Brand Review: TEAK LAB
When you purchase something from a certain business, you expect a certain accountability from the said brand and when these expectations are not met with, you are not just disappointed, you want to prevent such a horrible experience for anyone choosing to associate with this brand in the future. So here I am sharing my experience of ordering a Dining Table set from Teak Lab. -
I was looking for a compact dining table and chairs for a refurbishing project I was working on and found a sleek design that fit the requirements on the Teak Lab website. So I requested a call back from them to discuss customisation options. The response was not exactly prompt. I received a call from someone in two days and after a short discussion over a few emails, I placed the order on 11 July 2020. I transferred the full amount to the bank account details shared and was assured I will receive the delivery within the next 25 days. I had specifically requested for an accurate date of delivery based on the current lockdown situation since my client had decided to sell off their existing dining table and chairs before the new one arrived so as to avoid space constraints in their compact apartment. Around the end of July, after repeated entreaties for updates, Teak Lab let me know that there is a lockdown in Bhopal, so there will be a delay in delivery by 5 days. At the end of these 5 days, I enquired again only to find that they had not yet shipped the order. After giving me insufficient information or ignoring my calls for a few days, I was finally told the delivery will happen in the next 7 days, that is, by around 25th of August.
The said date passed by and still there was no delivery and as per their assurance the client had sold off their old dining table. By the beginning of September they had given me the excuse of their transport vehicle breaking down thrice. They even promised to refund 10% of my payment. Being at the end of my wits, I requested for their owner’s contact information. I was given a Mr. Aaron’s number who claimed to be the owner, but was equally unprofessional claiming lack of any relevant information on the order or taking any initiative in helping me.
After waiting till 15th September by which Mr. Aaron had promised to deliver the order, I decided to cancel it and asked for a refund. Since then both Mr. Aaron and Mr. Aristo who I had been in touch with earlier started ignoring my calls whenever I called for an update. It has been a harrowing experience since then, having to get other people call and visit their office just to get an update. They continued to behave in their unprofessional ways and give their lame excuses. It was as if the concept of being accountable to a customer who has paid for a product was completely lost on them and giving an update on the status of the order or any other part of the process was them doing us a favor.
The products were finally delivered on 27 September 2020. I wish I could say it was a seamless process. The delivery guys (one of them who was the driver of the transportation truck) were nothing but rude. They called to deliver around 8 PM and notified us that their truck won’t turn into the residential colony road. Instead of finding a solution, we were informed by the local store outside which they had parked, that they had reached at least an hour earlier and had been lounging around. We had to make arrangements for a smaller transport vehicle after 8pm on a Sunday because the company with whom we placed the order couldn't be bothered to do any of it themselves. If it had ended there, it would have been a miracle. The delivery guys made a ruckus over the unloading not being part of their job. They claimed that their duty was just to drive up to the delivery address alone, which let me point out, they did not. With the help of the kind truck driver who had agreed to take this up so late at night and some passers by, we managed to unload the products and get it to site. No thanks to Teak Lab!
