Did I get blown off by Crate and Barrel?

We bought a very expensive piece of furniture from C&B about 4 years ago - it's the Taka trunk, they no longer make it. We had ordered it at the Americana store in Manhasset and had it delivered.

The other night, we saw that there is a HUGE crack going right across the front. This is a solid wood piece of furniture that basically just sits in our living room. There is no reason it should have cracked like it did.

I called up C&B customer service directly yesterday afternoon and they said that they couldn't help me, but that I would have to go through the Manhasset store where we ordered it from.

What was that about? Why would an individual store help me with a quality issue in lieu of the actual corporate customer service?

Has anyone experienced this before?

Re: Did I get blown off by Crate and Barrel?

We had the same situation with Bassett. A piece of furniture broke so I called the customer service number and they said I had to call the store I ordered it from and they would deal with it. They said they would have all the records of our sale and they would know exactly what we bought. Well, we called the store and yes, they are helping us but I still have to dig out my records because they have no idea what we bought.