Mattress service

After living in Jakarta for about five months now, I have learned to enjoy the social richness and warm friendliness of the people in this beautiful country. One grows used to the traffic jams and to the delays. However, one thing that is very hard for me to accept is the absence of certain shops. Let me explain what happened to me.

In August 1996 we bought quite an expensive mattress at the Ligna (Benfir) Furniture shop in Jl. Fatmawati. In the middle of January 1997 we had sleeping problems and inspection showed that the springs were bad and that the coverage layer was wearing thin. These kinds of things happen and normally a furniture shop provides service in these cases. Unfortunately, not Ligna.

First, they promised to provide us with a new mattress. Nothing happened. Then they promised to repair the mattress and meanwhile gave us a spare one. But still no new mattress. But a really astonishing thing happened. They suddenly showed up when we were absent, took the broken mattress and that was it. We urged them to bring the mattress back on the same day. After that nothing happened. Finally we got in touch with the mattress factory, called Romance, in Jl. Rawa Bebek, Gedong Panjang, Jakarta and their service department helped us so that within two days the repairs were finished. A tribute to this Romance factory.

I would like to make two things clear. The relationship between customer and shop owner goes further than just collecting the money for the purchase. Buying durable things also includes providing service and aftersales. I also felt powerless, because big stores, like Ligna can behave in such a way without being corrected. Happily there are service departments or factories like Romance that can clean up the mess, but what if you cannot contact such factories?

R.J. JORNA

Jakarta