It's Final! TARGET Furniture is the Worst!!!

I have said it before, but I gave them another chance this weekend only to see their online furniture is even worse than what they sell at their stores. As the President of New York City's largest Professional Assembly Service it is hard to turn a customer away which will in turn leave a bad taste in their mouth thinking we only assemble high end pieces. That is not how I want my company to be viewed, but their has to be a time when you say enough is enough. When I first launched this company several years ago I thought IKEA was the bottom of the barrel compared to some of the other retailers. However, in time I found that for the most part IKEA was a good quality product, well made, and fairly priced. Target however, sells furniture that is poorly made, poorly handled, and sold at very unreasonable prices considering most of the furniture is coming out of China. I cannot say what they paid for the cherry "Finish" executive desk I agreed to have a technician assemble in which the customer paid $379.99 for, but I do know that a small company like myself can purchase an entire kitchen that was made in China from a dealer in the states for under $400.00! Now considering the company that resells these kitchen cabinets is not a big operation they have to be making at least 100% mark up on the kitchens, so I am guessing Target might mark up their furniture somewhere around 700%! In any event I was called to the customers home by my technician who came 2 hours to assemble the desk only to open the box and see that it was completely broken with chunks of the MDF ( Medium Density Fiberboard) that was the top amongst the other pieces scattered like saw dust. I immediately explained to the customer that we need to take pictures and call Target and report this matter, and assured her we would provide an affidavit to the company if need be. She contacted Target and put me on the phone with their customer service representative who I give credit to for being very nice and understanding. I explained who I was, our company, and the serious damage that had occurred to the customers article either in route from China, their warehouse, or the delivery service in which delivered it. I explained that we had pictures and by this time she must have pulled up our bio online and began to ask questions about our services that she could have only known by viewing our website. In any event when it was all said in done the customer is being shipped a new desk minus $40.00 for her troubles and we agreed to return a second time in the hopes that we can assemble the desk for her. Our minimum service fee is $60.00 which should be applied since it was not our fault the product was damaged nor inspected prior to our arrival, but I just couldn't find it in my heart to charge her. I guess that is what separates us from the big national companies who would have already had her credit card # and charged the fee. Now on our website we have a notice that clearly states we will no longer be assembling Target furniture and the reasons why. In a way I feel as if we are hurting our reputation and possibly bottom line by doing this, but Target furniture is just that bad that I had to take such a drastic measure because not one of my technicians will take a Target job.


Do you own target furniture? Was it damaged or not what you expected? Did the assembly process go easy? Either way please let us know so we can decide if we should begin contacting other Professional Companies and pull together to ensure Target starts selling better quality furniture.