After a gazillion hours spent searching online furniture sites, you finally find it ... the perfect piece of dining room furniture. You read the description carefully, specify exactly what you want, and place your order. Then, you wait. Weeks pass, and then a month, and still your furniture does not arrive. The waiting continues.

Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common. It seems you forgot to ask the key question when ordering furniture online: Is it in stock? If furniture is not in stock, it could take anywhere from 2-12 weeks to arrive. If it is in stock, you could have it within 24 hours!

The reason that furniture would not be in stock is that many online furniture retailers drop-ship. Drop shipping is when a retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler. The third party then ships the goods directly to the customer. The main risk inherent in this process is backordering. This happens when a seller places a shipment request only to find that the product is sold out, leading to a long wait for the customer.

Armed with this information, I bet you’re placing a whole new value on the words in stock! At the very least, you should now be aware of the necessity of asking your retailer to let you know a precise estimate of when your furniture should arrive. If your need is urgent—as in, you’re eating dinner on the floor while you wait for your new kitchen table to arrive—then don’t even consider ordering anything that isn’t in stock.

Thankfully, every single dining room furniture set on Dinette.com is in stock and available to ship from our warehouse. In most cases, orders ship within 24 hours and you can have your set in only a few days.