Arhaus Furniture

My experience with Arhaus in Raleigh was less than pleasant. Beware, the “designers” in that store are primarily sales people—my sales person told me that. Only a couple of the sales staff took a design course. One sales associate told me she was actually a shopper in the mall when the manager approached her and asked if she wanted to work for them (experience totally unknown.) Not only was their ‘design’ staff untrained, they shifted from getting an appropriate design to selling items to get more commission. The sales person, Sara, put together a bench, dining chairs and two head chairs for the small dining table. It felt like a subway car. After reconsidering my order, I went to the store over the weekend and told the manager I wanted to cancel. She said I would have to talk to my sales person, Sara. (wouldn't’t you think a good manager would take care of this). When I spoke with Sara, she just stared at me. I said it twice. She didn’t want to obviously lose the commission and said and did nothing. The manager, Larissa, is totally disengaged and lacks leadership at this store. There is a serious lack of customer service at this Arhaus Raleigh location. No one seemed to want to do the right thing; no one took action. It was as if I was already out of their minds since the paperwork was written. I got up and left. Upon arriving home, I contacted the Arhaus Headquarters (Ohio) Customer Service line. Since I had placed my order at the store over a weekend, I knew the local store would contact the vendor of the chairs sometime the beginning of the following week. I knew I would have ample time to cancel the order. Sure enough, I received a confirmation email from Richard in Customer Service at Arhaus Headquarters that he was able to cancel the Halsted Chairs and that order number from the local store was now closed. (I have a copy of this email.) The local store was also notified by Richard. My experience with Richard was fine. He seemed to be well equipped to handle this issue and did so in a quick manner. Getting the full deposit returned was another incompetent job. There was a $1128 balance still due to me. I went to my bank and my banker also did an audit of the account. She agreed that there remained an $1128 balance due to me. She called Arhaus Headquarters Customer Service and spoke to Julie Kravcisin, Senior Client Services Specialist. Julie also identifies herself as the “Accounting Department”. My banker pointed out the inconsistencies and the accounting errors to Julie. This effort generated a call from Julie to the local Raleigh store manager, LaRissa, who is not on top of anything. LaRissa was interested in covering herself and said that my Halsted chairs order were charged a restocking fee. Thus, any money not adding up was deemed the restocking fee. To make their accounting balance they called an $1128 difference a restocking fee and then created a falsehood around that to substantiate this. Both Julie and LaRissa were in such a hurry to cover their tracks and close this matter that they didn’t bother to research the status and the fact their own customer service at headquarters (Richard) had effectively canceled the order before any notice was sent to a vendor to manufacture the chairs. The order no longer even existed. They needed to send me a full refund. There should be no restocking fee on a successfully cancelled order especially by Customer Service at the company’s headquarters. These two quickly assumed the customer was wrong and neither knew how to correctly audit a transaction. This store still owes me my deposit on chairs that were legitimately canceled by Richard at Arhaus’s Customer Service at their Ohio headquarters. My banker followed up with Richard about this situation but, unfortunately, he did not do the right thing and would not do anything further. The amount still due to me is $1128.95. I would not recommend working with Arhaus for any design or furniture project. They are putting personal monetary gain ahead of doing the right thing for their customers. This experience was less than pleasant and it is safe to say I will not be shopping with the Arhaus Brand any longer.