Gerdt Furniture - No Wonder They Are Going Out Of Business!

I went to Gerdt furniture this weekend. They were having a "Going Out of Business" sale. I originally thought just that store was closing but I have since learned that the business itself is going under, but that is another story...

I purchase one of the last showroom mattresses they had left. It was a queen-size mattress and box spring. The sticker price was $1200 but it was marked down to $575 for the sale. Additionally, due to the going out of business sale, the sales person took the price down to $440 plus tax. That seemed like a decent deal. They wanted to charge an extra $100 for delivery, but we figured it would be cheaper to hire our construction guys to pick them up.

On Monday my mom went with the guys to pick up the mattress and after about 40 minutes of confusion the employees at Gerdt told them that the somehow got the mattresses mixed up and gave the set that I paid for to someone else. That in and of itself seems pretty bad. Then they try to give them a different set by telling them it's a better mattress than what I had paid for (which turns out to be total crap). I do not even so much as get a phone call through this whole mess.

I come home and my mom informs me of what happened. I told her, why did you accept the other mattress? She should have called me, I would have just said please have them just refund my money. But she said they told her it was a better mattress than what I had bought. I reminded her that the only mattresses that were better were the tempurpedic mattresses they had in the showroom. The only other mattresses they had were these cheap $200 ones stacked against the wall. Anyway, we looked up the mattress that they gave us and they had a sticker price of $690 which means they probably were the $200 ones stacked against the wall.


I call that evening and left a voicemail. I then called the next day and talked to Liz who tells me she is going to look into it and will call me back in 15 minutes. Over an hour later I call back to make sure they haven't forgotten about me. She said they are still working on it and will call me back. Another hour later I finally get a phone call and Liz tells me they will refund my money, but we have to bring the mattress back. I told her that I already had to pay extra to hire guys to pick up the mattress, I didn't want to have to pay them again to take the mattress back because it wasn't even my fault that they gave the mattress I paid for away. She said they didn't have a way to pick it up because they didn't have trucks. Which of course is a lie because otherwise how are they selling delivery?

I asked to speak to the manager. She puts "David" on the phone. David proceeds to tell me the same thing. I explained that this was their error and he said that because my mom signed off on it, it's not their issue. I told him that they didn't have my mom's money, they had MY money, and that if a decision like that was to be made, it should be made by me. I never got so much as a phone call. He said again, it wasn't their issue, if I wanted to return the mattress they would refund the money and that if I didn't like it, I could "Sue them". How ridiculous! How do you sue a company that is going out of business? There is no entity to sue!

I'm currently disputing the charges with my credit card company, but at the end of the day I'm pretty much screwed. I'm having to have the workers bring the mattress back down to the southside to try to recover my $535. Meanwhile, I hope my credit card company has my back and help me out. It sucks that I can't sue them because I'm just going to have to eat the pick-up and return expense which is close to $200.

I hate bad business and customer service. How do you give something someone already paid for away to the wrong person in the first place? The mattress had a tag with my name and invoice number on it. It's not like I put money down for them to hold something, I paid outright for it!!