The Saga of the Bunk Beds:
I bought a really nice bunk bed for my kids. I paid maybe 1/4 retail cost because I bought the bed at auction (as usual). It came flat-packed in a bunch of boxes that had all already been opened. Usually when I do this everything is fine, but sometimes this means I'll be missing some pieces or some pieces will be broken or both. Usually that isn't a problem either: a few emails or phone calls with the manufacturer's customer support team and they send replacement parts.
When I finally got around to opening these boxes and rummaging through them I realized I was missing the instruction manual and the hardware. After a lot of painful back and forth via email with the company whose name is on the box, and a lot of pulling teeth, I eventually got them to send me the hardware, though they made me pay a hundred bucks for it. I found the manual on their website and printed it out.
When the hardware got here I looked at the manual, flipped open to the overview schematic, and started inventorying what I had. Turns out I was missing some pieces as well. This time the company would not even sell me the missing pieces, and they said a lot of contradictory things. Gradually they stopped answering my emails (and they never answered phone calls).
Meanwhile my garage is unusable because it's full of bunk bed parts, and my kids are sleeping on the floor.
I did eventually get the company to at least send me another schematic that indicated the dimensions of the bed, and from this I can reverse engineer the sizes of the missing pieces. Which I'll need to do because my only alternative now is to fabricate the parts myself. So that's my next woodworking project.
If you're thinking of doing business with a company called Bunk Bed King out of Arlington TX, my recommendation would be to think twice.
