Save A Bundle On Office Furniture, But Take Care!
April 17, 2008
The internet has had a significant impact on the UK office furniture market over recent years. Prices have fallen substantially in the budget to mid range market as national online dealers have undercut the more traditional suppliers.
The majority of UK domestic internet office furniture sales are handled as drop-shipments where the manufacturer delivers goods to the end customer without the dealer ever seeing the goods.
The drop-shipment business model may work painlessly with many products however things do not generally run quite so smoothly with office furniture orders. Furniture products are often heavy, 80 kilograms (175 lbs) or more is not particularly unusual and these items are also more prone to transit damage than many other products unless handled extremely carefully. Specialist transport is required to minimise transit damage but no company claims to eliminate transit damage completely.
While office furniture can now be purchased at bargain prices, purchasers do need to be mindful of the possibility of needing after sales service. Some suppliers offer very slick sales operations but are none too helpful when problems occur for example with transit damage or missing parts that always seem to go hand in hand with furniture requiring on site assembly.
My recommendation is to go for a company where after sales care is dealt with by the sales staff. It is fairly common practice these days to get an automated call routing menu where you press 1 for sales, 2 for customer service etc. Maybe I am overly cynical but it is amazing that the sales calls are answered virtually instantly but the customer service calls are kept in a queuing system. There is also the problem when having got through to customer service the customer is simply referred to a manufacturer?s help line which can prove equally difficult.
There are bargains to be had but take care!
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