Ethan Allen Customer Service - The Last Defense?

Ah, a new line of defense by the Ethan Allen store in Mountain View, CA ... Customer Service!

It appears that the phrase “as is” is being used by Ethan Allen to abdicate any responsibility for selling a usable product. When we purchased the product, we made it very clear to the Ethan Allen sales person that we planned to actually use the ottoman; that we planned to put the ottoman in our family room, place books and newspapers and magazines on it, and even have people sit on it. At no time during that discussion did the Ethan Allen sales person say that the ottoman might break in those situations. If she had, we would have never bought the product. Again, we made it very clear that we planned on actually using the ottoman. We did not plan to put it in a corner of the room so that folks could just admire it.

When we were sold the product, we were told that the product was “as is” and that the “as is” referred to normal blemishes, discoloring, tears, stains and other cosmetic imperfections that occur to a floor model. We accepted that the “as is” condition would cover the above types of floor model-related imperfections. We were never told that the “as is” condition also covered the fact that the ottoman would break, or likely was already broken. In fact, because the Ethan Allen sales person clearly stated that the ottoman was a floor model, we had ever right to expect that the product would perform as we needed it to perform – that someone could actually sit on it. But instead, we were sold a product that broke the first time someone sat on it in our family room, or was already broken when it was sold to us.

This whole ordeal raises the question whether the Ethan Allen sales person knowingly either sold us something other than a floor model or knowingly sold us a broken product in order to get it out of the store. We are now very concerned that the Ethan Allen sales person knowingly mis-represented the status or condition of said ottoman.

The sad thing about this entire process is that we just want our money back. We're not suing for damages or for the Ethan Allen sales person mis-representing the product. All we want is our money back. And that's what we stated when we called the day after buying the product.

Sigh... Oh well, watch this space for the continued adventures of trying to deal with Ethan Allen, a once proud brand that has to resort to this sort of customer treatment.