I have been fond of the quality of service at Haynes Furniture Store for many years now. My entire home is furnished with nothing but Haynes products. However, I now have a tainted image of Haynes as a company and look to doing business with another company because of my experience with a manager of their collections department.

I was past due on an account for furniture I financed and my daughter received a phone call on her mobile phone on 2/20/08 at 5:29p.m. EST from a female employee. My daughter kindly advised the representative that she does not pay the bill that I do and to contact me directly. My daughter also advised to not ever call her on her mobile phone again. The representative insisted on trying to retrieve payment from my daughter and my daughter again told her to contact me. That same day after a long day at work, I received three phone calls from that same representative. Earlier that week, I scheduled a post-dated payment over the phone with my check card. The payment never processed because the representative took down the expiration date incorrectly. This was not a case where I was refusing to pay the bill, the was simply an error that resulted in a past due bill. When I called the representative (I believe her name was Ms. Darden---out of the Virginia Beach call center) she was very rude and cold with me. She was upset because my daughter dismissed her on the attempt to collect from her and passed it off to me. I tried to tell her that she took down the wrong expiration date and she got frustrated and stated my daughter had an "attitude". At this point, I did not see how this was relevant to the issue regarding the erroneous expiration date. At this point told the rep that this has nothing to do with my daughter, but with the error of your department putting in credit card information and at that point she hung up on me. I was appalled that a collector would hang up on someone who is discussing payment and I called my daughter in frustration. My daughter called and asked to speak to a supervisor---

From Jamie:

I called to ask for a confirmation number for the payment to ensure it gets appropriately applied to the account. At that point the rep Travis placed me on hold to look up my account. He told me that Haynes does not offer confirmation numbers. I found this to be quite odd, since I have had experience in collections myself and always knew a confirmation number is given whenever a transaction takes place. I asked how can I ensure the payment gets applied once again and Travis placed me on hold. Travis came back to the line and stated that a supervisor requests to speak with you. A supervisor (and I use that term loosely) by the name of James came onto the line. I felt the need to express my disappointment in how the previous female representative handled the call with both myself and my mother. The supervisor right away without any hesitation was very defensive and stated my mother was wrong and that she was not hung up on that that she got her "story" mixed up. I was confused by what he meant, but was willing to hear him out. He stated there was a mixup in whom the rep was talking to. I asked him whom did she think she was speaking to and the supervisor bluntly said "I don't know". I told the supervisor that the female rep called me on my mobile phone and the supervisor placed me on hold. He came back to the line and simply stated "She just told me she never called your cell phone". I insisted that she did and boldly insisted that she did not. At this point I realized I was no longer dealing with a supervisor but an unprofessional, dense employee who could care less about customer service or trying to assist myself or my mother with this issue. The Haynes mobile number from which she dialed from is clearly in my cell phone: 757-213-0258 at 5:29p.m. EST on 2/20/08. To fabricate someone dialing your mobile phone is half-witted, idiotic, and just plain dumb. At this point we were going back and forth and the conversation was going nowhere. I finally gave up because I refuse to converse and argue with someone who's intellect and IQ level matches my shoe size. I would hope that the powers that be at Haynes Furniture Store become aware of the employees who are in "management" see how they are treating customers. I have worked in collections for over 5 years and there are tactics to collecting on past due accounts that include empathy, financial planning, and LISTENING. These were practices that were not used by the collections team at Haynes Furniture Store and I would expect such a reputable company would use better methods as well as hire more professionally grounded individuals to run their offices. I look forward to reconciling this remittance and using my services elsewhere when I purchase furniture in the near future. This is so unfortunate, because I have been a customer of Haynes for over 20 years and have loved their customer service in the showroom. However, their collections team has forced me to discontinue my business with this company.