Home Essentials

So Home Essentials is a few things. It is a furniture store (to buy or rent. Yes, they will outfit your home with furniture and you rent it from them). It is a home décor store with vases and artwork and pillows and home stuff. And It is also a candle store and it is on this point that I am writing my review.
I love great candles. Home Essentials first floor area is dedicated to candles. Limited in brands, but each of these brands being of great quality. K. Hall Designs is a great candle and diffuser line that is exclusively sold here. Hand poured of 100% vegetable wax with a 60 hour burn time, these are some of the most fragrant candles on the planet. Siberian Fir is my favorite, I can buy it at Home Essentials and I enjoy the scent year round. It is one of the great candles you can smell even when it is not burning… all you have to do is walk by it in your house and it is in the air. Their candle lines are very pricey and are priced in the $ 200-​$ 300 range for a single candle.
So although I do not know from first hand experience about the furniture piece to Home Essentials business model, I do love their candles and enjoy buying K. Hall Designs from this store.
Honestly, I just like being in the candle space and smelling all the candles. It is a great stop to pause and smell the roses… or rather smell the candles. You dont even have to wander upstairs, you can just pop in the first floor little candle nook area and be enveloped in the sense of smell.

I wish I could give this store a 0 rating (if such thing is even possible).
I also wish that I had read these other posts before my terrible experience:
Lesson learned, always do research!
The actual store is located conveniently on Lyndhurst Road & the store is definitely one of the bigger ones in Central area. The sales people are friendly, and sometimes even offers wine while you look around the store — DON’T LET THAT FOOL YOU!
I had a similar experience to those other 2 reviews. I paid ~$ 5000 HKD (~$ 600 USD) for a customized shoe cabinet. I was told that it would take 4 – 6 weeks. I was told that I would have to pay for the entire upfront (which didn’t seem like a big deal seeing as the big store presence).
A week went by & I did not hear from them to confirm the measurements (odd). I chased them 2 – 3 times myself to finally confirm the measurements so that it can go into production.
6 weeks went by and I heard no response from the team. I chased them, and was told it would take another week. Then another week went by, and was told that it would take another week.
What kind of service is it that the customer has to always chase down the progress of the delivery? For a store claiming to have been around 17+ years, the store service is DISASTROUS. Let me add, this is also with the «CEO» of the store.
Long story short & many angry emails later, we finally received the product 10 weeks from initial payment. I was happy to put everything behind us since we were finally happy to receive the receive the product.
… WITHIN 24 HOURS, ONE OF THE LEG PIECES (from my $ 600 USD cabinet) BROKE OFF & CAUSED THE CABINET TO ALMOST FALL ON ME.
We contacted the store & demanded an immediate refund, only to be told that they DO NOT ISSUE REFUNDS. Excuse me? I paid $ 600 USD, waited 10 weeks, had a cabinet almost fall on me and you won’t issue a refund? They did GRACIOUSLY offer to fix the cabinet — was this some kind of a joke? You want me to wait another 10 weeks for a cabinet?
After heated discussions, it was settled that the store would have 2 weeks to send us back a «fixed» shoe cabinet — or full refund, no questions asked.
Of course… 2 weeks went by, and we had to chase them AGAIN only to be told that it would take another week or two. Per our agreement, we were sick of dealing with the terrible, lying, can’t-manage-expectations, CEO and demanded a refund.
Again, I was willing to put this all behind us with the refund… but NO, when I went to get a refund, I received a TWO-​WEEKS-​BACK-​DATED CHECK which I could not cash out. IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE? If you need proper working capital management, fix it yourself — don’t prey on innocent customers’ cash.
In all my life, this is the WORST EXPERIENCE I HAVE EVER HAD with a furniture shopper.
DO YOURSELF A FAVOR, AND DON’T BUY ANYTHING THAT REQUIRES ASSEMBLY, DELIVERY, ETC. (ie. ANY FURNITURE). YOU’LL THANK ME.
It took us almost 14 weeks & many angry conversations and headaches to get our refund.