EDIT: I ended up calling Sam's Club returns customer service, and the lady did her best to help and sent out a replacement kit and directed me to setup an appointment with a delivery company to schedule a pickup of the old parts. Apparently, the manufacturer wasn't letting Member's Mark know that I would never get my parts. In their communications with each other, the manufacturer kept deflecting, saying they let the customer know when Member's Mark asked for updates. Ridiculous. But Member's Mark said to take out the parts I need from the new kit and send the rest back. So we'll get this figured out one way or another.

tl;dr Sam's Club is selling and shipping gazebo kits with parts missing and Member's Mark contracted 3rd party customer service agents and manufacturers didn't let me know that the parts I needed were on backorder and wouldn't get to me for weeks or months.

Original Post:

We ordered a gazebo kit from Sam's Club online (link). It was shipped fairly quickly and arrived faster than expected by a third-party delivery guy. Not a huge deal, but I had to help him since he was by himself get it off the truck and into our garage. We were pretty excited about this, I got it for my wife and 2 little kids so they can be outside in the south without melting in the summer time.

We start putting it together, myself (M30) and my parents helping out, and it took us 8 hours...to get halfway done. At which point, we discovered we had a few missing parts, primarily some beams across the roof that the roof panels rest on. Pretty important pieces. I kind of anticipated something like this happening, sometimes not all the parts get into the box. It's understandable.

However, the customer service that I've had in trying to get these parts has been appalling. The piece of paper they include in the box with the phone number to call doesn't work. You call in, and there's a recording, and then the line goes dead. So I call Member's Mark CS with the phone number on their website (link). I start communicating with them, who is a 3rd-party vendor contracted with Sam's Club/Member's Mark to handle these types of issues (I know this because the guy's name on his email is <name of agent> - VENDOR). He needs me to send in photos from the manual of the parts I need so he can pass the info over to the manufacturer to get parts shipped out. No problem. I get that over to him, he CC's me on an email to the manufacturer with all the right part info, and the manufacturer responds within 24 hours saying that the parts are shipped, here's the tracking numbers.

Awesome! We wait for the parts, they get delayed 3 days because of some FedEx fiasco (and potentially the crowdstrike outage), but we get the parts. And it's only 2 out of the 3 part types we needed. The parts missing were in fact the beams we really needed to finish the whole thing. So they only shipped some of the parts. I called back in and let them know, and got stonewalled, like they didn't want to tell me they couldn't get me the parts. I sent an email indicating some frustrations around only getting some of the parts and that I wasn't told I was only getting some of the parts, and all I got back was "the manufacturer will let you know". Well they didn't. I called back into Member's Mark and was told on the phone the manufacturer should be contacting me in the next two days with an update. They didn't. I emailed the manufacturer directly requesting info, and this was the conversation:

me: Hi, I'm not sure if you're who I need to talk to, but I didn't get all of the parts I needed. The email from Sam's club shows 4 UL beams from this gazebo. Member's mark should have contacted you already about this, but I'm checking in trying to see if another shipment will be getting sent soon. Thanks for your help thus far.

them: Good morning, your order is on backorder I will email you once they have been shipped 

me: Was it on backorder the first time we requested the parts? How long until it ships? 

them: the manufacere has to make the parts once ship I will email you 

me: I understand that. But how long does that take? A month? A week?

them: it can take a while 

me: Can you explain what that actually means? Can it take 3 months or a year? What is "a while"?

them: months or weeks 

Now, I don't mind the fact that parts were missing, or even that they're on backorder. I used to work customer service for an exercise equipment company. I get it. What really bothers me is that Sam's Club is selling and shipping these kits out, knowing that parts are missing from the kits, and then spinning the customer in circles when they try to call in to get parts. The first time they shipped parts out to me, they knew the parts were on backorder and didn't say anything. They knew the parts needed to be built and that it could take weeks or months and didn't say anything. Did the agents at the 3rd-party Member's Mark customer service know? No idea. But someone somewhere knew and didn't say anything, just kicking the issue down the road until I found out that I can't actually put this gazebo together, and at worst I'm stuck with a half built gazebo, and at best, I have 2 massive boxes of parts sitting in my garage just waiting months for the rest of the kit to arrive.

This is horrendous customer service, and is leaving a bad taste in my mouth around Sam's Club in general. Granted, the materials the parts of the gazebo are made out of are really great quality, and it actually seems like a really great product. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter one bit because we can't put a roof on the dang thing.

I'm not sure what to do here at this point. Can I return this thing? Am I stuck with a half-baked POS in my yard? Member's Mark says 100% satisfaction guarantee. I'm starting to think that's some real BS.

Has anyone purchased this gazebo?

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/a/P03016295.ip

Costco has one similar and it’s nearly double the price. I was hoping to purchase this model because it looks like assembly may be easier compared to the other roofs that come with the gazebos.

How was assembly and the quality of this gazebo? Also trying to figure out if I need to screw it into our wooden deck or below the deck where the concrete patio is at. Not that handy and considering the assembly option which is not that bad.