Ambrose A.
Yelp
My experience was one of dualities. This place is huge and full of incredibility beautiful antiques and stone wares and carpets. And on the other side of the coin they are completely and totally devoid of customer service and basic human curtesy.
I was looking for an antique door to make a new desk out of while I have my wife's Grand Fathers desk refinished that I use in my office. I gave myself a budget of $7,000 for the project, and was going to have my business partner's furniture factory do the assembly. After walking around in a daze at all the thousands of doors and panels to choose I was ready to talk price. This is where my experience went from great to horrible. First they don't put prices or ranges on anything, so I had to find an employee. After looking around for 10 minutes I found someone who would make eye contact with me and asked to see a sales associate, the gentleman said he could help. I said I was interested in a few doors and wanted to talk price and I started to describe about where the pieces where when I was cut short. "If they have a border they are $1500 - $2500" He said cutting me off. I can remember a time that that would have sent me running out of the store in horror, so I understand not wanting to take time to pitch the wares to someone that could not afford it, so I'll forgive a bit of gruffness as a salesman try's to gauge if I can afford it.
I said the price is not a problem and I would like to know the prices of the actual doors I want. I have the uncanny ability to pick the most expensive piece around so I figured that the doors I liked are not going to be in the low price range. We head over to where the doors are I point out the three doors I am interested in. The salesman still seemingly disinterested, refused to even walk within 30 feet of the door shouted "those are over $3500", to which I asked for an exact price per door. He quickly said that he thinks they are $3699. I then said that's not a problem.
I then must have committed a moral sin, I asked to take a picture of the door, to message my business partner to make sure he thought he could work with the door, and to see if I needed to get legs for the desk or trim (they have both) and to get the shipping address of the factory. "There is ZERO photography permitted!!!! NO EXCEPTIONS!!!!"
Now I try to respect business owners rules, I own my own software company and I know how annoying freeloaders can be, and I can see how with as many wonderfully unique pieces laying around how they could get tired of people just wanting to take pictures and never buying anything. But if I am going to drop close to $4,000 on something and ship it from NM to NC I am going to make sure it's going to work and I have all the pieces I need. So I stated that I simply wanted to make sure that my partner in North Carolina owned a furniture factory called Kellex seating and I wanted to make sure I didn't need to look for anything else that I could find there and the only way I could do that was to ask him and a picture was worth a thousand words, and if I didn't buy the door I would be happy to let him delete it from my phone. "No photographs are allowed but I will show you that it can be done" he said rather rudely and pointed to a door that had been stacked on some boxes to make a crude bench. At this point there was no reason to continue talking, it was clear they had no interest at all in providing even the slightest shred of customer service.
All in all it's clear the reason they have around acre of doors as they are really good at buying them, but they totally fail at selling them.
In the end I spent the money on a fossilized stingray which is going to be placed under a glass frame for my desk. And to the salesman who helped me at Seret & Sons, Tracey from touchstone gallery says "thanks for the commission!"