Firstly, I want to be clear, these stools were “open box”. My understanding of open box was that they were inspected and deemed reasonable shape. This isn’t what was delivered. One stool was broken beyond repair.  Open box items can’t be returned. I knew that when I purchased. My issue is that these should never have been offered for sale. A rudimentary inspection would have revealed the one unit was hopelessly trashed. A proper description would have been you are purchasing one stool not two. 
Learned a valuable lesson, Wayfair will deceive for the sake of a sale. Really disappointing.