One Moment, Please… I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again

By Jason Sethre

Publisher

Fillmore County Journal

jason@fillmorecountyjournal.com

Over the past year, we decided we had finally arrived at a point in our lives when we could upgrade from our living room furniture to something we had always wanted.

When our children were little, we stopped buying new anything (vehicles or furniture, in particular), because it was going to endure the unexpected.

If you’ve ever changed a diaper in the back of a mini-van while standing alongside the shoulder of a highway, you know what I mean.

If you’ve ever thought that you could survive in that same mini-van stranded out in the middle of nowhere for 17 days, because you knew there was an untapped food source of fruit snacks and Goldfish crackers underneath the second row of seats, you know what I mean.

If you’ve ever discovered your child’s sippy cup full of two-week-old juice or curdled milk somewhere in your house, and you only found it because you followed the smell of something vile, you know what I mean.

Our children are in their teenage years, so we are now past the point of baby-proofing our home.  We can relax a bit, and know that the remote control to the TV will not disappear for five days at a time, only to be discovered in a toy box.

So, we decided to go to Drury’s Furniture in Fountain, Minn.  We picked out some furniture, and it was during a time when the supply chain was at its worst.  But, we were fine with waiting.

When the furniture arrived, we were offered a warranty option for anything that could ever happen to the furniture.  Not exclusively a factory defect or malfunction.  Anything.  But, we opted to pass on it at that time, as we were thinking, “What could go wrong?”  Nothing.  Right?

Well, about eight months went by, and we didn’t realize the loveseat with a motorized seat control had been pushing into the wall directly behind it.  We discovered it one day, and of course we were disappointed in ourselves for not noticing this earlier.  It had been happening over and over for months, so the top corner fabric of the loveseat was torn and there was a decent-sized hole in the drywall.  The drywall was an easy fix.  But we weren’t sure about the loveseat situation.

We knew we hadn’t purchased a special warranty for circumstances in which we had damaged the furniture ourselves.  Any repair would be at our expense.

I called Drury’s Furniture, and spoke with one of the owners, Mike Drury.  He asked if he could come to our home and look at the loveseat.  After checking it out, he thought he could repair it for us.  Several days later, our loveseat was back to as good as new, just like the day it was delivered to home by the Drury’s Furniture movers.

When you purchase these big ticket items from a local family-owned business, you are not just buying a product.  Your investment comes with a sense of ownership.  They want your repeat business.  They want you to share a good word-of-mouth experience with your family and friends.

If you buy these big ticket items online or from some big chain in the big city, good luck.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  Shop local, and you’ll be glad you did.