Over the past several years, I’ve gone through quite a few desk chairs and it’s been very frustrating. I know I don’t sit on them quite properly all the time, but surely they should be more durable than they are. I had a really good chair years ago that I passed on to Game Fanatic when one of his broke down. He used that for quite a long time before it needed to be replaced. Last year I bought two desk chairs from an office furniture store for both him and me. They seemed quite solid and durable and I had high hopes of using it for many years. Alas, it was less than a year later when Game Fanatic’s chair started failing and eventually became a danger to use. Game Fanatic’s weight is pretty high so I bought another chair and insisted they show me ones that could handle his weight. That chair has been doing okay so far. Meanwhile, a couple months ago, mine started to fail. I started to look at options on potential chairs but I have had enough of failing chairs to last a lifetime. After considerable research, I found that Buro made a chair that has a ten year warranty and I found it for sale through Staples here in Australia for essentially $300 delivered. There are other chairs even more highly touted but they cost quite a bit more and I really don’t want that sort of investment.

I put in my order online at Staples since there are no retail outlets for them here in Australia. The information when I ordered indicated 5-7 business days for delivery or something of that ilk. There was no indication at that point of a delay. I  waited for two weeks and called to find out that it had to be sent from over east and was due in the warehouse on that Friday and delivery should be made within the week after that. Again I waited and no chair showed up. I called again and the service representative promised to look into it and get back to me. I never heard back but I did discover two authorisation for the chair on our credit card bill. I waited until the end of the week and then sent an email since the phone calls hadn’t been effective. Surprisingly I did get a prompt response back on the email saying there had been delays from the source, blah, blah, blah. The current expected delivery at that point was 9th October. Fair enough but no contact had been made to me after my order aside from an email the next week asking how they did. Needless to say I gave scathing feedback and plan to send further feedback now that the transaction is completed. A day later I got a call asking if someone would be available for delivery on the Monday and it was organised to arrive Monday. And it did.

Some assembly was required of the chair but I managed most of it myself. The Scientist helped getting the casters onto the base and with a couple other screws but I managed the rest. Not that it was really that hard. It was already mostly assembled and an allen key was all that was needed for all but two screws on the back. The biggest difficulty was maneuvering the parts. It’s a very heavy chair and lifting parts to assemble was a bit tricky but do-able. Also there was the strong odor of chemicals when the box was opened from the chair. It’s mostly better now but not not totally gone. The chair itself is quite nice with adjustable seats, chair back, armrests and height. So far I am pretty happy with it and it’s rather nice to be able to roll the chair a bit when I need to move around.

As for Staples, I don’t know if I will ever order furniture from them again after the poor service on this product.