Buying Furniture Online

A lot of people are skeptical about purchasing furniture online.  There is a level of experience and ambience of physically going to a store and sitting on a chair or sofa to see how it feels on your bottom or running your fingers across a dining room table before you buy it.  Knocking on a cabinet or shelf to see if the wood is solid is obviously not something you can achieve by clicking on a picture.

Although you lose the option to sit, lay, bounce, knock and touch when shopping online, there are benefits to purchasing furniture online.  The most obvious is saving time.  I have known people who have purchased or built homes and have literally spent months shopping to furnish their home.  They have driven hundreds of miles away and spent hours upon hours trying to find pieces to fit their taste and budgets.  The stressful scavenger hunt that they created made for an extremely unpleasant experience.

Eventually after weeks and months of searching, they found what they were looking for, but then another load of stress was dumped upon them…how to get the furniture from point A to point B.  The delivery costs to have furniture delivered from a store two hours away was enough to make any saint curse and then having to contend with the stores that didn’t provide delivery service.  You can only imagine.

The stresses mentioned above could have all been avoided with just a click.  There are an endless amount stores that sell furniture online which in turn makes it possible to shop in the comfort of your own home and compare prices to make sure you’re getting the best deal.  That brings us to the second benefit, saving money.  Going to a big box retail store, you can expect to pay at least $1,000 for a new dining room set.  On top of that you’re more than likely going to pay a hefty delivery fee.

You can find that same quality dining room set online for a fraction of the price even with shipping charges included.  For example, I priced a quality 5 piece granite topped dining room set online the other day at Bargain Outfitters.  The regular price of this set was $1,185 shipped (excluding taxes).  This item is now on sale and to have it shipped to my door would cost me only $359.97.  That is a savings of $825.03!  Not only was this item on sale, but this store had a shipping coupon that I applied.

I also priced decorative living room chairs and found one at Overstock.  It’s a beautiful, soft retro chair with solid hardwood frame and lots of cushion to make it comfortable to sit on.  The regular price of this chair is $650.00, but they are selling it for $179.95 and shipping (for a limited time)…you might want to sit down for this…is only $1.00!  If you missed this shipping special that’s okay because this store offers shipping for under $3.00 regardless of the size or weight of an order.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to shopping for furniture online.  Retailers know that the percentage of people who shop online is growing and they are making it easier to shop and purchase large items.  More and more stores are offering extensive view options for furniture items giving you the option to see even the tiniest detail like the grain of wood or the stitching of a cushion.  If you are still in doubt, customer service is always a phone call away to give you additional product details.

With this increase of online furniture shopping, stores are also offering frequent shipping discounts and some, if you hit it just right, will give you free white glove delivery.  This means that they will bring the furniture into your house, place it in the room in which it belongs, unpack it and haul away the packing material for you.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  Personally, I have bought many pieces of furniture online and, over the past few years, have saved thousands of dollars.

Yes, by doing this I have sacrificed that first hand experience and ambience of touching, knocking and bouncing before I buy, however, the money I have saved far outweighs that tiny sacrifice.  I can bounce, sit, knock and run my fingers across whatever it is I buy after it gets delivered to my house.   My days of visiting furniture stores and paging through ads are over.  Ahh…the ease of online shopping.