Faulty sofa from furniture village.

lilac_dawn

Can someone advise? I have exactly the same problem. I purchased 2 sofas in 2006 at cost of £1177. One started peeling this year, so we called out the warranty people to be told it was a manufacturing fault as it was not real leather and therefore not covered - he said this was quite well-known! This however was the first I'd heard of it BUT I have dug out the receipt where it states it is bicast. I bought it on the understanding the sofas are leather. Do I have a chance to claim anything, does anyone know?

visidigi

depends, the scala sofa range was advertised and sold as full leather with leather kitemark symbols attached to the sofas, if this was not the case then its unlikely you have any come back, 'your understanding' is not what is legal, its the adertising etc and given the receipt says bicast I am afraid it sounds unlikely you have a case.

lilac_dawn

I know my 'understanding' counts as nothing, which is why I asked if anyone knew particularly about this range. It seems odd if this range was advertised as bicast if the Scala was not, especially if FV did change their advertising in 2008, as someone else mentioned. I have searched to try to find the original advertisement, but cannot find it. I can find lots of similar complaints from other FV customers who do not state their sofa range so I will follow these up but thought I would start by asking here. I can't remember which labels I removed in 2006.

wizzo13

:(I am still battling on with my peeling sofas :mad:. They have offered £400 to spend in store and dont want to budge....not giving up yet though. Have emailed watchdog so will wait to see if they reply. If they got lots of people with the same complaint they may look into it for us all. It is making me very stressed but im not giving up. I didnt want a plastic sofa thats why i went for leather...or so i thought. Any new suggestions welcome

sunflower_2

i believe i have the original scala advert saved on my office pc.
PM me your email address and i will send it to you

i only "panic saved" this after ordering a sofa and reading comments on here going back so many years

good luck

fat_taff

I purchased my Scala 3 + 2 suite from FV in Telford and have the horrible cracking and pealing. It was ordered in December 2005 and delivered in April 2006. Was going to order a new settee but decided to Google the issue and came across this forum! So glad I did and will get on their case now after speaking to Consumer Direct. I'll post my results.

philosophyalice

thegruffalo wrote: »

I bought my Scala from Reading FV too and negotiated a straight swap with them for the Dante with no extra to pay, so don't accept anything less than an exchange or full refund.

I say "negotiated" as they did put up some resistance, the technician was keen on recovering and the store were insistent on the wear and tear penalty - but I got there in the end without too much fuss.

The Dante is pretty good for the money in my opinion, so much softer and warmer than the plastic Scala. Good luck!

Have had to keep chasing them up on this, the technician came a month ago and still not heard anything, it's now been passed back to Reading FV who hadn't done anything about it. Rang up today, the chap offered me a £400 refund or credit against a new sofa.

I told him I was not happy - the Dante equivalent costs £995 so that means I'm forking out £600 to get a replacement.

Manager then rings back offering an extra £300 credit so we can "upgrade" to the Dante by paying "only" £300. Despite my fighting words earlier I am considering accepting this. Am I being weak or should I go all the way and demand we get it free? As others have said, the manager is sounding like he is doing me a massive favour here but bottom line I have to pay £300 out for a respectable sofa. (Mind you, we are getting a £600 refund on an £800 purchase...)

visidigi

hes entitled to take away fair wear and tear.

Ask him if his cash offer involves you keeping the sofa - I could live with the fault we had based on the 50% cash refund.

Iw ould take cash anyway if you can, for a start DFS/SCS have a big sale on, you could easily get a replacement sofa with no cost to yourselves.

I vowed not to give FV any more of my money - so I kept my sofa (im sat on it now) and got a 50% refund - next year when the dogs have stopped being puppies we'll get some new ones, from Ikea I expect...

Goodi2shoez

Hi there,
being a newby to the site, firstly I'd like to thank everyone who takes the time to share their experiences. I've read all the postings with great interest. I purchased an Alexis sofa from Furniture Village in June 2009. We took delivery in Sept 09 and in Oct I had to report that one of the foams in the cushion had collapsed already. They were very good and sent a guy out who packed the sofa from underneath with more foam. All was well until October 2011 when the middle chair of the 3 seater developed a tear/rip. I might add the sofa has been barely used and the middle one least of all of them. Guardsman came out and have stated that 'there is a large tear in the bicast leather on the centre seat cushion. In the technicians professional opinion, this is not consistent with accidental damage but due to a flaw in the bicast, the area has gone very thin and has torn open over time.' (The seat is shows like a rippling appearance next to the tear/rip).

I'm now very confused about the whole 'bicast' debate. When we chose the Alexis, we had the option of that or the Dante and chose the Alexis which was identical in price and colours and everything else, it was just the rear cushions that we different. Dante is advertised now on the website as Leather, yet the technician is stating mine is bicast leather.

Now been waiting a week for the store to ring me back. Any help would be much appreciated.

visidigi

the dante was a replacement for the Scala - they replaced it because they were told to stop selling bicast as leather - the scala sofas had kitemarks on them to indicate real leather.

If you had the choice of dante or the suite you chose that says to me that this was advertised correctly - as FV stopped applying kite marks to sofas indicating they were real leather when they werent when the dante went on sale.

I think you have a flawed sofa they need to fix, I don't think its like the other cases of scala owners I am afraid.