Review on Melissa & Doug Wooden Storage: Easy Assembly for Organizing by Ben Balas

Bought for a Christmas present based on reviews and that it was a little larger than others. Nothing damaged and well packaged. Good hardware package. The building instructions started well until it came to attaching the lid. You'll notice in the first picture I've attached that the lid is slanted. This is not well illustrated in the instructions and is not discussed at all in the written instructions, see images. The first thing I noticed was that the holes for the support loops didn't line up with the lid and chest when laying horizontally as shown in the picture; I assumed it was a manufacturing error. I almost drilled new holes until reading a 2018 review. Someone did it and everything went wrong. You'll notice that the instruction photos I've included show the chest with the lid straight up, so you can assume that's how it should be. WRONG WRONG. The chest of drawers is designed in such a way that the door does not open further than the corner. Neither the support hinges nor the cross brace at the stern allow it, but the instructions are not intuitive. If you look very closely at the attached image, you can see the lid at a slight angle, but it's easy to miss. Also, the support hinges are very stiff as they're supposed to hold the lid open, but look at the screws that hold them in place. They are very short and not as shown in the instructions. I expect they will eventually fall out after moderate use due to the stiffness of the supports. Most embarrassingly, the Melissa and Doug Company has been aware of this issue since 2018 and has never done anything about it. This indicates a total lack of quality control. Although I have no problem with how it turned out; I like the size and looks. If bad instructions have been around for about 2 years, this indicates a greater interest in profit than in customer satisfaction.