SCREENSHOT
Hawley, who presumably came upon Rough Country Rustic Furniture's abysmal Better Business Bureau rating in between Google searches of his own name, announced via a press release Tuesday afternoon that his office would be looking into the myriad complaints leveled at the company by dissatisfied would-be customers.
“My office will aggressively pursue those who defraud Missourians,” Hawley says in the statement. “Making consumers whole is always the goal in cases of this nature. However, if that cannot be accomplished, we will pursue other avenues.”
As we reported back in December (yes, unlike the state's attorney general, we read the BBB's reports in real time), the Mountain Grove, Missouri-based manufacturer was slapped with a consumer warning alleging the company "fails to deliver goods in a timely fashion and is lax in issuing refunds." The consumer protection agency says it is not uncommon for customers to wait more than a year for their items — nearly three times the company's most liberal estimates to consumers — if those items ever show up at all.
The company's BBB site currently has 832 customer complaints, with the most recent reviews coming in this week. Amanda B., who says she's been waiting three months for a piece that was supposed to arrive in two at the most, says she attempted to cancel her order, but Rough Country informed her they'd be keeping half of her money anyway, since it was allegedly already in the "cutting process."
"I would bet $20 they haven't even started my order as I have just seen on their FB page people waiting over a year for their products," she writes.
Paulo G., on the other hand, says the company wasn't even successful at taking his money. "Placed an order and 6 months later NOTHING," he writes. "No charge to my card but apparently making a web site is the only thing they can accomplish." Awww, what's a man seeking a weapon-concealing ottoman to do?
In an email, Rough Country tells RFT, "We've been working with the AG office for a few months and have resolved about 2/3 of the complaints and will continue until every one is resolved." Meanwhile, in an October letter to the BBB, company owner Joseph Ross explained that the delays were based on a series of problems with contractors and some employees.
“We are doing everything we can to make this right,” Ross claimed, adding that the company serves 20,000 to 30,000 people annually and has “thousands of satisfied customers.”
The Missouri attorney general's office met with representatives for Rough Country in February, its statement says, and the company agreed to comply with its requests for information on the status of ongoing complaints.
Watch a video of a cool Rough Country Rustic Furniture bedroom set that is capable of concealing up to four rifles and six handguns at a time — and which you will apparently never own no matter how much money you pay or how long you are willing to wait — below.
[Editor's note: This story was amended after being published so as to include a comment from Rough Country.]
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