#bigbox

[tameblog]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[ramestoryworld]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[alexha2210]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[angusstory]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[tumibaba]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[romaleen]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[monaleen101]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[iamownerofme]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[shelyold]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[iammeandmy]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[januishstory]

Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.I recently purchased a sectional from a DTC furniture brand. Yes, I’m ashamed. I knew better than to spend thousands of dollars on an object I’d never experienced in person, and to buy that object from a company whose Google results contain multiple Reddit posts titled things like "DO NOT BUY FROM [THIS COMPANY]" and "HELP!! HOW DO I DEAL WITH [THIS COMPANY]?" And yet I did. Please, listen to my story and learn from my mistakes.To explain myself briefly—I’m not a particularly picky person when it comes to home decor. Most of the furniture in the apartment I share with my husband and our two dogs was acquired either as a hand-me-down or at low cost. Our space is decorated not intentionally, but merely with the things we’ve collected over the course of our lives: a papier-mâché head, multiple paintings of our dogs, a clay guy who is screaming, a small wooden hippo. My husband purchased our previous sectional before we lived together; it came from Wayfair and cost $500, which is an amount I didn’t know a sectional could cost. We had it for years.That couch had undergone multiple surgeries over the years, performed by my husband. During the surgeries he would remove errant springs from the underside of the cushions and replace them with dish towels, duct taping the resulting hole. Eventually the couch became more dish towel than spring, and yet still, every time you sat down, you felt a spring poking you in your butt. I decided I couldn’t sit on this couch for another second around November of 2024. We sold it for $100 to a nice couple who, when they picked it up, said, "this will be perfect for our dog." Correct.I think you would agree that it was reasonable to assume a new DTC couch could not be worse than our previous couch. While researching options, I sought advice from friends, none of whom recommended the brand we ended up going with, and all of whom recommended DTC brands that indeed seemed better but were outside of our budget.We settled on our new couch in part because the brand had a flashy Black Friday sale. Normally over $5,000, this couch was priced at just over $3,000. (Yes, I’m aware that brands like this hold these "sales" frequently, and that the "actual" price of over $5,000 is little more than an illusion. This is another red flag I ignored so you could learn this valuable lesson—you’re welcome.)The couch seemed like everything I wanted our new couch to be, which was only three things: comfortable, a bit larger than our previous couch, and normal. It seemed to have good reviews and, in part because my bar was low, I felt confident splitting the purchase between my credit card and my husband’s so we could each get a share of the points.The couch took a little over two months to ship. The idea of it somewhat brightened the ceaseless litany of dark American moments in the weeks between November and late January. Then finally it arrived.After the couch was delivered and set up in our living room, my husband and I immediately noticed it was covered in large red stains that looked unnervingly like blood. (They could have also been permanent marker or, I guess, an extraterrestrial substance meant to serve as some sort of warning.) We counted six stains across the sectional’s body and pillows, and immediately I knew the expensive and scary couch must be returned. My husband—grasping at the idea that maybe, since we’ve been waiting so long for the couch, and since the couch was pretty much the only thing we had going for us right now and in fact our entire sense of wellbeing was dependent upon the couch, we could just live with the apparent blood stains if everything else was okay—expressed the desire that I slow down. "Let’s at least see if it’s comfortable first," he said."You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right. The couch certainly appeared comfortable, with large, amply-stuffed pillows. It was big, poofy, and inviting. We sat down with our full weight, expecting to be supported by a dreamy cushion, only to instantly meet the cruel reality of a wooden plank. It felt like sitting on a surf board, or the stage crew-crafted Central Perk couch in a high school production of Friends. It was not only uncomfortable, it was flimsy; it made our old couch seem like a dish towel–stuffed picture of craftsmanship and relaxation. It was the worst couch I had ever experienced.I sat on the surfboard couch while I Googled the company’s return policy. It showed that between shipping costs and the restocking fee, I would likely end up paying more to return the couch than I did to buy the couch. On top of that, Redditors complained that the company had a tendency to draw out returns past the return window, leaving you without whatever sum would even be left after their rapacious fees. Thank god, then, for the blood stains. "You have to go Karen mode," a friend advised. She was right."Call [the company] immediately," I told my husband. "To ask them what we should do?" he asked, too kind for this world. "No," I said. "Tell them we’ve been shipped a defective couch with mysterious stains, we do not feel comfortable having it in our home, and we require an immediate pickup and a full refund without fees!!"While he called, I emailed; we had to come at them from all sides. The customer service rep he spoke to said they would likely comply with our demands, but she had to check something and would call him back later that day. I said, to my husband, "SHE’S LYING! CALL BACK IN HALF AN HOUR! MENTION FEDERAL LAW!" Frightened, he did what I said, and that phone call led to a request for photos of the apparent blood stains, which we were happy to provide. And, well—I could explain to you in detail the litany of straining and polite emails and increasingly stern phone calls that took place over the next days, and believe me I would like to, but I know you’re busy, so let me just say: we eventually won. They agreed to pick up the couch at no cost, which they did a week after they delivered it, and gave us a full refund.The day after we were introduced to the horror of the demon couch, my husband and I drove to the nearest Raymour & Flanigan. There, we sat on 30 to 40 reasonably comfortable couches. They were nearly all priced far lower than anything we’d looked at online. Eventually, we found our couch: comfortable, a bit larger than our last couch, normal, and $1,000 less than the other one. Raymour & Flanigan delivered it two days after we ordered it. It’s gray and its vibe is cozy, but it’s aesthetically neutral enough that it would likely register as nothing more than "couch" to a visitor. It looks at home in our living room, and it is a pleasure to sit upon.Please, if you take anything away from this story, let it be this bit of wisdom: just buy a couch you’ve already sat on. You don’t have to buy a direct-to-consumer couch based on vibes and the misguided idea that there is something to gain financially by doing so. You can actually just go to one of the brick-and-mortar places that sells couches, sit on all of their couches, and pick the one you like the best. I love our new couch. Illustration by Clare MallisonRelated Reading: Source link

[automundoarg]

Franco Colapinto suma un nuevo patrocinador a su campaña deportiva

Una empresa con presencia destacada en Argentina, México, Perú, Chile, Uruguay y Colombia se incorpora a su proyecto deportivo.

A partir de la próxima fecha de la FIA Fórmula 2, que se realizará en el circuito italiano de Imola en el marco del Gran Premio de Emilia-Romagna de Fórmula 1, el argentino Franco Colapinto contará con un nuevo patrocinador. Se trata de Bigbox, una plataforma líder en experiencias originales que promueven vivir la vida al máximo. Miembro destacado de la William Driver Academy, Colapinto ha sido…

[yannosh51-blog-blog]

Retour de vacances : Don de jeu #bigbox : Merci Bruno par @yannosh51

———————— Rejoins nous ——————————————————- Pour plus d’information, contactez yannosh sur discord : https://discord.yannosh.net ———————— Suivez également les chaines de Continue reading Untitled

[laopiniononline]

[Opinión] Equipos motivados en segundo semestre.

Nueva publicación en https://ct2.cl/89

[Opinión] Equipos motivados en segundo semestre.

Por André Parisier, CEO en Bigbox.

A estas alturas del año, muchos líderes de organizaciones y empresas se comienzan a plantear ¿Cómo motivar a los colaboradores para que mantengan la buena actitud? Y la verdad es que ya hacerse esta pregunta es un muy buen síntoma, pues demuestra el interés en las personas que componen los equipos.

Partiendo de esa base, lo óptimo sería que evalúen implementar o aumentar los incentivos, y cuando hablo de incentivo no me refiero solo a los monetarios. Existen otras herramientas de estímulo que tienen excelentes resultados en los equipos. Por ejemplo, garantizar que los empleados puedan compatibilizar su vida personal y familiar con la laboral, los espacios de trabajo flexibles mantienen a colaboradores interesados en su trabajo. Así lo demostró un sondeo de la empresa de reclutamiento Robert Half, que señaló que un 49% de los chilenos cree que el peso de los modelos de trabajo flexible (remoto, híbrido) son fuertemente determinantes para atraer y retener talento.

Otra manera de mantener la motivación entre los empleados es reconocer abiertamente que el primer semestre fue arduo para todos y junto con ello premiar el esfuerzo y la disciplina. Una buena forma de felicitar es por medio de obsequios, pero no cualquier regalo corporativo, sino que más bien uno personalizado. Sabemos que agasajar con experiencias tales como salidas a restaurantes, estadías, sesiones de relajación o paseos son bien valorados por los colaboradores y los empleadores ya han visto buenos resultados.

Este tipo de alternativas para incentivar a los empleados ha cobrado cada día más relevancia en la región, según la experiencia de Bigbox en el segmento corporativo, los clientes aumentaron un 40% en 2022. En tanto, para los que resta del 2023 creemos que este tipo de opciones de regalos podría crecer un 50%.

Las capacitaciones y opciones de crecimiento laboral también contribuyen a que los equipos se mantengan de buen ánimo y puedan seguir motivados trabajando para lo que queda del semestre. El mismo sondeo de Robert Half mostró que el 50% de los encuestados estaba insatisfecho por no contar con oportunidades de desarrollo y carrera. Demostrando la relevancia que tiene esta área en los chilenos.

Ya se ha dicho mucho, pero nunca está de más repetirlo, que los trabajadores más felices son los que mejor producen, sacan a relucir más a menudo su creatividad y se muestran abiertos a los nuevos desafíos dentro de la compañía. Todos signos de que la motivación se mantiene alta.

[tillman]

NO FUCKING WAY ITS IN BOX.

[virtualrealitynewstoday]

《POPULATION: ONE｜Phoenix Royale》上線慶祝活動：獨家角色皮膚和全新遊戲內容

《POPULATION: ONE》的開發商BigBox VR, Inc.今日宣布，將於6月6日推出該遊戲最大規模的更新—《鳳凰皇家》。此次更新將包括全新的自動重生機制、更多自定義玩法以及更多動作機會，並將在全新的地圖上進行。 BigBox VR, Inc.特別指出，所有玩家都可於5月31日參加《鳳凰皇家預覽周末》，屆時玩家將可提前體驗到所有新變化。此外，為了回饋社區的支持，開發商設計了多種途徑，讓玩家在《鳳凰皇家預覽周末》以及遊戲正式上線初期免費獲得獎勵。 預覽周末將從太平洋時間5月31日上午11點開始，持續至6月3日上午11點，期間玩家在《POPULATION:…