When you're knee deep in property renovation, there are days that go remarkably well... and then there are days you try to buy a pellet burner 🔥
The living room wall has had to be brought in to allow for the natural shape of the mountain rock; which was proving virtually impossible to cut away
Because of that. we needed to get the pellet burner (estufa in Spanish) ordered straightaway. What else would you want to spend a few hours doing on a Friday evening, after a full-on week!
Estufas are not straight forward. You have to think about:
The colour of the casing
The size of the space it will end up heating
How often you need to refill it with pellets
If it's silent, or is it going to make a noise
If you want a built in thermostat
If you need remote control (or wifi enabled)
How much space it's going to take up
Its energy rating and build materials (green credentials)
Pellet burners typically range in price from around €600-€3,000, so it's a sizeable purchase (aircon machines - which blow hot and cold are around €300 - so this is definitely a cosiness decision, rather than being purely about warmth)
It took us quite a while to select the best option, as they all had different advantages, and different add-ons via the various sellers vying for our cash
In the end (we thought) we chose an estufa from Leroy Merlin
Delivery time was 7-10 days, so we took screenshots of the product info and messaged our builder with the size and ventilation details. Luckily - because our builder is only part-time with us, as we're doing most of the work ourselves - he decided to wait for the fire to arrive before he fitted the extractor/chimney
I kept an eye on the tracking link, until the day came.... it was out for delivery 🚚
Except it didn't arrive
I contacted Leroy Merlin. Who said it was nothing to do with them, because they're a marketplace and this was a third party seller 😳
So we contacted the seller. Who said it was nothing to do with them, because they'd handed it to the delivery company 😧
Twelve emails and phone calls to the delivery company later (not counting the calls where no-one answered the phone) and still no fire 😠
The seller - Sun-Chauffage (in case you want to know who NOT to buy from) - said it hadn't been delivered because we were angry (about it not being delivered) and our attitude was to blame 🤯
The three separate people we managed to reach at the delivery company (who didn't mention our attitude), said they didn't know why it hadn't been delivered, because it was a different department 🤦🏻♀️
Making the executive assumption that if the fire was damaged, or anything went wrong with it, we'd have no recourse with any of the involved parties, we decided to send the still-undelivered estufa back 🚚
Sun-Chauffage said we could cancel if we paid an €80 return shipping fee 🤬
Obviously this post is a dramatically edited version of events. I would estimate it's taken me 2-3 days so far, in calls, emails and messages
Today is the one month purchase-anniversary and we, finally - after having started an ongoing email correspondence our (very nice) local Leroy Merlin store manager - emailing the CEO of Leroy Merlin Spain. Twice! - and becoming email buddies with the head of customer service for Leroy Merlin Spain - have been refunded for our original purchase (including the €80 return shipping fee!)
We still have no estufa. Although Leroy Merlin have made some alternative suggestions for us to try and get our heads around 😣
Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind I hear Leroy Merlin singing amended lyrics to the 1980's Joe. Dolce hit: What-a you t'ink you do, why do you look-a so mad?
It's-a not so bad, it's-a nice-a weather
Ah shaddap-a you face!
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