Decalogue of furniture purchase via the Internet

For two decades, sales of furniture via the Internet have been increasing by a few to even a dozen (since the covid-19 pandemic) percent annually compared to traditional forms of trade. The times have come when the lack of your own website as well as sales via commercial and social portals practically condemns every furniture manufacturer or dealer to bankruptcy.

Do you still remember the times when furniture was bought in showrooms? Admittedly, some buyers still practice the time-consuming and costly form of acquiring them in the traditional way, traveling from showroom to showroom where a lot of time is spent choosing preferred manufacturers and sellers, analyzing offers, negotiating prices and finally making a purchase. If we want to see and touch as many pieces of furniture as possible and / or the more we are hesitant, the more time it costs us, of course, and the more we burden the budget due to the necessity to travel to the points of sale. So what makes the online trade inexorably displace the traditional sale of furniture? First of all: the inexhaustible multitude and variety of the offered assortment in one place. Secondly: saving time, so precious for all of us, in combination with any amount and time of day or night that we intend to devote to searching for the furniture of our dreams. Third: price attractiveness, discounts, promotions – e.g. free delivery, bringing or assembly of furniture. So, whether it suits us or not, on-line shopping has become common and in the near future probably the only way to obtain the furniture industry products that interest us. However, this does not mean that online shopping does not involve any risk and most of us already know it. The same applies to trade in the furniture market. A customer who does not have the opportunity to “live” see, touch or sit on a piece of furniture, after purchasing and receiving a parcel from a courier or supplier, is sometimes disappointed – most often with the quality of the product. According to the letter of the law, we have the option of resigning from the purchase within 14 days, but it is known that this involves the need to take certain actions that will take a lot of time and sometimes we will have to incur additional costs … To reduce the risk of post-purchase dissonance to a minimum, let’s try follow the rules below:

1. Rush – enemy number 1 of the buyer. According to the old adage “suddenly is good for the devil”, decisions taken too hastily rarely turn out to be right, so let’s try to avoid haste at all costs. We have to be careful about the wide range of sales tricks used, unfortunately, quite often by sellers, encouraging us to make a decision to buy “now, here and now”. Promotions that are supposed to end in a moment, price discounts as part of the “offer of the day”, additional bonuses such as a reduction on the so-called “Abandoned baskets”, freebies (usually absolutely unnecessary to us) added to the purchased products, etc. It should be emphasized that most of these great offers are no longer relevant if we do not use them immediately and at the end of the current day at the latest. Experienced and “talented” in persuading such allegedly attractive offers, sellers can make it very difficult for us not to “get hot” on the product they offer. Unfortunately, we do not notice then that it is not exactly the piece of furniture that we intended to purchase, we do not remember to ask important questions or forget about the need to obtain a reply to those already asked. Rarely does anyone scrupulously analyze the offer, the details are of little importance to us (and it is quite the opposite) and what we cannot understand, we explain ourselves in our own way, without trying to find out how things are in reality … disappointments and resulting in principle from our fault, because we did not look closely enough at the offer or were led astray by the calculated seller.
2. Are you sure this is what you need? Let’s define our real needs related to the purchase – let’s try to do it before browsing the offers. A trained salesperson will always try to awaken in us new needs that we have not realized so far and which are usually only suggested to us to arouse the greatest interest in his offer. It comes to a situation where we suddenly “discover” that we cannot live without something that we did not realize existed! Having a list of needs directly related to the furniture sought (type, application, dimensions), it will be much easier for us to avoid the pitfalls set by sellers who are not always fair to us. Knowing what we expect, we can choose a few proposals that best suit our needs and, after reflection, choose the right one.
3. Think again – thinking doesn’t hurt and costs nothing. Let’s analyze the selected offers in detail – value for money, usefulness, availability of various options – not only in terms of size and color. Having a separate bedroom in the apartment and looking for a sofa for the living room, on which we will mainly receive guests, wanting to rest for a moment from the hustle and bustle of the day or watch an interesting movie or program on TV, the sleeping function should not be a decisive factor in the purchase, because it is not basically we need this piece of furniture. If, however, we want to buy an upholstered corner for a room and we like frequent changes and rotations in interior furnishings, let it be important for us whether the furniture we are interested in can be mounted on the left and right side (then it is often referred to as “universal”). An important aspect is also the durability of the furniture, resulting from the quality of its workmanship. It does not always have to be a key nuance – we are aware that high quality almost never goes hand in hand with a sensational low price. Therefore, it is worth investing more if the budget allows it and the purchase is to serve us for many years. If, on the other hand, we assume that changing the furniture to a new one is not such a distant matter, it is worth considering offers with a lower price list.
4. Expectations and reality. It is necessary to verify the dimensions, appearance and color of the furniture. Remember that the photos posted on the web do not reflect their actual size and the real colors may differ significantly due to calibration of monitors or excessive color saturation in smartphones. It happens not so rarely that the customer is far from being satisfied because the piece of furniture turns out to be too small in relation to the interior in which it was placed – however, if someone, without checking the size, buys a wall unit for several hundred zlotys, expecting that it will fill the space in the living room with an area of ​​several dozen meters square meters, that is, he is to blame himself for the subsequent discomfort of such an acquisition. This can be counteracted by estimating the size of the furniture and knowing the dimensions of the room at the same time, or by using the services of an interior designer who will calculate everything for us, visualize and present favorable possibilities of space development. It is obvious that this, however, is associated with additional reaching for the wallet.
5. Analyze your budget against expectations. Usually our budget is clearly established or limited in this case. By browsing many offers on the Internet, we are able to determine the price level appropriate for a given group of goods that interests us. We will also receive additional help here from comparison websites. Thanks to these activities, we find out which of the offers have a suspiciously low or overstated price. Most people avoid choosing the cheapest and most expensive options. If we are interested in the cheapest offer, do not convict it in advance and try to analyze it carefully. This is because such a situation occurs when the manufacturer offers the product directly to us for sale, omitting the intermediaries. However, not everyone is aware that running a professional online store is associated with considerable costs, especially in terms of its operation in terms of IT, advertising and positioning. It is known that in practice all this has to be paid by the buyer, so the well-worn slogan that the low price is due to selling directly from the manufacturer is rarely an accurate justification. The reasons for the advantage of this offer will be rather exaggerated material savings or limiting the variety of available variants – with sufficiently high repeatability (large production series) and low costs of obtaining materials (which often directly correlates with low quality), the price list for the products can actually be surprisingly strong reduced.
6. Decision made – click and buy! But do not be overly zealous, before you click “Buy the product”, check the seller again and the opinions posted on the Internet by previous buyers, what is his credibility, what they think about the quality of the products offered, etc. to the company’s headquarters, checking its existence in the National Court Register or CEIDG. However, if we still have any doubts after these steps, let’s analyze the offers of other sellers or decide only to purchase on delivery.
7. The furniture has just arrived? Here, too, we strongly advise against acting impulsively and succumbing to requests from outside. Most suppliers – especially couriers – work on the basis of delivering packages or the entire furniture to the door of the house, immediate collection of the amount due (for cash on delivery) and even faster departure to the next customer. Of course, this procedure must be preceded by information from the seller on what day and more or less at what times the expected furniture will reach us, because usually it is the buyer’s responsibility to bring the parcels or the entire piece of furniture inside the house or apartment – so remember to order large-size furniture as e.g. a sofa or corner sofa, get help with bringing it in. Some companies offer the service of bringing home and even assembling furniture, but this, of course, means further costs, and usually quite considerable. If we move the furniture inside the apartment / house ourselves, we usually meet with a clause stating that the customer has the right to file a complaint for invisible at the time of delivery (hidden) defects or non-compliance with the order, after opening the packages, so of course after the supplier’s or courier’s visit . It must be admitted that de facto all self-respecting companies make sure that such a complaint is considered as quickly as possible, usually with a positive effect and without additional questions or difficulties on the part of the seller. However, if we paid the driver without seeing the parcels (e.g. we asked to collect them and pay a neighbor because we were at work), submitting a free complaint for damage to the packaging (and especially the furniture itself) visible from the outside after the departure of the driver delivering them will be in principle impossible!
8. Proper use of the furniture. Let’s use and enjoy the furniture of our dreams, but always in accordance with their intended use and warranty conditions. For furniture purchased online, we have the right to resign from the purchase within 14 days (when we know immediately that it will not meet our expectations and we have not used it yet) as well as a 24-month warranty for the seller, which is not included in any other provisions. can cancel.
9. Referring the seller to other people. Do you already know that your purchase is satisfactory? The furniture is what you expected, good quality and makes the household members and other users happy? So let’s help both a reliable seller and other potential buyers by issuing a positive opinion – it can be an ordinary “like”, although your subjective reviews, such with a short but concise description, are especially valuable. We should remember, however, that choosing only the option of using the offer of recognized companies that have been operating for years and selling a lot of products every day is, of course, rational and the safest, but guided only by such reasons, we do not give a chance for newly established or recently operating companies, from which “a breath of fresh air” brings a lot to the furniture market, it approaches the customer and sales via the Internet in a professional manner.
10. Are you looking for and looking for but still can’t find an interesting offer? So if you need the highest quality, original and beautiful upholstered furniture, e.g. chairs, armchairs or sofas, please visit www.domartstyl.com – you will surely find them at this address and your purchase will be satisfying and will bring a lot of joy for many years to come. 