A few weeks back our dog Jake decided to rip into some cushions on our patio furniture. They were too far gone by the time we noticed. As a result, we’ve been looking for new chaise lounge cushions. You’d think they’d be easier to find, but everything has been fairly expensive or not the right size.

We thought our prayers were answered when my wife spotted this Pottery Barn sale on Chaise Lounge Cushions. Instead of costing $250 a cushion, we could buy them for $50… what a deal, right? Sadly, there was a $100 “delivery surcharge” and $17 for shipping and processing. I really don’t understand how there’s shipping and delivery charges, but we factored it into the overall price and it was still a decent deal considering the quality.

We got the cushions and they were twice as wide as our chairs. My wife exclaimed, “This isn’t what I ordered!” So we went back to the website to see what wrong. In case the sale changes with the previous link, here’s an image (click for larger):

I’ll start off by saying that there’s enough information here to pin it on us. It does say “Double Chaise Cushion: 53″ wide x 86″ long x 2.5″ high” in the overview box. However, if you missed this piece of information, as we did, I can see where the confusion comes in.

The picture is of the single, which isn’t even available for purchase. It would be nice if they removed all references to the single when there aren’t any there. Also, we saw the “Double Stripes/Prints/Solids with Piping Chaise Cushion” and thought it meant “Double Stripes” as in the pattern. I would have expected to see a comma between Double and Stripes – or better yet use a word that is unambiguous like “two person.” Best of all would be to have two separate pages for the separate sizes, so there is no chance of confusion.

If you click in the Product Info box, the dimensions are only presented for the single size:

It does not mention that it’s a “single” or “double” or that another size other than the one we wanted exists. Shouldn’t the Product Info box be accurate for the product? If it isn’t, shouldn’t this entitle us to a refund?

There’s also this interesting return policy in the shipping information:

It clearly says that the item is final-sale and can’t be returned in italics, but the return policy on the page seems to differ. Not shown in the image is the part of the return policy that also says, “We also cannot accept returns of final-sale items which are identified by a price which ends in .99.” I realize that they probably put the same Shipping Info box on all items, but why not tailor it like they do the Product Info?

I’m really on the fence on this one. We clearly could have avoided this situation by being more careful. At the same time, Pottery Barn could have done about 5 or 6 things to have prevented the situation as well.

[Update: I must have reached the right person when I called just now, because they authorized curbside pick-up with almost no questions asked. I didn’t even have to point out the Product Info box inconsistency, though I did because they should update the website.]