Williams Sonoma Arvostelua 

Used Williams and Sonoma for my wedding registry it is a disaster. They do not let you know when someone buys you something and then they shipped gifts to the wrong place and after many calls with customer service they can’t even figure out how that happened but told us there is nothing they can do even though it was likely there computer system that glitched so now I have to lie to some of my guests and tell them I got the gifts when really they have been lost

Dear Laura J. Alber,
I am hopeful that one of these email addresses actually gets to you and if not that someone actually makes certain this message gets forwarded directly to you.  
My name is Wayne Goldberg and we have a couple things in common.  First, Although I retired a number of years ago, I was also a CEO of a large publicly traded Company, so I completely understand the demands on your time.  We have also both appeared on Mad Money with Cramer.
The reason I am intruding on your time is to let you know that you have a couple real winners on your team at Williams-sonoma, North Park in Dallas.
Last week, I was in the NorthPark location and for the second time, I had the pleasure of being helped by David.  He is extremely pleasant, helpful and service focused.
As Paul Harvey used to say; "and now the rest of the story"
After purchasing a $4,000 Jura coffee maker, I got home only to learn that a very small, but important part was missing.  I first called Jura support and after being on the phone with service for an hour walking through all of the packaging and doing a video call, the gentleman on the phone determined that the Filter casing tube (cover) was indeed missing.  He advised me that he had located the part and was ordering one to be sent to me.  I told him I had specifically purchased the machine because I had guests coming for the weekend and I promised to have their favorite coffee, so unless he could get the part sent to me overnight, I was just going to return the machine and order it on Amazon, because I could get it the next day.  
Before taking the time to repackage the machine and return it, I decided to call the store.  This is where Perry P. Tobin (spelling?) went to work and saved, not only a sale, but a customer; because to say the least I was extremely frustrated.  
Again, I had already decided that if I had to go back to the store or return the coffee maker, I was just going to completely return it and buy it elsewhere and I would likely no longer shop at William-sonoma.  Yet, Perry saved the day by telling me she had several other units and not only would she be happy to take one of the caps out of one of the other units, she would personally have it delivered to me and leave it with the concierge in the building where I live.  I went to dinner and sure enough when I returned from dinner Thursday evening, the concierge had the items that Perry had personally delivered, as promised.  
Perry has a hospitality heart and went out of her way to solve the issue without putting the burden on the customer.  
From one CEO to another, I want you to know that Perry is a problem solver, a great ambassador for your brands and she not only saved this sale, she understands the "Life Time" value of a customer.
Please thank David and it is my hope that you use this opportunity to properly recognize Perry for going above and beyond and making a significant difference.  
You can also feel free to use this message as training or in any way of your choosing.  I will also  be happy to post it publicly.
Yours in Hospitality, 
Wayne Goldberg
Former President and CEO
La Quinta Corporation
La Quinta Inns and Suites
LQ Management, LLC.

I ordered WS's electric pepper grinder thinking it would be a better bet than other brands. It's completely non-functiona. for many reasons and NOT RETURNABLE! Why this should be I can't imagine-- except that (As many others have noted), it's extremely tricky to take apart for the first charging (necessary to remove the pull tab) and to put back together. Once I'd found other recipients' (NOT WS's, package and so-called manual contain nothing but hype and "don't put in dishwasher") instructions an tips and gotten my mill working I found that the supposed grind adjustment produces the same combination of dust and big chunks of pepper no matter how it's adjusted, also as many others noted.

I just wish I'd found this site before I had anything to do with Williams Sonoma!

Purchased two sets of kitchen towels. After washing, three of eight are unraveling around the edges. $58 for junk. I have 25 year old towels from Williams Sonoma that are in better shape than these. The drive is too long to make a return worth it. They have lost my business.

After I red all people reviews and comments, I realized that my issue with WS is just minor and my experience was not that bad as it seems to me before! I love WS and I will keep shopping but will never ever order online or ask for delivery service from any of WS stores BP, WE & WS home or kitchen. I’ll just shop in the store and make sure of my purchases then leave. Anything else that needs order and delivery will not be considered

I used to be a fan of Williams Sonoma. Then, September I bought a chef knife and everything changed. They keep pushing the order back and when I asked for a refund or a credit, they wouldn’t let me because they said it is a “vendor issue”. They keep lying about the estimated delivered date. So far, as of today I still haven’t gotten any updates. They are an untrustworthy and a terrible company for customers. Don’t buy any products from them.

first of all WS should not get 1 star. I bought a Jura E8 fully automatic espresso machine in June of 2024. They said they had plenty in stock. After I paid for it, she went in the back room and said they were out, would ship one to us. 3 weeks later it arrived. after un packing, setting it up, to see that water tank is cracked around the handle ($3000.00 coffee machine). The first call was to the store where i bought it. WS told me to contact Jura, contacted Jura, they said i had to work through WS. The Lies continued, I spoke with 2 WS customer service people with in 2 months of each other both stating that I would have to buy another one, when they recieve mine, they would credit back my account.
I agreed to that, but nothing happened, they said that I would get the new one 11/5 - 11/7 window. well today is 11/8/24. I make another call to WS, cs , spent 1.5 hrs on the phone, CRAZY right? they told me they could ship one to the store where I bought it,
I could go pick it up, Pay for it again, but I would have to ship it back for credit. you can't make this up! Told cs i was not going to do that, so after an hour and a half on the phone she charged my card again , going to ship it to my house, I will ship it back. this could have been resolved so easy by simply going back to the store, give them my cracked water tank, taken the one out of there demo machine, off I go. So Sad

Bought a Cuisinart coffee maker from them in December 2023. It started leaking a month ago, I contacted them and was told they don't service Cuisinart, that I should contact them directly, another feat that is proving to be difficult. Terrible customer service and warranty

I’m really disappointed that Williams Sonoma does not stand behind the quality of its products. Yesterday I went to their store at the Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo, CA, and paid $220 for a KitchenAid pasta press. I made dinner with it, and was surprised at the low quality of the device. Very plasticky, with a resulting poor texture in the pasta. Today I tried to return it, but the store refused, saying I used the product already. I’ve been a loyal customer over the years, but no longer. Sorry, WS, you lost my business.

Anne, the Plano, TX Store manager refused to sell a product she clearly had on the sales floor. I don’t understand why making a happy, satisfied customer is NOT her primary focus. I don’t know who hired her or who can rectify the situation, but customers are who pays her salary, so you’d think she’d be gracious & accommodating, instead she was snotty & rude.

Terrible. Last time I will order from them.

$35 rotary cheese grater is Dollar store quality. It took many weeks to get and it is not eligible for return. Cheap plastic build. Don't waste your money or time with this brand.

I just got off a 15 minute phone call to do a return. This is absolutely ridiculous. In addition the customer service agent Chad made it seem like I was an inconvenience.
I am the customer who received a broken product but I am an inconvenience!?!

After this experience I will not be purchasing from this company again. It’s too bad because I really like the products from this store.

This was terrible service!!

I used to LOVE Williams-Sonoma when it was Chuck Williams' company. It was stellar, and I started outfitting my kitchen in the 80s with copper cookware and high end, quality product.

As Chuck's influence on the company declined as he aged, it was taken over by people who really don't understand the business or their customers, and the quality product was still there, but also "filler" product Chuck would never have had in his store, and higher end expensive ridiculous product was added as well -- over the top stuff for the Kardashian wannabes, when Chuck had real quality products at prices only slightly more than elsewhere (because of the quality) and stuff you wouldn't find elsewhere.

Well all that's changed, and the company is now in some ways worse than Amazon.

The reason I'm writing today is I took the time to write a very thoughtful and fair review of the brand new Fellow Aiden coffee maker (which I returned after just nine days). It doesn't live up to its promise, and even my carafe didn't keep coffee hot for more than 20 minutes. I even put that I was looking forward to Fellow's NEXT iteration of the product as they improved it. It wasn't a slam piece at all. It's a product I WANTED to like. I thought it was going to be a Moccamaster killer. But it was overhyped and didn't do anything it tried well.

So what did Williams-Sonoma do after I took the time to write my review? They rejected it, and they didn't tell me on what grounds, and they didn't provide a way to contact them to complain.

What's this suggest to me? The reviews on their site are hyper-inflated to show off and bump up the score with any good reviews, while bad reviews are simply ignored, making all products on the site look pretty damned well reviewed (much better than they actually are), when in reality this isn't the case.

My impression is that Williams-Sonoma is now run by a bunch of corporate business men for whom Williams-Sonoma is just another source of income in a package of companies they deal with, and who don't understand the product, don't understand their customers, don't care, and are simply involved to get what they can out of the business.

It's sad, becuase for literally decades I would have given Williams-Sonoma five stars and more. They also bent over backward in the past if there was any kind of issue.

I'm not surprised to see they're losing their multilevel flagship store in San Francisco's Union Square. They deserve to. It's now Chuck's stuff that never wears out (nor goes out of style) and a bunch of tacky holiday stuff filler products and lower end goods and store brand low-quality filler products now.

While I've never personally had a bad experience in a Williams-Sonoma store (their staff has always been stellar to me), the people running the company (and being highly overpaid for it) need to find something else to do with their dubious "talents."

Williams-Sonoma was always my go to before Sur la Table, Crate & Barrel, and so on, but they lost me as a customer today when I realized how their rating system is rigged to show almost only good reviews and to reject bad reviews without cause or explanation.

UPDATE:

I have Mauviel copper cookware in my kitchen, but I recently put a small kitchen upstairs and am outfitting it with All-Clad D3 stainless in case I want to do induction. I only need about five pans, but when it came to the saute pan everywhere I checked said it wasn't available or had a ship date in February. Williams-Sonoma's site promised between January 22-24 so I ordered it through them.

There was NO MOVEMENT AT ALL, and on January 23 I got a notice saying it hadn't shipped and NOW wasn't expected util March 29, 2025 -- essentially nine weeks later.

I called to cancel the order and was told by Williams-Sonoma's phone person that they would "put in a request to cancel" with All-Clad, who was direct shipping the product (Williams-Sonoma never actually even had it in their possession to sell), but that cancellation wasn't guaranteed.

Really? Because All-Clad's site was very clear about not having in stock when I ordered, and Williams-Sonoma's site was the one that promised delivery that same month.

Anyway, it may or may not be canceled, but my life's on hold until these people figure out what they're doing, and I'm potentially having to wait two more months and one more week or longer for receipt of an item I've already tried to cancel, and that I will THEN have to return to Williams-Sonoma either by requesting a UPS sticker or driving it to their nearest store an hour away and returning it there.

If you want your life and money potentially tied up like this, by all means, order from Williams-Sonoma, who now seems to almost exclusively sell things they don't actually even have to sell.

Terrible customer service. I used them because I have in the past. I ordered a gift for my partners birthday, and I was sent the wrong item. When I called customer service they said I would need to ship the item I didn’t order back and they would have to receive the item before they could rightly send my coffee grinder. The gift didn’t get here in time for my partners birthday. Won’t be using Williams Sonoma again.

WS used to be my go-to place to shop for gifts. However, the customer service has slipped so much that I won't be going back. I paid a lot for shipping and received a damaged item. When I reported the issue, I was told I would need to return the item before receiving a replacement. This was a problem because the item was meant to be a last-minute gift, so I paid for expensive shipping. That's the policy the customer service representative told me. That's fine - there are plenty of other places to shop. Sorry!!!

I ordered an 8x10 rug online from Pottery Barn, which is owned by William Sonoma and paid an extra $279 for white glove delivery. I had to cancel the order before it was delivered. When the credit did not appear on my card, I called to inquire. I was told that I would have to pay the $279 delivery fee for the undelivered rug. Their reason: They had already shipped the rug to their delivery center. Yes, they charged me for their delivery to their delivery center. Did they use white-glove service! What pettiness! They ended by saying they would send a gift card for $279 instead of refunding my money. Since I will NEVER do business with William Sonoma or any of its subsidiaries, I will gift the card to charity - if it ever arrives.

If I could give zero starts I would.

I placed a order March 2023 for a significantly discounted product. Was charged almost immediately and received shipping notification a couple days later. Seemed pretty straight forward until I never received the product. I had since reached out to customer service (via email), only to find out they no longer monitor their emails (maybe don't advertise this then in the contact page)? No worries, I called their customer service instead. I was communicated that the product discount was due to price error and since the product has shipped, they are unable to issue me a refund or cancel the order. Instead, they indicated when the product arrives, I will be requested to pay for the intended price of the product (literally 10x the price I paid). At that point, I can also process a return and get a refund. I was irked at the time but understood that the product was shipped and could see their point. Paying the price difference felt extreme but I could also see reason. ANYWAYS, it's now been over 1 year and I have attempted to contact the company multiple times to get an update or resolution but alas, still unresolved. Anyways, I am sure in person/in-stores they may be wayyyy better to deal with. Just sharing my experience in that I wouldn't order from them ever again.

Purchased a gift hand washing set for a client, I have seen previous bottles, these were tiny, what I would equate to tester samples. Almost $75.00 for a "deluxe" hand washing set, only to discover nothing delux about it with leaky 3-4 ounce bottles. Very embarrassing!

Avoid this company at all costs! I ordered from them and received a completely incorrect order - a single $5 food item instead of the 7 expensive items I paid for. To add to this, they require me to waste my time and money returning this paltry item just to get a refund (if they even send me the refund). It took 1.5 hours to reach this absurd "solution". Their business practices are utterly shameful and exploitative - steer clear of them! Also unethical.