Pottery Barn

4÷19÷16 — Every time I’ve gone into the store in the last 6 months I’ve walked out thinking, ‘I should go on Unilocal and give a good review.’ After a table/​chairs purchase, table return (wrong size), Easter stuff purchase and other little trips in for house stuff I’ve had nothing but great service and nice people. Tula, Sandy and the store manager (John?) were all helpful and fast. There was one gal in there who was a bit overwhelmed and not exactly cheerful but she seemed to be doing her best and isn’t worth a star off.

Came here the other day with my mother-​in-​law to pick up a 6 person dish set.
Sort of disappointed that a lot of pieces we were interested in weren’t on the showroom floor. On top of that we were given plates with defects. Staff seem to be a little unfriendly.
We ended up bringing in the defected plates for an exchange which they were nice enough to have ready and ordered the plates that weren’t in stock. I’ll update my review when I get my plates on order.

This review is for my experience in Nov 2015. There are 3 people at the counter and not one looked up to acknowledge the 3 people in the line. Even if you’re busy, I expect that you could at least do customers the courtesy of looking up and acknowledging their presence, and saying «it will just be a moment». Instead, the entire line of customers experienced the opposite: face down and try not to look up for fear you might need to attend to a customer waiting. I still like the products at Pottery Barn, but they really need to work on staffing and consistent service. I have been here more than 2 – 3 times. Sometimes there is a great /​amazing manager to help, but at least 50% of the time, the service is lacking. Just expecting more from this brand.

Saw the new «urban» furniture collection preview and was massively disappointed as a follower move to Restoration Hardware type décor.
Rustic Northern California, vintage contemporary, all gone.
So unimpressed and from the worlds biggest pottery barn furniture fan :(

I’ve been shopping for years at Pottery Barn and from my experience in general, their policies are pretty sucky, considering their higher prices. But their expensive furniture is good quality. (FYI their less expensive furniture and items are always lower quality too, which is less worth it.) We basically furnished most of our home with Pottery Barn and I’ve shopped at the Palo Alto location and mostly at the Valley Fair location too. By FAR this Burlingame location is the best, only because of the sales associate TULA. She’s amazing. Seriously, she went far FAR out of her way to accommodate us, help us, and just get us everything we needed. She’s a realtor too, I’d totally love to have her as my realtor! Even while other associates were saying «No we can’t do that», Tula was saying she can, and she did. I was blown away by how helpful she was! I’ve never considered writing a review only because of a sales associate before today. But Tula really was a gem!

This store is indeed as good as it gets, but (to echo another reviewer) this is almost entirely thanks to the amazing, tireless, sincere and helpful Tula, the store’s crown jewel of a sales associate. She makes a big chain store feel like a local business. Where other sales associates are brusque, insincere, or pushy, she is patient and seems to genuinely care. She has several times gone out of her way to find items for me. I actually look forward to seeing her and saying hello whenever I pass through. If I were a business owner, I would steal her away in an instant.
The store itself is clean and well-​organized, with interesting seasonal arrangements. It is often best to wait for a good sale, as the merchandise (especially holiday merchandise) strikes me as overpriced. The furniture is generally of good quality, but I do recommend seeing items in person before purchasing, since their online and catalog photography sometimes looks different from reality.

The people in the store are very helpful, friendly and knowledgeable but their ordering system seemed to be a mess. We got a quote from them, but then a week later called back to order and they had apparently switched to some new inventory system which made it hard for them to find our order.
Same thing with trying to check on the order via the the web. Delivery has been a bit slow (it’s been about three weeks now) and I wanted to find out what the hold up is, but again it took them a long time to find my information and then I was told that someone said they called me on July 2 but there was no missed call on my phone for that day so still waiting …
UPDATE: They said delivery would be today between 7:30 and 12:30 p.m. – a five hour window. It’s 2:30 and they’re still not here. They said they’re «running late». Seriously, for the prices this company charges their customer service should be a thousand times better.

I am remodeling my house and have made frequent trips to this store. Jonathan has been a huge help to me. He gives me great ideas and really helps me with his good ideas and design tips! I would highly recommend this store and Jonathan! Maryann is also great! I loved her personality and customer service!!!
i still love Jonathan but some of the other people in this store were talking about me while I was still there. won’t be returning.

Nancy, Kathleen, John and the entire team at pottery barn are hands down amazing! Nancy assisted with design and furnishing several rooms in our house. Her opinion and expertise were truly appreciated. We are 100% content with the outcome. Will definately be back.

So I come in here middle of the afternoon on Tuesday and the store is practically empty. I ask one lady if there is a bowl I like in a larger size. She offhandedly says «I don’t know», talk to her” and points to another associate. This other associate is a nice young lady named Corinne and tries to help me. After picking out several pieces for a present, Corinne attempts to wrap it for me but does a really bad wrap job (not her fault she tried at least) but I ask for ribbon to try to make it look better. A really rude woman chimes in and says they have no wrapping paper or ribbon. Isn’t this pottery barn? I always get great service and nicely wrapped gifts at other locations. I asked if she was the manager since she sounded so authoritative, and she says no. I tell her she is rude and they do indeed have wrapping paper and ribbon as it is all over the store on display and Corinne just wrapped something for me. She makes it a point to be more rude and tell me thats just for display and that their store «always» gets good marks for customer service (again delusional as you can see by some poor reviews below). I ask for her name and she lies to me and says its Marilyn. I find the store manager, John, and he asks me if the rude person was Mimi (which is her real name on her name tag), apparently she is well known for her rudeness and has had customer service issues before.
Regardless, the Manager did not do much except gave me a standard apology and said he would speak with her.
In the end, while I was standing there trying to re-​wrap the gift myself, a nice stock guy named Matt was able to step up and did a decent wrap job. He really saved this review as I could go on about this horrible experience.
The manager at this location and some of the associates really need to sharpen their customer service skills. I was in the store for over 2 hours and I will not be wasting another minute of my time or money at this store.

Fantastic service! I called to see if I could purchase items off a registry over the phone and have a friend pick them up. Kathleen worked with me to locate the items, handle the purchase, gift wrap them and delivered them to my friend in her car so she didn’t have to come in. I really appreciated the extra assistance on a day they were apparently short staffed on.

What a bunch of fabulous and helpful women in this store. We did not have a receipt since our sheets were a gift and although they did not sell those sheets in that store, she was able to give us a full store credit.
Great sales, great merchandise and we walked a way with a killer duvet and they included a customer appreciation day discount.
Love them! I will be back

I was hesitant to stop by this particular location because of the reviews, but in the end decided to go here because it was closer to me. I’m glad I did. I actually had a good experience with the customer service. I was trying to take advantage of their buy more save more sale. Some of the items I wanted were not in store, and they ordered it for me online. They were not able to honor the discount but they did give me free shipping. Plus they gave me the highest discount for the items I was able to purchase in store. The stuff is pricey but I would definitely go back if I needed anything and there was a great sale going on.

Love the products, but this store has the worst, and I mean worst customer service. Ordered (an paid for) a lamp 8 weeks ago. Still has not come in. Called 4 times, each time they said they would have someone call me back. No one ever did. On hold now (fifth time)

I will start with TULA, TULA, TULA!
Over a very busy Saturday afternoon I walked into the Pottery Barn store on Burlingame Avenue. I spent some time looking around but it looked like everyone was pretty stretched and there was some sort of corporate run through going on for the holidays. Anyway, I had limited my house warming selection to a couple of things and had questions, etc. I didn’t want to be rude but I ended up stopping one associate in her tracks and my goodness she was amazing! She stopped what she was doing and we went through a bunch of options and each thing that I thought I was going to get either was a little scratched or not didn’t have enough numbers available. She was INCREDIBLY patient with me and we finally worked something out and I got exactly what I wanted and the the host ended up loving! THANKS SO MUCH TULA!
One last thing… as we were checking out, I was sure she was ready for us to go… not the case at all. She wrapped the gift just beautifully. I love the time she extended to me and she makes that store a gem in my eyes.
Thanks again!

Pottery barn customer service is complete crap. Shop here at your own risk. We went in looking for furniture. They took our money up front and NEVER PROVIDED THE FURNITURE. 6 weeks go by and WE have been calling checking up on our purchase. They never once called us. We are being told, everything is great, delivery next week, each week. Then 6 weeks later, we call to check up on the delivery, and are told THEY NEVER INTENDED TO FILL OUR ORDER. well, why would they take our money, you may ask yourself. Great question! And this is not a trivial amount of money. This is a large sum of cash that they held onto, earning interest in their accounts. The answer my friends, is because pottery barn is a bunch of lying, cheating, idiots who couldn’t find their head if it wasn’t attached to their bottoms. The customer service representative could not even find our order. Not kidding.
When we finally got them to give us a refund, they sent it by check, which we cashed. Then they refunded our credit card, so we were refunded twice. Then pottery barn put a stop payment on the already cashed check, causing us to incur bank fees. So not only did they waste our time, utterly fail to meet our expectations, unprofessionally fail to deliver a product that was promised, failed to communicate about their shortcomings, they couldn’t even figure out how to refund our money correctly causing us to lose access to our money for 6 weeks and get hit with bank fees.
The customer service representative’s response to all the above was «so what do you want me to do?» Upon being given an answer she said she had no authority to do anything. AWESOME POTTERY BARN!
Do not shop here. There are far better, far cheaper furniture stores all over the Bay Area. Go away pottery barn. No one likes to be cheated.

While i like there stuff, the customer service needs improvement. There was a continuing saga around a rug that I purchased, with differing information from each person I spoke with. Lots of phone calls with lots of time on hold. Not sure if they are short staffed, or just incompetent.

i would give this place zero stars if i can. I like the stuff at PB even though it’s often time overpriced. But i want to mention the Sh@tty customer service that my mom and I have gotten at this place over the last five years as well people like us (we’re Asian).
The sales associates are rude and disrespectful when we make the mistake of asking them for help and will outright ignore us any other times.
I’ve noticed that is not the case with other customers of non-​Asian decent. Specifically — those that are Caucasian. The are always fake nice and ready to help them. I’ve worked retailed in the past and have worked on Burlingame Ave. There are always a range of different types of patrons and SA should be nice to everyone.
They were times when we finally get someone to help with a stock check, wait around for 20 minutes for an answer and then finally notice the sales associate helping some other Non-​Asian patrons while the items we’re asking about is still sitting there.
yes my mom is a nurse and often wears her work clothes into the store because she goes straight from work but she has a PB cc card and frequent the store often to buy odds and ends.
Both my mom and I feel discriminated against every time we go into this store. Even though, it is farther away, we’ll hit up Palo Alto and Valley Fair from now on. We rather give our money to a place that will treat ALL their customers with respect.

the rating reflects the cost of items provided at this chain
From the outside this place looks an feels like it would contain all your homily needs, from bath furniture, bed frames to fancy vases they do carry numerous items only draw back is the price.
lets see home entertainment system they had about 4 to choose from each had some sort of shelving range between $ 1500 to $ 2500 depending on style and look of course but honestly when looking there was nothing really special about there choices heftier price for something that looked like you could get it at a garage sale.
the staff is very friendly, some of the choices are unique but more or less everything they have is what the masses already have at their homes you come here to get a range of how much you will spend in a mom and pops store, if you come here for furniture come to spend big literally nothing here is cheap. again service is top of the food chain but price digs into your back like a dirty blade haha
service *****
price $$$$ ballin
ambiance **** lil bit of everything but you will have to work double overtime to afford their items haha

The husband had been complaining for over a year that our living room pillows were very very tired. At some point I should have gone to Ikea or some other cheap store but since I have an anxiety attack in that place time passed and no new pillows entered our home.
Fast forward to forced time-​to-​kill in Bgame and I fell victim to the PB ploy of buying separate pillow covers and reusable/​replaceable inserts «so that you can change your look every season». Yeah right, like that’s gonna happen.
Anyway, I spent the last $ 170 of my Xmas bonus updating my living room look. It’s still a dump, but I do like the PB aesthetic well enough and 5 years from now I can buy new decorative pillow covers.
Very nice people work here.