Today we went on a mission to find a decent price for a granite counter top and perhaps locate some tile for the new kitchen as well. We started out at a place both of us hate which is a mega-store called Segmüller. They sell every kind of furniture and home accessory that you can think of but unfortunately they are always extremely packed because of various sales they run and their customer service is lacking in a big way. But since it is one of the only places around that we know of with granite, we decided to give it a go anyway as long as it was still early in the morning since no one seems to be out before 10 am on Saturdays.
After being pointed in the right direction by one of their less than useful staff, we located a piece of granite we liked. But the question was how much did it cost and was there actually one working in this area who could tell us something useful. So we went back to the guy who’d pointed us in the right direction, who was still standing around with his colleagues and just talking, and he told us we had to find the information desk around the corner because this was a “high ticket” item and not just anyone could sell it. Riiiight.
So information needs to call about 3 guys before finding one that isn’t too busy to assist us…and then the guy promptly seems to forget that the customer is always supposed to be right. After sitting at his desk about 2 minutes and waiting for him to calculate the cost, it was pretty clear to both of us that this guy wouldn’t be making the sale. But we were here already so we got the quote anyway before going on our way.
As we were driving out to the store, we noticed a sign for a granite and Italian tile store and decided that should be our next stop. We were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by an actual Italian who was quite helpful despite talking our ear off.
We found a lovely piece of granite, well two actually which we’ve taken samples home of to try out with our table which is the same color as the kitchen (since we don’t have anything from it yet), and some amazing tiles which are simply huge (60 cm x 60 cm) but would work really well in the house. We’re hoping that he will cut us a good deal since we’re buying quite a bit of merchandise from him so we’ll see. But we were quite happy to kill two birds with one stone and can’t wait to get things on the road next week with the construction.
