Erica and her fiance are tired of waiting for a lamp to arrive from Lamps Plus, especially now that it’s been three months and the company hasn’t kept any of its promises so far. She wants to know what to do next.

Here’s a portion of the letter she snail-mailed to the company over a week ago, because she couldn’t find working email addresses and the company’s web form wasn’t working. She says she hasn’t received any response from them yet.

On December 28th, my fiancé and I came into your Lamps Plus store in San Diego in order to find a floor lamp for one of our rooms.

Not finding our lamp of choice in the showroom, an employee brought our attention to your Berkeley bent three-light lamp, which was available from another warehouse. We decided on it and made a down payment of $90. We were told by your employee to expect our lamp within six to eight weeks.

Four weeks passed during which we received no word from your store. I looked on my receipt and discovered that special orders could take from six to eight weeks for delivery, so I waited four more weeks before calling in with my query. I was told that my lamp would be delayed until March 15th.

I waited till then and once again called the store when I had not heard from them. I was greeted with a salesperson who had no clue what sort of order I was talking about. I was transfered to another sales rep who told me to call later the next day when the original employee who took the down payment would be in. I did so and talked to him, and he assured me the lamp was on its way, and that someone would call me when it arrives because they “wouldn’t want it taking up space in their storeroom either.”

Perhaps he was trying to be jovial, but with the abysmal service I have experienced while trying to purchase one floor lamp, I did not find the situation to be such a lighthearted affair. As I write this letter, it is exactly three months since we placed our order, and I am still without a lamp.

At this point, we just want a reasonable assurance that we will get our lamp soon or to have our down payment refunded. This is the first and last time my fiancé and I will shop here.

Erica, I hope you put that down payment on a credit card, because if so you should just initiate a charge back for non-receipt of goods. Since Lamps Plus doesn’t have any reliable way of contacting them for customer service, this may in fact be the best way of making sure someone takes notice.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.