the story about the chair.

when justin and i got married, we got a lot of gift certificates to crate&barrel.  after our wedding and honeymoon, we piled them all up and headed to the store and picked out a chair.  it was red and a really cool woven fabric and it was symbolic of our new union - the first piece of furniture we bought as a married couple.

i'm sentimental.

within a matter of days/weeks/months, our cat pippa had basically destroyed the chair.  she had claws, and no matter how much we covered the chair with blankets, sprayed her with a water bottle when she was on it, or any other act of terrorism towards her, she was hell-bent on clawing that chair.  apparently, she really liked the weave too.

here's the thing.  we knew the chair was in bad shape, and getting worse.  but...i am terrible about buying furniture.  a) i'm picky b) i'm indecisive and c) i'm really really averse to spending large sums of money (and justin is really really averse to cheap things).  so, the chair just sat in our house, then moved with us to another house.  then another.  six years, give or take.  that's a long time for a busted chair.  at some point, my mom had apologized to guests on our behalf for the state of our chair enough that i couldn't take it anymore, so i started to see about options to reupholster it.  the bones of the chair were still fine, it just needed some fresh new fabric and maybe a little sprucing on the stuffing.

i got several quotes in excess of $750.  that was not including fabric, which could range anywhere from $50-$450.  yikes!  as i said before, i have a hard time spending large sums of money, and to spend a lot of money to fix an expensive chair seemed like one of those fool-me-once scenarios.  i thought there HAD to be a better way.

side note: i really REALLY want to learn to reupholster and i feel like i would like doing it, but i don't have the time or room to learn right now, and this is a more advanced project than i would be ready for (or so i rationalized).

enter needto.com.  i heard about needto on the radio - it's a local startup that connects people who need jobs with people who need jobs done.  i thought this would be incredible - i could give someone some work and get something done, and ideally pay a more reasonable amount for the whole thing.  win win.

so i posted my "need" and i offered $400 for the job (minus fabric, which i was going to acquire for myself).  i thought that was reasonable, but hoped for competitive offers to get it for me for less.  i got a lot of offers - probably 10-12, which was great.  one of the most compelling was from a guy - let's call him zach.  zach said he had a degree in industrial design and set decoration, had lots of tools and experience, and that he's easily be able to do the job for $250.  perfect, right?

this is where things start to go awry.  the last weekend of january, justin was traveling for work.  i arranged to meet zach near his bicycle shop downtown.  i loaded up the kids and the chair and the fabric and texted him when i arrived.  he came to my car, got the chair and fabric, and said he'd be in touch.  i told him not to worry about timing too much, since we'd been dealing with a busted chair for 6 years, and he said he'd be done within 3-4 weeks.

in early march, i sent him a facebook message asking how it was going and i got no response.  i sent a follow up message a day or two later and he apologized profusely, said he had injured his hand a couple of times, but that he was making progress and should be done by sxsw (end of march).  i said fine with me, just let me know.

sxsw comes and goes and i hear nothing.  i reach out to him via email, facebook message, phone, and text in early to mid april and i get no response from anything at all.  justin and i begin to suspect we're never going to see our chair again, and i realize we have no recourse and start mentally berating myself for making the terrible decision to trust anything peer-to-peer.  in a desperate attempt to do something/anything, i reach out to needto.com directly with my issue.

i get a response from a guy at needto.  let's call him wade.  wade is apologetic and assures me this has never happened to another client ever before.  he says he plans to make it right and will do everything he can to get our chair back for us.

i should say at this point that i gave zach no fewer than 10 opportunities to walk away from the project all together.  in one fit of desperation, i even offered to pay him JUST to get my chair back (reupholstered or not).  no response to any of it, ever.

anyway.  wade and i go back and forth several times over email.  he employs social media and whatever other sleuthing skills he's got to try to track zach down.  the best luck he has is through a mutual facebook friend of his and zach's who agrees to contact zach and try to get a response.  the gist of that conversation was basically that:

• zach is some sort of stalker (according to the mutual friend person)
• he had nearly completed the chair, but had been super depressed because one of his friends was critically injured in the sxsw accident
• he and his girlfriend were down to one phone which is why he hadn't been in touch
• he would contact us that night/that weekend and arrange for pick up that weekend free of charge for everything he'd put us through

needless to say, none of those promises came to fruition.  i emailed wade to let him know we were still chairless and incommunicado with zach.  he said it was his personal mission to get our chair back (finished or not at this point was moot).  i gave him zach's work address, home address, and all other contact info i had for him.  

and then...silence.  i sent a couple of emails asking for status/if he'd had any luck.  no response.  i sent a facebook message to zach's girlfriend, apologizing for contacting her, but asking if she could help intervene.  she responded, but was not helpful and never replied again.  

so this week, i get a suggestion from facebook for needto.com.  in my frustration, i gave them a one-star review and said something along the lines of "good business idea.  bad business when your worker steals your stuff.".  i could have been much snarkier, but i try to tone such things down on the internet.  

lo and behold, this morning an email pops up from wade.  it has been 37 days since he last wrote to me.  this is a direct copy/paste because it's amazing:

Just wanted to give you an update, was waiting to just bring it to you but, still don't have it. Here's the deal, Zach, is all coked out and a thief, got fired 2 months ago for stealing at {business name}. He still is in Austin and one of his house mates still rides so trying to contact her. Talked to detective last week and he suggested filing a charge on him.  I'm still waiting to find out where he lives and just go there. What ever we need to do to make it right because Zach is not a representative of the thousands of awesome helpers on the site.

so here we are.  over four months later, and my helper is a cokehead who stole a beat up chair from people who would willingly give him money just to get their own property back.  i can honestly say this is the most bizarre situation i've found myself in in recent memory.  i'm weirded out, frustrated, angry, and a little bit scared.  do i press charges against this guy?  i don't want to get in to some sort of crazy legal situation over this.  i just want my chair back.