Shopping Experience @ Furniture Mall Along Beach Road - S*h**e

[deterspine 0]

Hi peeps

I usually do not post on forums as I only bother to read and do not have the time to write lengthy experiences either. However, I just got to share this shopping experience at Furniture Mall along Beach Road, really “made” my day!

My wife and I decided to spend our well-deserved public holiday 2 days ago by shopping for a rug to spruce up our newly renovated apartment.

Off we went and invaded Furniture Mall, combed through the levels and realised there aren’t many shops specialising or at least stock a huge variety of carpets and rugs! Stopped by the third level and BINGO, found a shop by the name of S*H**E. From the outside, one can clearly see an impressive library of rug samples in an array of beautiful colours and textures! Did I mention they even have professional “pull-out” drawers to stock the samples? Certainly enticing to rookies like us!

We held our heads high and strutted into the shop with the sexiest moves and stated our intention – WE WANT A RUG! The next natural question from us was “What are the available sizes?” We were concerned about size (everyone does, don’t we?!) as we had had to give up many “eye candies” simply because the size does not fit our nest. Out came a confident and assuring reply, followed by a confident nod, “We do customisation, to your size!” COOL! We thought. This might just be the very place we pick up our eye candy! At this moment, we realised a fellow colleague yelling away to the salesperson who served us and commenting in an unruly fashion, that a customer wanted a local sofa i.e. china made and needed it to be 2.4m in length and that the sofa should sit comfortably. Darling and I looked at each other and thought, “What’s so wrong with that request?” Probably that dude had a really bad hangover from the previous night of partying (btw he looks pretty hardcore!), we then brushed that issue aside and began browsing through the entire library. Not much sales pitch and the salesperson pretty much left us alone to browse while he looked on.

15 minutes of our precious time passed (the time could have been spent cuddling in bed you know…keke!), salesman must have realised that there is a high chance of “closing” us and began telling us the various benefits of his rugs. From Made in Germany (?), easy to clean (he could not answer our qn of the cleaning steps and merely mentioned “easy to clean” despite our persistent asking), hair very strong (won’t come off), blah blah blah…he covered them all. I am an easy going person (am still now!) so I thought, never mind his ignorance and lack of product knowledge, as long as we like the rugs, these issues are secondary.

Since we were already in the lion den, we then checked out the “best price” for a style that we liked. $600 with a gentle smile. Ok…we thought…slightly above our budget but still ok if we really liked it. We wanted something not too costly as I have a really bad habit of changing styles frequently – it wouldn’t hurt as much when time comes for a change! Darling then spotted another style and again we asked for the price. Reply given was, “it’s more than $600.” No exact price was given. I was indeed puzzled at this stage. Darling was fine but I can sense that sentiments were heading south in the “satisfaction scale”, but was still good to go. Thoughts sprung up at every corner of our executive well-calibrated heads, one of which was, “Are we too shabbily dressed on a public holiday to purchase a $600 rug?????” Darling was dressed in a polo tee with jeans and birkenstocks (oh yah…we don’t have the habit of wearing flip flops to malls), while macho (haha!) was dressed in Hard Rock T-shirt and jeans with gd ‘ol leather sneakers. Not exactly the Marilyn Monroe and Brad Pitt alike but definitely not the beggar at the corner of Wall St! Strange enough…probably we looked like students doing projects with a tight budget? No…we thought. Sensing that something may be wrong i.e. carrot may run away, he said he could sell at same price if we were sincere. Even commented that the same rug will retail for >$800 while pointing at the adjacent shop specialising in carpets/rugs! DARLING AND I DO NOT LOOK UP TO PEOPLE WHO BAD-MOUTH…sorry folks if I sounded arrogant but that’s us!

At this moment, both of us were fighting real hard to resist the urge to show our emotions and say that we want to consider and pop over to the next shop immediately to see what’s in store. Btw, Darling would not have noticed the other shop had he not pointed it out! We succumbed to the temptation and pluck up our last bit of pride and said “we will consider”. What to do, adrenaline levels were high at that time! Just gotta go! We have always had a penchant and a habit of buying luxury items if they can prove their worth and within our budget without tearing a big hole in the pockets! Angled our heads some degrees down and walked briskly out, with significantly less poise and confidence compared to our grand entry!

Oh yah…remember the hardcore dude who had had a bad hangover? He was outside the shop talking to a mate. As we walked past, what happened was the deciding factor in me deciding to spend 30 minutes of my precious time to share our “wonderful” experience. A good holiday indeed! Both of us heard these comments, “wen wen wen, wen ze muo duo, dou bu mai de!” We looked at each other in disbelief and immediately through telepathy, we pondered, “Did we ask TOO MANY questions” To the best of our knowledge, the following are the only questions asked, nothing more…

1. What are the available sizes?

2. How to clean the carpet? Easy to clean?

3. What is the time needed to customise one

4. Best Price

I believe the above 4 qns are reasonable qns that all decent and normal prospective human rug/carpet buyers would ask, there is even room for more questions! We certainly did not ask what colour underwear he was wearing, and whether he has a sexy sister at home. Nor did we ask when his grandma gave birth to his dad! To think we were being flamed (or torched) for asking too many qns. Btw, people who think the 4 qns asked were unreasonable can contest!

To the prospective bros and sis who managed to read till this point, please take out your notebooks and jot down these impt points:

1. Think, think, think! Don’t make a decision because of sales pitches! Any vigilant and alert reader in this post will ponder, “How to have a carpet/rug of European origins and customised to size for $600?” Think again…good stuff do not come cheap! If such stuff are available, they would most probably cost $6000, and yes, we would and have the budget to buy one, if we really liked it!

2. Always go to dealers who can be trusted and have received good remarks/reviews online or have been recommended by word of mouth, regardless of what you are buying. These are the folks who will most likely provide good after-sales service.

3. Never feel pressured to buy, if the salesperson shows a “black like charcoal” face when you ask questions WITH REGARDS TO THE PRODUCT (pls don’t ask what colour underwear he/she is wearing!), this act simply shows his/her incompetence and therefore unwillingness to answer the qns posed. In such cases, just WALK OUT! Come on, there are better shops out there wanting to earn our money! We only live once, why go to hospital because of morons we don’t even know?

In conclusion, it is the buyers’ market now. We are in a technical recession and people are definitely not as willing to spend on “wants” as compared to the past. Retailers who are adamant on their unruly customer service are most likely to be the next ones to perish. After all, consumers are the reason for their existence. Without consumers, retailers exist for what? Hungry ghosts? So peeps, let’s join forces and destroy these morons who are making us upset, even when we have the money to spend! Not happy with us, we are taking our money elsewhere! Even if no one wants to sell us a rug in Singapore, I will go online. If that fails even, I will go find Ali Baba! Ask him to donate one to me!

**Retailers alert – Look out for girl wearing polo tee with jeans and birkenstocks + a macho in Hard Rock T-shirt and jeans with gd ‘ol leather sneakers. Haha!!!!!

Good Nite!

Edited December 9, 2008 by deterspine

[pinkpetter 0]

Despite it being a bad experience... I certainly enjoyed reading that. Thanks for sharing.

[vex 0]

thanks for the sharing of experience, i support your decision to walk away and never look back. myself i will definately blacklist this shop. their service attitude sucks. btwi think judging from the chinese essence, i guess the sales person is from china ? am not surprise of their poor service attitude then.

[Starscream 0]

It's kind of long. Why not state the point first followed by the story for those who want to know more in detail. Usually it is the service staff that has bad attitude and not the company, then again it is the company who employed these staff.

[tower 0]

Another "BLACK" or blacklisted shop!

[ryan13680 0]

I can empathize. I was looking for my induction cooker at R*na electrical in Orchard. The sales assistant could not answer any of my questions and had the cheek to ask me if I was there to do a survey or buy something. I wanted to slap her. Instead, I just said 'thank you' politely and left the store.

I bought my teka hob from Poh Joo at Jln Besar instead, which was highly recommended and for good reason. The sales lady accompanied me for about 2 hrs while I was making up my mind on the stuff I wanted to get! She even skipped lunch to serve me. Poor thing.

[reedwan 0]

Thanks for sharing!!! I do feel sorry about your experience yet (as mentioned be4) I too enjoyd reading your thread

[deterspine 0]

The salesman who served us is from China, his colleague is just a typical low-class ah beng...hard to talk to these people...sigh

Edited December 10, 2008 by deterspine