An Arkansas woman’s furniture purchase turned into a months-long ordeal that reads like a customer service horror story, complete with missing pieces, broken promises, and a ridiculous amount of meticulous documentation.
TikTok creator @raisingshilohridge recently shared her experience purchasing furniture from Ashley Furniture in Rogers, Arkansas, that’s since generated 28,000 views. In the video, she describes part of her recent debacle with the furniture chain and how they essentially scammed her out of the furniture that she bought.
What happened with this Ashley Furniture purchase?
In October 2019, the woman and her husband decided to upgrade their home with a sectional and bedroom set from Ashley Furniture, spending $6,379.70 on what they hoped would be quality furniture for their home.
The first red flag appeared during the financing process. Instead of opening one credit account as expected, the salesperson had them apply to two different lenders, resulting in both credit accounts being opened and causing significant drops to both customers’ credit scores.
“Instead of just opening one of the accounts to finance our furniture, she opened both,” she documented. “So two brand new credit accounts hit our credit score instead of just one.”
When delivery day becomes a puzzle with missing pieces
November brought the furniture delivery, but it was missing a few key parts. The sectional arrived missing sections, and the bedroom set came with random assorted pieces that ultimately meant it was near unusable.
The sectional that did arrive had fundamental design issues. It came without brackets to connect the sections. “The sectional pieces didn’t hook together,” she explained in her TikTok video. “The pieces of the sectional were constantly drifting apart.”
Online reviews for the Chamberly sectional on Ashley’s website validated her complaints, showing this wasn’t an isolated incident. Other people agreed that the pieces were ill-designed and structurally inept.
Enter the customer service loop from hell
The woman contacted the store manager, expecting a straightforward exchange process, as the company did not have a refund policy. The manager initially seemed empathetic and agreed to help, directing her to call corporate customer service to initiate the exchange. That’s when things got particularly confusing. The corporate line told her that only the manager could initiate the exchange for the couch, and that she would need to call him back to get the process going.
The same day that she called the store regarding the exchange, she called again three separate times, receiving zero response. The next week, she called the manager’s Rogers location and left multiple voicemails asking about the exchange process. “I called three more times in one week during this period to leave a message asking [the manager] to call me back and nobody ever did, totaling five phone calls that resulted in absolutely no progress or anything being done.”
More back-and-forth
What then followed were months of calls between November 2019 and February 2020, with both sides consistently telling her misinformation regarding the exchange process. No return was possible according to internal notes that the woman received because, “corporate CS and Jessica at the store informed [her] on Feb. 6 that there’s a note on my account from Dec. 9 that states that I was informed that no return was possible ‘because the guest didn’t like the way furniture looks in her home.'”
Every time she called corporate for the next few months, they would tell her that there was “no” record of the exchange that the manager had agreed to do, and that she would have to call her local store to “get it done.”
She recorded audio of future discussions with Ashley Furniture associates, posting them on YouTube to prove that she was receiving misinformation from both corporate and from the local franchise. The local franchise would tell her that corporate wouldn’t approve the exchange, and corporate would then say that the manager’s store was the only person who could approve the exchange.
Ultimately, she didn’t get anywhere with the stores, leading to a nightmare situation and the loss of $6,000-plus because she had unusable furniture. That’s when she decided to make a WordPress blog and post about her experience online.
Ashley Furniture Store Scam
The woman posted the entire debacle—with receipts—to her WordPress, detailing a day-by-day account in a five-page document that garnered a small amount of social attention.
“I ended up with a call from the CEO of my region apologizing to me, telling me that they were having meetings about my situation and that they were going to learn from it. I was going to get a full refund, [and] they were going to come pick up the furniture. They were so very sorry. He followed through on that. This was six years ago. This was in 2019. I finally got my money back in 2020. Clearly, they have not learned. I will never darken the door of another Ashley Furniture.”
She’s not alone
From 2020-2025, the woman estimated that 10,000 people saw her website, possibly due to having issues with their own furniture from Ashley.
Commenters seemingly agreed. “I had problems with this same store in 2020!” one wrote.
Another added, “I had similar issues with Ashley 20 years ago. Never got my refund or exchange and had to finally pay out of my own pocket to ‘fix’ my brand new dining room table so that it was usable. Apparently this company is still crap.”
@raisingshilohridge I know I’m late on this — I’m a little out of touch on what is going viral on TikTok ? But a friend sent me @Jasmine J’s video about Ashley Furniture and got all fired up again reading the comments. Then i found very recent videos from @GiGi_Pearl, @Lizagna and even @Caleb Hammer and got even more triggered. ?I fought with Ashley Furniture a while back and won – here’s my story and what I did to get a full refund & a personal call from the top of the chain of command: 1. Document EVERYTHING. Records are your biggest asset for combatting the gaslighting and getting them to make things right. 2. Share publicly. When I was going through this, I wasn’t on TikTok yet so I made a WordPress blog and shared it on all my other social channels. But TikTok is where almost everyone is now, so use that to your advantage. Post everything you have!! (Hide your address and stuff though bro) 3. Find every Ashley Furniture email address you can on the internet and share your story and evidence with them. I sent my blog to at least a dozen people in the company, maybe 2 dozen. There are several email addresses you can grab from my page, ashleyhomestorescam.wordpress.org 3. Do not back down. I have heard stories from so many others that they eventually gave up on making Ashley Furniture do the right thing — there is even a big Facebook group of people who have been scammed by Ashley Furniture, and so many of them never get a resolution. This is how the bad guy wins!! Keep pushing, hold them accountable! My ONLY desire in sharing is to keep any more of y’all from getting taken advantage of by this company. I wish I could say that I think Ashley Furniture will clean up their act too, but I’m being realistic. They haven’t changed yet, and I don’t think they ever will. #ashleyhomestore #ashleyfurniture #ashleyfurniturehomestore #fyp #trending ♬ ♡ ᶫᵒᵛᵉᵧₒᵤ ♡ – SoBerBoi
The Mary Sue has reached out to Ashley Furniture’s corporate line for comment. We’ve also reached out to the original TikTok content creator via TikTok direct message.
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