Dwell the Rubbishmonger

Dear Dwell Webmaster,

I purchased the Stained oak veneer, mirrored glass · Dimensions : h156cm : w92cm : d45cm : table h77cm” Loop Leg Dressing Table Darkwood with two drawers and mirror (product 101590) for £145.00 and took delivery in my home in London. Dwell as an order and delivery system worked sufficiently. As for the end product, it was rubbish.

I have assembled many flatpack legoland wonders so I am accustomed to all manner of these objects as they arrive in their cardboard shipping boxes and sticky tape fastenings. This one is a particularly bad example of what can go wrong with these products.  You should send a stiff note to your product buyer, and they can send an edict of displeasure on to the Malaysian slave labour camp they use to create these lousy fiberboard furniture approximations. Perhaps you can instruct the inmates on the power of product quality by cutting their rations to half a bowl of gruel a day.

The instructions included were a half a page of wrinkled paper showing a fully assembled loop leg dressing table (darkwood) with a kaleidoscope of arrows that looked more like a two year old’s scribble than any meaningful instruction meant for human use. The fastening objects depicted were indistinguishable from each other. It was more useful to look at the picture on the box than the instructions. People who create drawings like this are usually locked in padded rooms. There was no meaningful sequence to follow, no explanation of the ‘twisty lock’ technical marvel that holds it together. Fortunately I have encountered the twisty lock before. I imagine you have had other complaints because your website has an explanatory paragraph on the twisty lock.

The insstructions have a nice line in para 9: “Follow the instructions carefully and don’t rush. Take a break when feeling tired.” That means you must at some level understand that building this fibreboard concoction will take so long we should plan for naps when exhausted. No doubt you call that messaging consumer relationship value add. Nice work.

The piece itself is of such dimensions that it requires the assembler to have non standard tools. Specifically, the space age twisty locks are inside the drawer assembly where there is 4 inches of clearance. A standard screwdriver is 6.5 inches long. So when you buy this Dwell.com marvel, you have to also buy a shortened 3” screwdriver or you cannot assemble it. That means the actual price is £151.99 plus labour to acquire the special screwdriver. Interestingly, the ‘tools required’ shown on the useless instructions include a poor rendition of a standard screwdriver. Additionally, the holes were not properly drilled. It looked like the drill machine was set incorrectly because on one piece where the holes should have been there were only indentations. I had to redrill the holes myself. When I saw the fine handiwork you sell beneath the Dwell brand, I thought that for you, those indentations were not failures, but statements of Dwell QUALITY.

Why do I care so much about a flatpack fibreboard dressing table with ill conceived documentation delivered undrilled and made so difficult to assemble I should take breaks between sessions? I don’t. Its just another highly branded, cheaply made, globally shipped, overpriced piece of ‘product’ that has the cultural staying power of a Burger King anything but beef frozen patty served at the drive thru window at Home Depot’s joint venture with Walmart – WalBurgerDepot. Why should you care? You might not. But a product sold under your brand had the quality of a trailer park credenza and if you are happy with it, I guess we should be too.