Faulty sofa from furniture village.

visidigi

warranty has nothing to do with this issue - I beleive in November 2008 they withdrew the product after they were told that Bi Cast cannot be given the real leather kitemark that was applied to these sofas when sold.

call back, ask for the store manager (if you go here http://www.furniturevillage.co.uk and click find a store at the top you will find the current managers name for your store so someone doenst blag to you that they are the manager)

I had to speak to the manager after calling my stroe for the first time - I advised the first person I spoke to that Consumer Direct have advised me to contact the stroe to resolve while CS pass on my complaint tot he local trading standards.

As soon as I said that, therer really was no dispute in the issue,

What store is it btw? Mine was Wednesbury.

tillybob77

Thanks for the advice.

I bought the sofas from FV's Friern Barnet store. I will contact them again and speak to the manager & mention Consumer Direct. I think I will also contact Consumer Direct so that I am armed with some info from them as the previous chap I spoke with said it was acceptable to sell bi cast as leather!

Thanks again for the advice, I shall let you know how i get on......!

vaio177

Hi All

I purchased my Scala sofas in 2008 and have the leaflets showing them as "100% leather". In my correspondence with Furniture Village, they have claimed that the Scala sofas qualify as genuine leather and were not missold.

I just wanted to know if anyone has had their Scala sofas independently tested and verified as being bi-cast and not falling within the definition of 100% leather. The line from FV currently seems to be that even if they are bi-cast they fall within the definitions of genuine leather and were not mis-sold.

Before I pursue and get them independetly tested, I just wanted to confirm if anyone else had been through an independent test of the Scala sofas.

Thanks

judyb

The key here is the thickness of the Bicast layer that has been applied. It would be this thickness which defines whether it can be sold as leather or not. This can be easily verified in testing.
If the thickness of the finish is under 30% of the overall thickness of the product then it could be classified as 'leather'. If leather is sold as 'laminated leather' or 'Bicast leather' then this would be acceptable.

Hope this helps - if you need any further advice on testing etc then please just ask as it is our area of expertise.
Judyb

visidigi

the coating on the sofa is wafer thin - its peeling off - its thiner than a coat of gloss paint on the doors and skirting boards at home. The rest is just like rubber foam.

Its a significantly cheap product they have tried to sell as quality.

You NEED to be lodging calls with consumer direct for these sofas - they are being approached centrally by trading standards on this based off the head office location.

There is no excuse for what they did with the scala range back in 2006 - hencde why they stopped selling them and rebranded to scala after they were found to have mis-sold bicast as raal leather.

vaio177

To clarify the Scala sofas were not sold as either bicast or laminated leather. I have retained the original product guide which does not mention bicast at all, only that they are 100% genuine leather, with the 100% leather logo.

FV are sending a technician to inspect the sofas. Will wait and see what they have to say after inspection.

vaio177

Just an update following the inspection last week. Showed the FV service technician the Scala brochure with the 100% leather logo and he was genuinely surprised that FV had advertised the Scala which were bicast as genuine leather. He took copies of the brochure and assured me that FV would take the matter seriously and I would be contacted by an area manager.

A week later, I have received a pretty dismissive letter from the store general manager "reassuring" me that FV had at no stage missold the bicast Scala sofa as real leather.

At the moment regretting ever walking into Furniture Village. There is a huge gap between the company Furniture Village aspire to be and the shoddy operation that they are.

I have sent a robust response back together with another copy of the product brochure which claims the Scala is 100% leather.

malchish

vaio177 wrote: »

Just an update following the inspection last week. Showed the FV service technician the Scala brochure with the 100% leather logo and he was genuinely surprised that FV had advertised the Scala which were bicast as genuine leather. He took copies of the brochure and assured me that FV would take the matter seriously and I would be contacted by an area manager.

A week later, I have received a pretty dismissive letter from the store general manager "reassuring" me that FV had at no stage missold the bicast Scala sofa as real leather.

At the moment regretting ever walking into Furniture Village. There is a huge gap between the company Furniture Village aspire to be and the shoddy operation that they are.

I have sent a robust response back together with another copy of the product brochure which claims the Scala is 100% leather.

You must make a complaint to Trading standards without delay! They did investigate a complaint before about FV presenting bicast as leather, and the agreement was that FV must not advertise as leather. If they persist with this, this could amount to a criminal offence and warrant criminal investigation by Office of Fair Trading. You will need to log the complaint and send a copy of the brochure by fax to Trading standards.

thegruffalo

Hi all.

First time poster here, have been following this thread with interest as we've had exactly the same problem with our Scala sofa peeling.

First of all I must sincerely thank Mr Slab and others for taking the time to post advice here. We bought the Scala sofa from FV around 2007 - it's had hardly any use over this time and yet started to peel around the 2 cushions we sit on - exactly like PVA as mentioned earlier in the thread, leaving a pink-ish under layer visible.

I started with an e-mail complaint to FV head office who put me in touch with the store manager we bought the suite from. This was swiftly followed up by a phone call and some options to rectify the situation. First offers were to completely recover, or exchange for the Dante - but with 12.5% "wear and tear" deducted for each year we'd owned the suite.

I rejected these straight away, and later that day received another offer as a "gesture of good will" of 20% total deduction for fair wear and tear. This still left us needing £400 to replace like-for-like which was also unacceptable.

Next they sent a techinician round who tried to convince us to recover, but I explained that I was mis-sold and wanted a replacement at no cost - we'd never even sat on 2 chairs in the suite!

Long story short - I had a phone call later that day to confirm that I would be receiving a brand new Dante suite for free as a straight swap - which arrived last week and is perfect!

So if anyone else is still in this situation, please don't give up or pay FV any money for wear and tear - they WILL exchange for free if they realise you're not going away. From my first complaint e-mail to sitting on the replacement sofas took around 5 weeks.

Good luck!

wizzo13

I am so pleased I decided to have a look on here. I rang FV 2 weeks ago about my peeling sofas and was told i was 4 weeks out of my warrenty so they could not do anything! I was gutted but thought that was all I could do.....until I went on here. I cant wait to get on that phone tomorrow. Does anyone know if the Scala sofas where found to be toxic at all?