"The best laid plans of mice and men" OR "the Happy Ending!"
As the saying goes, "the best laid plans of mice and men…” Please stay with me here - this is maybe one of the longest reviews you’ll ever read; my husband says I talk too much - but this story has a happy ending! In June we saw a patio furniture set we really liked in a generic outdoor furniture store - but being the “frugal” types we are, thought to see if our preferred outdoor furniture store carried the line. They did, but they were a little more costly. When we mentioned we were going to return to the original store, our sales lady mentioned that store had literally *just* gone out of business and closed its doors! Trust, but verify - and she was right - so we returned and placed our order. Not being in any rush, the delivery date of early September was fine with us. My husband is “that guy,” he doesn’t let grass grow beneath his feet - so we reserved a truck for the second week in September to pickup and drive our new furniture to our Florida home. Cancelled that truck and made a reservation for the following weekend. Cancelled and made a THIRD reservation as it was now the END of September and seemed crazy that our furniture was still not ready! Mr. “guy” was totally ready to cancel our order, but JACKIE did a YEOMAN’S job “working the deal” with the Tropitone manufacturer to get our furniture delivered. GO FIGURE - COVID was the reason given that the fluffy fill for our cushions was insufficient and all our pieces weren’t ready. Turns out the actual Tropitone factory was in the SAME town as our Florida home - and JACKIE was able to get us special permission to pick up whatever furniture/cushions we could get on our end of September trip! YEAH! Well - yeah until we arrived at the Factory and found the furniture had been SHIPPED TO the store in VIRGINIA! Are you kidding?! (And if Mr. “guy” HAD been ready to cancel - you can imagine what he said then) At this point, SCOTT, the Tropitone Sales Manager, stepped in as well - no doubt thanks to JACKIE contacting him and explaining all that had been going on - and they arranged for our furniture to be return-shipped *back* to Florida. Of *course* it was due to arrive after we left - but we have amazing neighbors who agreed to facilitate and take delivery. I had a call (just as we were boarding the plane) to call back and arrange the actual delivery - but when I called back, NO ANSWER! I tried the 2 numbers I had 6 (SIX) times - and finally a LOVELY lady from SOUTH CAROLINA answered! She relayed that she had *literally* just received an email that the Florida location had lost all power - no phones, no computers! She gave me 2 email addresses, and I sent emails asking them to reach back out to me once they had our delivery scheduled for either of the 2 days our neighbor would be available. Yes, they did! LORI - of Old Dominion Freight facilitated and the delivery was set for this afternoon!!! I communicated with our neighbor and all was well ~ True to form - of course that didn’t go quite as planned - and the delivery truck driver called that he was 30 minutes away and would be there THIS MORNING (vs this afternoon). Our neighbor was home - and we now have our lovely Tropitone patio furniture set! I’ll have to be patient and wait ’til our next visit to try it out - but WHAT A TEAM EFFORT this has been! Many kudos and thanks to JACKIE (of Offenbachers Home Escapes), SCOTT (of Tropitone), and LORI of Old Dominion Freight, our neighbor, Kris - and to the delivery truck driver and many others whose names I don’t have!
By M.Santos