Buy a suite of furniture

dusty_3

Are there any places I should avoid,or look up,when looking for a couple of sofas for the lounge.We have all seen horror stories,anad I don't want to be one of them.Thanks, D.

Jnelhams

Avoid DFS overpriced, cheap made rubbish, would go to John Lewis next time.

AMO

dusty wrote:

Are there any places I should avoid,or look up,when looking for a couple of sofas for the lounge.We have all seen horror stories,anad I don't want to be one of them.Thanks, D.

There are several categories of places that you can go to.

The most popular are places like DFS. These are not really furniture stores anymore, but financial institutions. In general, furniture is marked up approximately 5 times e.g. furniture costing £200 would have a retail price of £1000. Note: sometimes furniture is marked up to around 10 times the cost price.

From the £1000 price they offer anything from 25%-50% off and include 3 years interest free credit. Therefore you get to pay £500-£750 over 3 years. You do not get further discounts by paying up front.

The second type of place is a furniture factory outlet. Here the price of the furniture would probably be around £250-£300.

The third type of place is like Argos. The price of the furniture will be around £300-350. Furniture is cheap because they don't sit in show rooms.

Places like IKEA fall partially in the above 3 categories.

Furniture show rooms are expensive alongside sales people, and therefore the gross markup followed by amazing discount strategy incorporated into a no interest financial package allows for customers to pay more over the long term.

The advantage of places like DFS is that you get to try the sofa before you buy. Quite hard to do that in places like Argos and you're limited on choice if you go to a furniture factory outlet.

There are also smaller specialist furniture companies. Again, the prices are more modest, but variety is generally limited.

As sofas are so varied in manufacturer, like bikes, its difficult to compare prices, as you are unlikely to find the same sofa in more than one place.

Most people go DFS type of places because trying a sofa without being able to try it, can be problematic.

AMO