Bolia – a sofa without customer service and goodwill

As the winter approached Hamburg we thought about buying new sofa. During one of our last trips to Sweden we discovered (and starting liking) the plain Scandinavian design of Bolia. After two visits of the local Bolia Store in Hamburg (Hoheluft – Straßenbahnring 19) we decided that North should become our new „sofa buddy“. As an „internet person“ I of course asked in the store if there would be any difference between the order in the store or online. The answer was: „No. But of course it would be nice if you buy it in the store to support local stores.“.   We signed the contract with a 13% discount (25% fee if the sofa order was canceled) and were happily waiting for the sofa to be delivered.

In this time frame Bolia started a new campaign where they offered a 50% discount for „North“ – meaning that if I returned the sofa now and ordered a new one I would still save 280€. So I called up the customer service and asked them what they could offer me to keep me a happy customer.
They returned to me with an offer where I would still save money if I send the sofa back and order a new one. What kind of good will is that?
Even worse was that the customer service told me that of course there is a difference between the online and store order – mainly being that there is no 25% cancellation fee if you order online. Meaning in our case that we would have saved the full 50% if we would have ordered online!!

Summary: The design @Bolia is really nice but even if you are advised wrong there is no real good will from the customer service – in a situation where it would just be so easy for them (considering that they would save storage costs and so on….)

[Update – 14.11.2013] Good news on a thursday morning: Half an hour ago the customer service contacted me and offered the 50% discount to me. Glad to be a happy customer again and looking forward for the sofa to arrive next week!

Copyright for the pic.