Pottery Barn

Full review
My overall Pottery Barn Online experience has been good. In fact, sometimes, the only way to purchase certain Pottery Barn items is via their online store (or catalog), and not in their physical store! Products generally ship in a timely fashion, and delivered products have always arrived in good condition.

Their online store has an excellent selection of merchandise, and the site design, layout, and navigation is all good, making it easy to find and purchase items.

I have had a few less than perfect experiences with the online store in the past, however. Here's a summary of the problems I've had with the site:

1. You can not use Pottery Barn Gift Certificates on the online store. There is no where to specify them as a payment option. If you want to use a gift certificate, you must first pay by credit card, then fax or mail copies of the certificates to Pottery Barn. After they receive them, they'll then credit your account. This can easily extend past a billing cycle on your credit card, so beware. Pottery Barn could easily remedy this by using a gift certificate system similar to Amazon.com's.

2. It really irritates that some items are catalog/internet only (i.e. you can't pick them up in a Pottery Barn store). In particular, I recently wanted to purchase three bar stools ($189 each). Since I have a truck, I was more than happy to go to their physical store and pick them up, but since they are catalog/internet only, I couldn't. So, in addition to the flat 10% shipping, I had to pay additional freight on the stools. To make a long story short, shipping tacked another $40 to the cost of each stool. Not the end of the world, but irritating still. A simple solution would be to allow online shoppers to order an item online, then pick it up at their local Pottery Barn if they so desire.