DFS...old dog, same tricks?

jcr2007

Hi - I've read previous posts on the subject of DFS and their service/products and would appreciate your advice.

like many others we're having issues with our leather corner group, bought 18 months ago.
last year, service manager agreed one part of it needed recovering, so took a second day off work to be here - took him 3 hours to recover it (splittting leather)
this year, the same recovered part and the rest of the group have started to split - a third day off and service manager agreed it all needed to be recovered - again!

call from head office to accept that they were having probs with this leather and suggested we choose either a different leather to have it recovered or a new sofa altogether...up to the cost we paid for this one...18 months earlier! There were no other sofas we liked, would fit into our room either style or size wise so we chose an improved grade leather and they agreed to collect and redeliver on a saturday to accomodate our working days - GREAT.

one week later, we have our sofa back...in a new leather...in a worse condition than it left us!! it's scratched, damaged in a number of places has been recovered in a very poor way - some parts are perfect, others are baggy, leather folded, footstool not returned with parts it went with etc etc, basically I wouldn't buy it if it was on sale.

manager been out today and agrees it's poor. SO we now have 3 options:
1 - recovered again in this second leather, 2 - recovered again in the first, poorer quality leather that they no longer supply! or 3 - full refund and they will take sofa away and sell it in store at a reduced price (pity the poor person who does this!!:eek: ) .....

however, although we're going for the full refund, we bought the sofa in the sale and to buy a new sofa, 18 months later, will leave us out of pocket, not to mention the loss of three days annual leave from work AND that we'll be without a sofa for 10-12 weeks until a new one form an alternative company (not yet chosen!) arrives...manager says there's nothing more he can do and no compensation available - I've asked him to refer to head office which he says he will do (whether or not he will)...

just wondered what anyone else would do re: compensation?
thank you,:mad:

Nile

Hello jcr2007

Welcome to the MSE site.:wave:

I'll move your thread to 'The (Consumer) Vent' board.

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].

Regards

Nile

RichyRich

DFS do sales? News to me :-P

As far as I'm aware, the Sale of Goods Act and friends only allow for a full refund of the purchase price. I'm not sure you'd be able to recover your lost earnings.

You could, of course, ask them if they'd cover them for you. If they don't, there'd be nothing to stop you filing a claim in the small claims track of the county court, which would cost you about £40 in the hope that they'd rather just settle with you than instruct a barrister over the sake of a few hundred quid, but I can't help feel that this is an abuse of the judicial process.

Hopefully somebody with a little more knowledge will be along shortly.

HtH
Rich

lindos90

Having had experience with DFS myself, i would just be glad you got a full refund after 18months of repairs, yes it is a pain to have time off work, inconvenience etc, but you are free now to buy one from somewhere else, many people dont get that as a n option with DFS and similar outlets. I hope you have better luck with your next one!!

We had a suite from furniture land, to cut a long story short it was rubbish, they messed around trying to repair it, eventually got compensation of £200 as it was not repairable, trading standards got involved only to a point, then the firm went bust.

From frying pan to fire, we then went to DFS, again a rubbish job, botched repair attempts, manager visits, he agreed it was rubbish too and reluctantly agreed we were within our rights for a full refund, but encouraged us to 'reselect' ie choose another rubbish suite from them, the manager said if we reselected we could keep the old suite until the new one arrived, but if we had a full refund he would have the suite collected the next day. Its a scare tactic.

We played the game, but there was nothing we liked, manager said we could take our time, wait till the next collection came in etc. I had been crafty though and got him to state in writing that he agreed we were withing our rights to get a full refund, very valuable that!

So in the mean time we went to Ikea, fell in love with a suite, ordered it, and when we had a confirmed delivery date I called DFS up and said we had seen the new seasons collection and there was still nothing we liked, so could we have a refund as agreed in his letter, reluctantly agreed, sent a cheque and collected suite the next day, which was the day before our new one arrived! (he did not know this of course!!)

The saga continued as there were a couple of minor things wrong with the Ikea one, so we asked for an upolsterer to come and sort ot out (overstiching coming undone, and a small scratch that i thought they would put leather paint on and would have been quite happy with, but he recomended a full replacement, Ikeas customer service was prompt and reliable too!!

Im dreading the time we need a new sofa!!:rotfl: