How I Got Free Stuff From Value City

Since everyone keeps asking me this, here is THE VALUE CITY STORY.

I had put a NEW COUCH on "layaway" at Value City Furniture a few months ago. In fact, it was Valentine's Day, because that was the only way I could get Brian to agree to go furniture shopping. We finally found exactly what I wanted - dark brown, with a chaise and DEEP. As Brian said, VCF has a certain trashiness to it, but whatever. I guess I'm just picky about furniture.

Finally, we close on the house and can get the couch. Considering our friend DJ has a minivan, it seemed ridiculous to pay $80+ and have one of us take a day off work to have it delivered. So they go and pick it up in the van. It takes two trips because they have it wrapped stupidly, but whatever, it gives them something to do while I am painting anyway.

Now the moment I have been waiting for for months, getting to actually USE this million dollar couch. My first brand new, picked by me "adult" furniture. We take all the wrapping off and SURPRISE! It requires assembly. Annoying, but not a big deal, right? Obviously we can screw the feet onto the couch. We shouldn't have to, but it can't be that bad.

WRONG. Big surprise, whatever the bottom of the couch is made of is pretty crappy. You can tell by looking at it. There's probably some directions, right? There is a photocopied piece of paper with about one and a half sentences of translated Chinese and a faded picture with an arrow. We get the feet on enough to where you can't tell there is something wrong with it, but it of course comes with the price of that "putting furniture together" huffy mood that couples get into when they try to build something together.

Having learned the merits of bullying things out of businesses from Valerie, I decide to call Value City the next day to tell them of our troubles. The manager tells me this is why they offer delivery service, because "some people have more troubles than others". I ask him if he is telling me that I am incapable of screwing some screws into the bottom of the couch and he says no. I say it must be the couch then, and he says no. This goes back and forth for awhile, while I am sitting outside of Sheetz, dying to go inside to get food, so naturally I am getting more annoyed. He offers to send a TECHNICIAN, "free of charge", to come look at it. Yeah, I want to take time off work for someone to come out and look at a thing we already did. Then he offers me a $25 gift card. WHAT IS $25 GOING TO DO FOR ME AT A FURNITURE STORE. At this point I am getting desperate and more hungry. I go for the "I'm going to tell everyone I know about this", as a last ditch attempt before just hanging up on him. Suddenly I have a $100 gift card. I picked it up and used it at another VCF.