Faith in Customer Service Restored, But Not By That Bank

For Christmas Russ gave me new bar stools for our kitchen counter. It was what we call in out house a “white envelope gift.” That means he makes some kind of certificate and puts it in a white envelope so I have something to open. Generally all my gifts are white envelope gifts. He even makes his own Needlepoint gift certificates and I have to tell Nancy at Chapel Hill Needlepoint to charge him for the gift he has made up.

The wonderful thing about white envelope gifts is I get to actually pick out the thing he is “giving” me. Sometimes the white envelopes go unclaimed because I think they are too extravagant or not really what I wanted. This year, I had mentioned I wanted to buy new bar stools. For the record I was just going to go buy them, but this way Russ had a gift.

Since they were on my todo list already Russ and I went shopping the day after Christmas to look for them. We went to Ballard designs. They had ones I liked, but the shipping was $300 a piece and I balked at that. I was getting discouraged with the other places as I really was not looking for $2,000 per bar stool. After more looking at bigger named places we ended up at Bar Stools and Dinettes on Glenwood in Raleigh.

This was not a place I thought was going to work out. It only could have been a worse name if it was called Dinette World.

As it was close to the end of the day on the day after Christmas there was just one woman running the store and we were the only customers. She was a great help. They had lots to chose from and I was able to find the most comfortable stool and pick out the wood finish and the fabric. They are made in Canada and so it was going to take 10 weeks. No problem. We ordered them.

The stools came in this week and the store called me. You know we had terrible customer service at the bank this week. Well Barstool and Dinettes has restored my faith in customer service.

When the stools arrived they unboxed them and looked over them. There was a tiny dent in one leg. They went ahead and reordered me a replacement. We picked all three we ordered up Saturday brought the dented one home to use until the perfect one arrives. When they said a dent I thought it was really something. It is tiny, but I so appreciate them being the ones to say it is not right and not making me have to fight about it.

Sometimes you have to ignore the name and just go look. This family owned business still has great customer service and I love my new stools.