was the extremely dirty packaging, the fact that the heavy couch was packaged as one and not two packages or the 25 kilo heavy europallette that we got on top of that, but it took almost 1 hour until everything was up in our appartment. After we had removed the dirt from our faces and changed into clean clothes we started unwrapping the couch.
Unfortunately, what we unwrapped was not the couch we had ordered. It had taken stupid Bolagret more than 8 weeks to deliver a couch in the a)wrong shape b)wrong fabric c)wrong colour and d)wrong modell! I have to say that I was first so confused that I started wondering if maybe I had actually ordered that couch. But after taking a second look at that hideous brown corduroy couch (I know!!! who on earth buys something like that?!) I realized that there was only one party to blame here: BOLAGRET. So I called their customer service and asked them kindly where my couch was and whose couch I was giving shelter to.
First thing I noticed when calling Bolagret's "Customer service": They did not apologize. Instead they asked me if I was sure that it was the wrong couch. Yes, you can imagine the level of my pulse. After having reassured them that it really was not my couch that I had received, they promised me to look it up and get back to me asap. For the rest of the day I did not hear anything from them. So what does a labile German customer do who ordered a very expensive couch and does not know where it is or if it exists at all? Exactly, I wrote some words of choice on the facebook wall of Bolagret. And tada, they reacted within 15 minutes and promised me to ring me first thing the next morning.
Morning turned into afternoon and finally Bolagret called me. Unfortunately they did not have any answers to my questions. Even worse, they were even not sure anymore that my couch had been produced at all! So I had to wait another day. Pulse was now very close to 1200. On day 3 they finally managed to track down our couch in Stockholm (excuse me?!) and told us we would get it in one week. I also urged them to remove that brown Alien couch from my appartment immediately. Bolagret promised to send someone to pick it up the day after. And the day after they said they would come one day later. And another day later they finally decided to exchange the couches at the same time. The fact that we had to live with a strangers couch on a europallette that was blocking our living room for one week was not really interesting for them.
After another week finally the day of couch-exchanging came and we awaited the arrival of the couch we had ordered. This time delivery was scheduled between 2 and 4 since I had refused to sacrifice one half day for this again. A little after 4 our couch arrived. My first move was checking if it was the right modell this time. You know, it was getting a little crowded over there in our living room, I was not sure if we could fit even more Bolagret couches into our apartment. After all we are not a furniture storage, even if Bolagret apparently thought so. But to my great relief it was the right couch. This time the DHL guy even helped us to carry the couch upstairs - but we also had to help him carry down the wrong couch. Nevermind. So here we were, standing next to our unwrapped couch. The atmosphere was very tense since we only expected something to be wrong.
And we were right. When we wanted to assemble the couch (no, here in Sweden that is not included and yes, I know, banana republic!) we searched and searched for the legs for the couch and we could not find them! Well, why couldn't we find them? Maybe because they had not been delivered! I mean, sure, what was I expecting at that point? That Bolagret would give me the stuff I paid for without a fight? Noooooo. So I called for the 450th time their 'customer service'. I actually already knew the people by name. The customer service's reaction was "Are you kidding me." followed by "You have to look again under the couch for the legs". No excuse, no "I am so sorry that we fucked up" - no nothing. After I had convinced the lady with my voice shaking from anger that there really were no fucking legs, she agreed to UPS them to me. Actually inbetween she apparently was so intimidated that she offered to bring them by our house personally. In any case, she promised I would have the legs the next day around lunch time and they would be sent to my office which was great since I was running out of vacation days to take for receiving couch parts.
So the next day I stayed in the office until 5. No legs, no delivery. The next morning I called UPS just to find out that it would take two more days to deliver the legs. I thought that was great, since I don't mind waiting for 8 weeks for a couch, get the wrong one, wait one more week for the correct one and then wait another week on top of it to be able to assemble it. I decided to once more call the customer service to tell them how great this all was going. And this time I wanted to not only scream and shout at them to restabilize my mental health, no, I wanted a compensation.
I know what you are thinking now. Compensation? Did Bolagret after all that drama not offer a compensation voluntarily? Haha. Welcome to Sweden. They actually REFUSED to give me a compensation! Why? I quote: "You must understand, this couch has already cost us so much with that redelivery, we hardly earn something from this." I answered calmly that I am really sorry but that I did not ask them to deliver the wrong couch in the first place, that I had paid for delivery and had to carry 2 couches instead of 1, that I had waited 10 weeks for the bloody couch and that even if their company would go bankrupt it would not be my problem. I deserved a compensation. After she still refused, I forced her to discuss this matter with her boss.
You know what I got in the end? A fucking VOUCHER worth 50 Euro. And you know for which shop? Yes, Bolagret. When their customer service told me this I was so shocked and in disbelief that I actually was speechless. And we even had to go to their goddamn shop to pick the bloody voucher up. And guess what. When we arrived at the shop nobody knew anything about a voucher. So I made my final call to the customer service and 1 week later we got the voucher via mail. I mean, how dumb can a company be?! Even almost 3 months later I am still so pissed-off that I get a strange desire to set fire to the Bolagret shop every time I pass by. We tried twice to find something in this shop to buy so we could get rid of the bloody voucher. But we can't. Bolagret still makes me sick.
So what will happen next? I am actually thinking about burning the voucher. In front of the Bolagret shop in Malmö. A manifestation of what I truly think of Swedish customer service:
Sweden, you still can learn how to treat customers right, it is not too late yet!
And Bolagret: Pardon my language, but GO FUCK YOURSELF.
Compared to Bolagret, furniture shopping at IKEA is a zen-like experience.
But let's start from the beginning. In March I decided to get a new couch. After browsing the 2,7 furniture stores in Sweden with acceptable offers I finally ordered a very nice couch at Bolagret, a Swedish furniture store I back then was very fond of - probably since I had never bought furniture from them before. When looking back now, I should have seen the signs already back then that something was wrong: It took the lady at the checkout for example 'only' half an hour to process my order (yep, Sweden is unfortunately the country of service snails...), including a very rude "You don't have enough money on your account." comment when the first payment try did not work. Later it turned out that it actually was their creditcard reader that did not work. But nevermind. Being insulted and accused is actually one of the less bad things that happen to customers in Swedish shops.
So after some struggle the couch was ordered and paid and I was told delivery time would be 4-8 weeks. Yes, I know, you could wonder why that takes soooo long, but as I said before, we are in Sweden here, you are not surprised by such things. I was actually happy they were able to deliver the couch at all and that it was not sold out like so many other things (alcohol, bread, winter jackets, etc) in this banana republic. So we waited patiently for the couch. 4 weeks. 5 weeks. 6 weeks. 7 weeks. After 8 weeks we were still sitting on our temporary "couch" - an air mattress. Yes, that had white trash written all over it, but hey, we were willing to sacrifice 2 months of comfort for our dream couch.
When I was about to contact Bolagret after 8 weeks to ask where the hell my expensive couch was or if they maybe already had left the country with my money instead I suddenly got a note from the delivery company, stating they would come that Wednesday and deliver the couch between 8 and 12. Great that they only needed a 4 hour-window for this delivery. Who doesn't like to take vacation to get his couch delivered? But anyway, this is Sweden I tried to remind myself. So that Wednesday we waited patiently for the people from DHL. We were actually so excited that we already deflated our air mattress couch in ecstatic expectation of a real couch. At 12.15 the DHL people 'already' arrived. So we went outside to greet them and tell them which floor exactly they would have to bring the couch to. After all, we paid 50 Euro (FIFTY) for the delivery.
Well. Let's say that did not work out as expected. Instead, the DHL guy dropped a gigantic couch wrapped in a lot of very dirty plastic foil on a EUROPALLET right in front of our appartment building and just left. It took some minutes until I understood that he would not come back and that we would have to carry the couch upstairs on our own. That was of course very easy. I don't know if it was the extremely dirty packaging, the fact that the heavy couch was packaged as one and not two packages or the 25 kilo heavy europallette that we got on top of that, but it took almost 1 hour until everything was up in our appartment. After we had removed the dirt from our faces and changed into clean clothes we started unwrapping the couch.
Unfortunately, what we unwrapped was not the couch we had ordered. It had taken stupid Bolagret more than 8 weeks to deliver a couch in the a)wrong shape b)wrong fabric c)wrong colour and d)wrong modell! I have to say that I was first so confused that I started wondering if maybe I had actually ordered that couch. But after taking a second look at that hideous brown corduroy couch (I know!!! who on earth buys something like that?!) I realized that there was only one party to blame here: BOLAGRET. So I called their customer service and asked them kindly where my couch was and whose couch I was giving shelter to.
First thing I noticed when calling Bolagret's "Customer service": They did not apologize. Instead they asked me if I was sure that it was the wrong couch. Yes, you can imagine the level of my pulse. After having reassured them that it really was not my couch that I had received, they promised me to look it up and get back to me asap. For the rest of the day I did not hear anything from them. So what does a labile German customer do who ordered a very expensive couch and does not know where it is or if it exists at all? Exactly, I wrote some words of choice on the facebook wall of Bolagret. And tada, they reacted within 15 minutes and promised me to ring me first thing the next morning.
Morning turned into afternoon and finally Bolagret called me. Unfortunately they did not have any answers to my questions. Even worse, they were even not sure anymore that my couch had been produced at all! So I had to wait another day. Pulse was now very close to 1200. On day 3 they finally managed to track down our couch in Stockholm (excuse me?!) and told us we would get it in one week. I also urged them to remove that brown Alien couch from my appartment immediately. Bolagret promised to send someone to pick it up the day after. And the day after they said they would come one day later. And another day later they finally decided to exchange the couches at the same time. The fact that we had to live with a strangers couch on a europallette that was blocking our living room for one week was not really interesting for them.
After another week finally the day of couch-exchanging came and we awaited the arrival of the couch we had ordered. This time delivery was scheduled between 2 and 4 since I had refused to sacrifice one half day for this again. A little after 4 our couch arrived. My first move was checking if it was the right modell this time. You know, it was getting a little crowded over there in our living room, I was not sure if we could fit even more Bolagret couches into our apartment. After all we are not a furniture storage, even if Bolagret apparently thought so. But to my great relief it was the right couch. This time the DHL guy even helped us to carry the couch upstairs - but we also had to help him carry down the wrong couch. Nevermind. So here we were, standing next to our unwrapped couch. The atmosphere was very tense since we only expected something to be wrong.
And we were right. When we wanted to assemble the couch (no, here in Sweden that is not included and yes, I know, banana republic!) we searched and searched for the legs for the couch and we could not find them! Well, why couldn't we find them? Maybe because they had not been delivered! I mean, sure, what was I expecting at that point? That Bolagret would give me the stuff I paid for without a fight? Noooooo. So I called for the 450th time their 'customer service'. I actually already knew the people by name. The customer service's reaction was "Are you kidding me." followed by "You have to look again under the couch for the legs". No excuse, no "I am so sorry that we fucked up" - no nothing. After I had convinced the lady with my voice shaking from anger that there really were no fucking legs, she agreed to UPS them to me. Actually inbetween she apparently was so intimidated that she offered to bring them by our house personally. In any case, she promised I would have the legs the next day around lunch time and they would be sent to my office which was great since I was running out of vacation days to take for receiving couch parts.
So the next day I stayed in the office until 5. No legs, no delivery. The next morning I called UPS just to find out that it would take two more days to deliver the legs. I thought that was great, since I don't mind waiting for 8 weeks for a couch, get the wrong one, wait one more week for the correct one and then wait another week on top of it to be able to assemble it. I decided to once more call the customer service to tell them how great this all was going. And this time I wanted to not only scream and shout at them to restabilize my mental health, no, I wanted a compensation.
I know what you are thinking now. Compensation? Did Bolagret after all that drama not offer a compensation voluntarily? Haha. Welcome to Sweden. They actually REFUSED to give me a compensation! Why? I quote: "You must understand, this couch has already cost us so much with that redelivery, we hardly earn something from this." I answered calmly that I am really sorry but that I did not ask them to deliver the wrong couch in the first place, that I had paid for delivery and had to carry 2 couches instead of 1, that I had waited 10 weeks for the bloody couch and that even if their company would go bankrupt it would not be my problem. I deserved a compensation. After she still refused, I forced her to discuss this matter with her boss.
You know what I got in the end? A fucking VOUCHER worth 50 Euro. And you know for which shop? Yes, Bolagret. When their customer service told me this I was so shocked and in disbelief that I actually was speechless. And we even had to go to their goddamn shop to pick the bloody voucher up. And guess what. When we arrived at the shop nobody knew anything about a voucher. So I made my final call to the customer service and 1 week later we got the voucher via mail. I mean, how dumb can a company be?! Even almost 3 months later I am still so pissed-off that I get a strange desire to set fire to the Bolagret shop every time I pass by. We tried twice to find something in this shop to buy so we could get rid of the bloody voucher. But we can't. Bolagret still makes me sick.
So what will happen next? I am actually thinking about burning the voucher. In front of the Bolagret shop in Malmö. A manifestation of what I truly think of Swedish customer service:
Sweden, you still can learn how to treat customers right, it is not too late yet!
And Bolagret: Pardon my language, but GO FUCK YOURSELF.
1 reacties:
haha this is amazing, I've actually read the whole text in disbelief! The question however is not why the company is so stupid. The question is why are people so stupid to buy their stuff??? I wanna like this on facebook or something.
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