Buying an area floor rug online is scary and not for the faint-hearted, for many people it is because you can't feel the rug or see it's true colours and have to rely on the images and description to select the correct rug.
Here are some honest insights to assist you in your area rug purchase and some comments and observation may be considered a bit brutal.
these four things in this order
Rugs are expensive for a few reasons.
Each rug company operates its own discount policy which they are entitled to, however, when a product is marked down by 50-60 % one has to ask was that the original retail price, or an inflated price to allow for a perceived genuine discount.
Often you will see rugs on sale online that have been that price for months, in actual fact, after a period of time the discounted price becomes the normally recommend price.
This link to the commerce commission explains it clearly https://comcom.govt.nz/consumers/dealing-with-typical-situations/buying-goods-and-services/pricing
Many company's selling area rugs online are clearly flouting the law with the perceived discounts and this has had a knock-on effect with it becoming very hard for rug businesses trading in the bricks and mortar realm, to justify their cost verse pricing and their survival.
Rugs are made in a lot of different materials. When shopping online, don't just click on the rug with the pattern that suits your room. Investigate what the rug is made out of. Since you won't have any guidance from a rug professional and you can't run your fingers over it. What the rug is made often denotes its price - wool and silk are the most expensive natural fibres, rayon and viscose are the cheap synthetics. It pays to research and understand the fibre properties of any rug purchase.
At Rugs For All we deal with rugs on a daily basis and we're constantly having problems with the rugs coming in. Either they are damaged, they've got problems, or they have got flaws. Often the bags have been ripped in transit and or been dragged across a dirty floor. Many have been rolled improperly where it becomes telescoped and it won't lay flat. It's got lumps and bumps on it. Those are little things that you don't think about when you're buying online, but we deal with on a regular basis and know how to fix these issues.
There are thousands of great rug stores online, but not all of them are trustworthy. As a rule of thumb, we suggest focusing on a website’s photos, the way they describe the rug, transparency and responsiveness to determine its credibility. Does it give a physical address and a phone number, are they based in New Zealand? You are entitled to ask the vendor for additional close-up photos if they are not already posted online.
