Letter to the Editor
I have been a repeat customer of Gallery Furniture over the past 10 years and have purchased thousands of dollars’ worth of quality furniture. My family was living in an apartment in Kingwood, Texas during Hurricane Harvey while waiting for our new home to be completed. Our apartment was flooded with 81 inches of water and we lost our entire first floor of personal belongings.
Following the storm, we returned to Galley as previous satisfied customers but also because we wanted to support the store that was doing so many good things for people in need. My husband and I were emotionally drained from dealing with the storm aftermath so we brought some family and friends with us to assist in shopping for all that we lost. We spent the day at Gallery and purchased a new kitchen table, bedroom set and mattress spending over $15,000 in just a few hours. Our sales person (name withheld at this time) was very helpful and shared with us that Mattress Mac was running a promotion that if we were to purchase a mattress (spending over $3,000) and the Astros win the World Series, we would get our mattress for free. We typically do not purchase mattresses from Gallery but given the promotion we decided to purchase a new king sized Sterns and Foster mattress and box spring. At the time a promotion was being offered for an accessories credit that must be used in the store within 12 months. Our sales person did not inform us that we would only be eligible for one promotion – the accessories credit or the Astros promotion – we understood that the promotions were separate and did not impact each other. Upon checkout we signed all paperwork provided and left the store. At closing on our new residence the title company informed us that we can call Gallery and get 10% off with the purchase of the new home. We called the sales consultant and mentioned this to him at which time he told us we could either have the accessories credit or the 10% off and we decided to take advantage of the 10% off.
As the Astros continued to win we closely watched and rooted for the hometown team. The day after the World Series Win we called Gallery to ask how we would get the refund on the mattress. The person that answered the phone asked our name and looked us up in the system and stated that we were not eligible because “we did not sign a form”. Confused we repeatedly shared no form was ever provided at checkout and we were never made aware of this internal process. We were told to follow up with our sales representative, which we did and all we were told is if we did not sign the form, we were not eligible… even though we have an invoice dated during the time of the promotion and spent beyond the required $3000 dollar amount. Growing increasingly frustrated we went to Gallery furniture to speak to Mattress Mac directly the day after the World Series. He was not friendly at all and would not even make eye contact as he spoke to my husband. He took the invoice, made a copy and said he will look into it and get back to us and sent us on our way. Two weeks later we get a call from the cashier manager telling us since we didn’t sign the form and we received the 10% promotion for a new home, we are not eligible for the Astros promotion even though we met the purchase criteria. She kept repeating the same line for over 10 min and refused to accept any responsibility or provide any rational for why we do not qualify for the promotion, which was broadly publicized and for which we met all criteria (purchase a mattress for $3000 or more and before a certain date). They are refusing to provide us with the owed compensation as advertised. To make matters worse every person we interacted with was extreme rude and treated us as though its our fault we were not better informed of Gallery’s internal promotion process.
As a repeat customer it is very disappointing to be treated this way. Mattress Mac has received a lot of positive press for his charitable contributions but I wonder how many others are getting treated as poorly as we are. If he makes a promise he should be forced to live up to his word… we have dated invoices that show the requisite purchase – it should be very cut and dry. Any exceptions to the promotion should have been clearly communicated the day of purchase.
Kristen