"Can I please talk to the manager?"

Apparently I have a reputation that precedes itself when it comes to talking to managers about various customer service issues. But for a rare occasion, this particular situation resulted in a very favorable outcome.

After buying our house last March we set to work remodeling bathrooms, decorating, and buying furniture, when push came to shove the line item in our house budget that took the hit was the dining room set. We figured we could get by with an inexpensive set from JCPenney and save ourselves some money. At first we were happy with the set and then about 6 months ago, screws started coming loose, spindles started to pop out and before long, one of our guests sat in the chair and it completely collapsed. I thought that it was a fluke and there couldn't be any way that 2 more chairs would follow suit in the same fashion. Before long another chair was entirely demolished by another guest and not too long after that another chair started to show the tell tale signs of decline and we retired it from the dining room table.

All of this happening over a year after we bought the set, I thought all was lost and we were just going to have to bite the bullet and fork over the money for a quality set of chairs to replace these sad pieces. I called Penneys and talked to a representative who then sent me on to customer relations. I called back a week later to follow up on the case and sure enough, they were willing to replace the chairs. I pushed back and told them I didn't want them to send new chairs that would just fall apart again (according to online reviews this had happened to other customers). A few days later, I was happy to hear back that they would fully refund us, in cash, what we paid for the chairs and barstools in our kitchen.

The Lord provides! And we are now on a hunt for new dining room chairs and matching barstools. And I figure, over hundreds of dollars later, there is no harm in asking, whats the worst they can tell you?