After a decade of forced retirement, I've decided to replace much of the furniture in my apartment. For example, my sofa is worn out and will be replaced soon. I have three chests in the bedroom that I plan to replace with two new ones sometime in the next couple of years, and I will likely replace the entertainment center, coffee table and end tables in the living room as well.
But to do this, I must figure out how to get rid of the bulky furniture. I have several options for getting rid of the sofa, and none of them are that great, as they will cost me money. The coffee and end tables can be taken apart for disposal. Even the chests in the bedroom can be slid down the stairs and "walked" to the dumpster area for bulk pick up. But the entertainment center poses a problem. It weighs 450 pounds when empty. and it took 3 people to get it into my apartment. I will need help getting it out of the apartment, and will likely need to pay a good price to remove it.
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With the above being said, there is another headache I have to deal with - annoying salespeople. For the most part, I've found people working at furniture stores as of late to be too close to used car salesmen for comfort. All of them tend to hover around, not giving the customer enough breathing room to examine the merchandise in peace. If you give them ANY information, they will being up the various financing terms, as well as how good their delivery process is. But, not all of them know their product well, as was the case of one sales person we met about a month ago.
On a hot day in July, we decided to cross the river and look at some furniture. Entering the store, we met a fellow from the Indian subcontinent who proceeded to follow us around the store, wherever we wanted to browse. Shortly after we mentioned what we were looking for, but after a few minutes of browsing, he tried to find an opening to sell us a mattress. (I need a new one too, but I'm planning on going to Saatva for one designed for fat people like me. But I digress.) When we sat on an expensive leather covered sofa, he extolled the virtues of the sofa and its construction, not knowing that we knew of another sofa made by the same people with the same frame. He stated that this was the only one of its kind, not knowing that we knew otherwise. He was very insistent in trying to make a sale that day, but I brushed him off. But this wasn't the end of him.
About a week later, I got a call from the salesman. He sounded upset that I didn't call him back to finalize a sale. Luckily, the answering machine took the call. In a later conversation with RQS, I stated why he wasn't going to get the sale. First, all my credit cards are in Mario's name and I met this man in Marian mode. But, more important, was the fact that he didn't know his merchandise well enough. We had met a second salesman, this time with me in Mario mode, and he knew his stuff. This is the person who will get the sale when I'm ready to drop the hammer. Again, I digress. This morning, the first salesman woke us up, hoping that we'd answer the land line to set a date for another appointment to close the deal. Obviously, this won't happen anytime soon....
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The question remains...
How will I end up getting rid of the old sofa?
