The Nine Month Couch

The saga is officially over. Two weeks ago a couch was delivered to fill our gaping hole of a living area, a blank parchment of comfort-in-waiting ever since we moved in last Thanksgiving. It's a long story, but here it is:

On January 5th, Elisa visited a store in Santa Monica called Cozi Couch. She loved the look of the furniture in the place. She spent quite a while in there, found a couch and chair with an ottoman, picked out some fabric, placed an order, paid for it, and was told delivery would occur in approximately 8 weeks. She came home very excited about the purchase.

About three months later, with no couch, Elisa called the store to inquire about the delivery date. "The frames are ready, but there has been a delay in the delivery of the fabric. We'll call you next week to schedule a delivery date." OK, we thought, hopefully just a couple more weeks then. A couple of weeks later, basically the same call: "The fabric still hasn't arrived, but we should be able to schedule delivery next week." And for the next several weeks, the calls were essentially the same theme: "It should be ready soon, but [insert excuse here]. We'll call you in a few days to schedule delivery."

At some point in July (if you're keeping count, you'd recognize that as six months after the furniture had been ordered), Elisa finally spoke to the store owner and he explained that they were not likely to receive the fabric we ordered due to the requirement that it be shipped in bulk, and it was not likely that a whole bunch of people would order that particular fabric from him. So he innocently asked, "Do you want me to just cancel your order then?" WHAT?!?! Elisa was incredulous, and lit into him pretty good. "You've had our money for six months and that's all you're offering to do?!?! From my perspective, this whole transaction amounts to us giving you a short-term loan!" After some hemming and hawing from the owner, he asked, "Would you like to pick out a different fabric then?" Yes, we could do that, and he agreed to meet us at the store later that week.

I met Elisa at the store (it's just about 3 miles from my office) and we met the owner who showed us some fabric options. Once we made our selection, he said, "We definitely have this in stock in the factory, so it should just be a few days because the frames are already done." Great! He wrote up a new order, and we asked two questions:

Question #1: What was the price difference between the fabric ordered previously and the fabric we just ordered? He said he'd have to calculate the difference at the factory, but he would call us in two days with an answer.

Question #2: What was he going to do for us, as Elisa very nicely put it, "to get rid of the bad taste in our mouths" about the situation? He responded, "What would you like?" Oh, a discount would be good, or at least some additional free merchandise. He said we could probably work something out once the furniture was ready.

We were heading out of town for Lake Tahoe the following week, so we said, "Let's schedule delivery for Saturday, August 16." He said, "That will definitely be no problem - it will definitely be ready by then. We'll call you late that week to schedule a delivery time for the 16th." We left the store feeling cautiously optimistic that we would get a couch soon.

When we got to Friday, August 15th, and no call received, I made the call to inquire about delivery. "You know, we've been working on it, but we got a little backed up, so it's not quite ready. Let me call you Monday or Tuesday and we should be able to get it to you by Wednesday." OK, fine, whatever. Not surprisingly, Tuesday arrives, and no call received, so I placed the call to them. Voicemail. Wednesday: voicemail. Thursday: voicemail.

After that third consecutive voicemail, I was understandably getting frustrated, and I recalled one of the many conversations that Elisa & I had about the situation. After all the lies and deception, we really just wanted to see if the furniture was indeed "almost ready." The longer this took, the more we began to think that they had never even started our order at all. So, using my real estate and research acumen, I started a little investigation. I noted the phone number of the guy we would occasionally speak to "at the factory," and I did an internet reverse phone lookup, not really expecting to find anything. But lo and behold, an address appeared. Further research showed that the location was not a factory at all (hardly surprising), but was in fact another store location for Cozi Couch. More research showed that the building had space for lease. So I called the leasing agent for the space and pretended to be a potential new tenant making inquiries. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hi, I'm inquiring about the space for lease in Hollywood. Can you tell me about it?"
Agent: "Sure! It's a terrific showroom-type street retail building with huge windows and high ceilings.
Me: "Is there any sort of a factory/manufacturing/assembly area in the building?"
Agent: "No, it's not big, just the showroom area and a little bit of office space in the rear."
Me: "Is the space currently vacant?"
Agent: "No, there is a furniture store in the space now, but confidentially the building owner would like to get them out. He thinks that when a tenant signs a lease, then they should pay their rent!"

I can't quite describe my emotion at that moment, but basically my eyes became as big as saucers and I was envisioning a HUGE red flag in my head. Within about two seconds, I knew we had to exit out of this transaction as quickly as possible. Soon thereafter, I went down to the store one day during lunchtime and brought the original invoice (now nearly 8 months old) with me. I explained to the salesperson how we had ordered this furniture a LOOONG time ago, we had no delivery date scheduled as of yet, so we would like to take the owner up on his offer to cancel the order. She seemed not at all perplexed, as if this was not exactly the first time this request had been made, but said she needed to call the other location to receive instruction on how to handle the refund "because our credit card machine isn't working today." It had gotten so ridiculous, all I could do was smile. After a few minutes on the phone, she reported that they could handle the refund "at the factory, because that is where we have the original invoice, and we can just refund your credit card number from the original receipt. He said that if you check your credit card balance early next week, you'll see the refund by then." OK, fine. I wasn't going to argue with a mere salesperson who is likely an innocent party in the affair, so I left.

However, I wasn't about to wait that long. Two days later, I called Visa's dispute resolution division. It took a while to find the correct person to talk to, but finally I was able to explain all that had happened, and they originated a dispute report for me. Over the next couple of weeks (and no refund in sight from Cozi Couch, of course) I spoke with a couple more Visa representatives to give them more information and clarify in more detail the events that had transpired over time. After that third call, though, they were fully satisfied that it was time for them to get our money back. And sure enough, about a week after that, our Visa bill actually showed a positive balance in the amount of our purchase, PLUS INTEREST. We're not sure, but we certainly hope they took that interest amount from Cozi Couch as well.

After we got our money refunded, I logged on to every retailer ratings website I could think of (if you find one I missed, let me know!), and added this text on the Cozi Couch page:

"Cozi Couch is a fraud. We ordered furniture and eight months later it still hadn't arrived. I believe they never even started on our order - they just took our money and kept it until we had Visa intervene and got our money back. I also learned that they don't pay their rent and their landlord wants to kick them out. THEY ARE A NIGHTMARE!!" It was definitely not the first bad review that Cozi Couch had received.

Soon after the ordeal was complete, Elisa found a couch on sale at one of her favorite shops and bought it. They said delivery would be in 6-8 weeks, and I instinctively rolled my eyes. But lo and behold, a mere FIVE WEEKS LATER, a couch was delivered. Elisa has since bought two chairs at a very reasonable price at an antiques place that she will refinish and have reupholstered sometime.

Finally a couch in our living room, a little more than nine months after the saga began. It's a good feeling.