The Duravit saga continues...

You've got to love companies that peddle innovative design but couldn't give two shits about customer service. That is, in a nutshell, the corporate philosophy for Duravit.

In case you haven't been keeping tabs on my progress, I will recap briefly: I placed a fairly large order of Duravit fixtures from a certain online e-tailer (tubs, vanities, toilets, etc.) back in January of 2006. Some of the items were in inventory; however, some of the items were special orders that would take between 12-16 weeks to fulfill. I wasn't thrilled about that, but I figured that this would not be holding anything up on the project.

Fast forward 8 months (of course it was late), and my order finally arrived. Or, more precisely, half of the order arrived. Where was the other half (of course, the half with all of the special order items)? To this day, the whereabouts are still unknown. Clearly the freight carrier was at fault, and a claim was filed against them. But in the meantime I had to decide whether or not to cut and run or to wait for these missing items to be "special-ordered" yet again and wait another six months. Since my bathrooms had already been configured for the Duravit merchandise, I really had no choice but to wait it out. Plus, it's not like the house was in such an advanced state that the plumbing fixtures would delay anything. So I was told that it would take another 10-12 weeks for the items to be re-ordered/re-shipped, etc.

In the intervening weeks, I received some of the replacement items in drips and drabs. However, the one thing I was waiting the longest for was the "In the Mood" vanity pictured above. Apparently Duravit has never sold a single one of these in America! As such, the manufacturing cycle for the product is infrequent/sporadic at best, and unfortunately I was a bit aways from the next cycle.

So after 12 weeks I decided to follow up with that online e-tailer again to inquire about the status of the "In the Mood" vanity. It was still not done! Suffice it to say, both the e-tailer and I were more than pissed. This led to a series of threatening phone calls between the e-tailer, Duravit USA and Duravit Germany. After some weeks of back and forth, I finally received word that Duravit Germany agreed to have it airshipped to me within 2-3 days. A few weeks later, I still had not received word.

Finally on Friday, after following-up yet again, I was told that the vanity was in Atlanta and that it was on its way to that e-tailer, who would then send it to me along with my missing Starck 2 toilet.

Oh how we suffer for our art...