Dean writes:

My wife and I ordered a large rug from Overstock.com on 10/31/05 and received it a week later. The rug was very nice, but not the color we ordered. We requested an exchange for the right color, but were told that due to “warehouse issues” they could not make an exchange, but they would give a refund once the rug was received and we could then purchase the correct rug. Since that time, we have spent over two months attempting to return the rug and receive a refund.

The rug really tied the room together, after the jump.

We had to talk to a new representative each time we called (they have refused to give us a single contact) and everyone gave a different runaround with a common theme: “It’s in process and someone will contact you in two to four days.” We ended up calling them for a status after five or six since they never got back to us on their own. We had also been told several times that the return window has been exceeded, even though the long time frame has been Overstock’s fault. They’d conceed, but only after putting us on hold another quarter hour.

UPS finally picked the rug up on 12/23/05, almost seven weeks after our first return request. We were overjoyed. We waited two weeks for our refund to process before contacting Overstock. The representative said they would “check into it” and contact us within two to four business days. Sounds really familiar.

A day later we came home to find the rug back on our porch. A UPS label slapped on it said it “exceeded length requirements.” We immediately contacted Overstock and told them what we found. We were put on hold for 17 minutes, just to have the rep come back and tell us it “exceeded length requirements.” Well, duh.

He told us we would need to restart the process (!) and Overstock would find another carrier to return the rug. An email received at this point apologized for “any incontinence this may have caused.” Not a joke.

It has been over a week since then, and we have not heard anything back. The BBB have been contacted, and now we must get in touch with our credit card company.

My wife has requested that her complaint reach the CEO. I made her watch the Star Wars prequels to bone up before he calls.

As of today, Overstock has held our money hostage for exactly seventy days, and the rug still sits propped up in a corner of our foyer. If we had a dog, we’d train him to pee on it.

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