Gordaen's Blog

About a month ago, I moved into a new apartment. I thought it might be nice to have a bed, so I started looking for bedroom sets (why try to find matches yourself, when someone has already done it for you?). I wanted to spend under $1000, because I was also buying all the other first-home items, so my budget was limited. My girlfriend’s parents had used a company called Bedroom Furniture Direct recently and were pleased with the service. We looked around the site and both ended up finding the South Shore Back Bay Platform Bedroom collection to be the best choice. The price was good and it looked nice. I did some research online to make sure no one had any horror stories (you know, like the bedroom set mutinies against the owner and then sleeps on him/her for revenge). Everyone appeared to be pleased, so I ordered the set. I bought the bed, two nightstands, dresser with mirror, and the “chest.” I didn’t have a need for the airmoire.

I ordered the set on May 26th (a Friday) and it shipped out the following Wednesday (the 31st). A week later, the order started to arrive. Unfortunately, UPS (pronounced “oops”) delivered half of the packages one day and the others two days later on a Friday evening. All of the items were really straightforward as far as assembly goes. If you’ve ever put any furniture together before, you shouldn’t have any problems. A hammer and a screwdriver are all you really need (provided my memory has not yet failed). I found out that one of the trim pieces that goes around the edge of the platform bed arrived broken. I called up Bedroom Furniture Direct that evening and talked with a nice lady after no hold! It’s really nice when you can actually talk to a person without having to wait, being reassured that “your call is important to us.” If it is so important, why don’t the companies hire enough people to prevent waits greater than 5 minutes?

Anyway, before I ramble off in a totally different direction, the lady asked me a few questions. We both wanted to blame it on UPS, but the package appeared undamaged. She said she would put the information in and let the manager know. He would contact me Monday. And, sure enough, Monday morning at 7am I had an E-mail waiting for me. I opened it with the excitement of a drugged-with-tranquilizers monkey (Monday mornings are rarely exciting), finding information about contacting South Shore directly was enclosed. I thought that it would pretty strange that they would put me directly in contact with them (nice to cut out the middle man, but would they believe a random person that the part arrived broken and I hadn’t just headbutted it in half?).

I called South Shore’s number and was promptly confused by the mixture of French and English (it’s a Canadian company). When I realized I had to press 1 for English, I was greeted with a basic answering machine message. I prefer to talk directly to a person, or at least have some evidence of actually contacting them, so I decided to forward the E-mail from BFD to them with information about the order and part number. A Mélissa contacted me back the next day asking for my shipping address and letting me know that I could call the phone number (it was a different number, but it went to the same place). I chose to simply E-mail her back. A few days later I received a reply letting my know that the order had been placed and I should receive the parts within 15 days. 11 days later the FedEx (hooray!) man was putting the box in my hand.

Overall, I have been very pleased with the bedroom set. It was fairly inexpensive, but the quality is good. Much of the pieces are made out of recycled materials, so you can feel good about yourself when you go to sleep at night. I would recommend the products to anyone who is looking for something in this price range.