Sofa Workshop Direct simply dreadful customer service (Sofas in General)

Member Name:

Product:	Sofas in General
Date:	16/09/03 (3769 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Fairly good quality, n/a

Disadvantages: Customer services don't exist, n/a, n/a

If you are thinking of ordering a sofa from Sofa Workshop direct then read this before buying.

I ordered a sofa from Sofa Workshop Direct at the end of June 2003. The ordering system was a very easy to use online order form which had my sofa on order in minutes. After a week or so I got confirmation by post of the order and an estimated delivery time of 8 weeks. This was not what they advertise their delivery time to be, or it wasn?t when I placed my order. I contacted SW to query this long delivery time and was told it was due to summer factory shutdown. This I accept and prepared to sit back and wait for my new sofa (if you excuse the pun!).

At the beginning of August I had a phone call from SW to arranged a delivery date. The date was set as a day in the last week of August. They told me to expect it between 8 and 12 in the morning. I therefore set myself up with a morning off work to wait in for the delivery.

On the delivery day itself I waited until 11.50 at which point I was getting worried about the delivery so I rang customer services. They said they would call the driver and ring back to tell me how long they would be. By 12.30 I had to ring back, same response. On my third attempt they told me that the delivery had been cancelled and I had been rung at 10am that morning with that message. Firstly I was still waiting so they hadn?t called and secondly why had they waited 2hrs into delivery time to tell me it wasn?t coming, they would have know long before the delivery day that it wasn?t coming.

I was very cross about this and wanted an explanation, they didn?t know, I also noted that my credit card had been debited as if the delivery had been made and they said they would initiate a refund. They also told me they would ring back the next day with a new delivery date.

After a week of me calling them wanting to know where my new delivery date was and (they never ring back!) and getting them to confirm the refund ha




d been initiated (nothing showed on my credit card statement) I was given a new delivery date of 17 September. This was the only day in the whole of September that was inconvenient and I told them such but they said it was then or I would have to wait a further 2 months! Again in their promotional material they state that if you can?t make a

They noticed I was very cross about this complete lack of customer care and added a free footstool to my order ? major compensation I don?t think! So again I sat back to wait for delivery. However, a week later I noted that I still had no refund and it was well outside the 7 working days I was told to allow for the refund. So I set to trying to email them. To date (12 September) they have ignored every single email, I have sent one each day this week, and still no refund. I have now had to alert my bank to the situation because I have a feeing they will try and debit the card again on the next delivery date (I will update if anything goes wrong with that delivery!).

The storey does not end there either. After arranging the new delivery date a number of days later they called me and left a message, ?please ring us immediately, we have an earlier delivery date, quote reference X?. Great I though finally some customer service. So I rang back and quoted the reference only for them to tell me they hadn?t a clue what I was talking about. They couldn?t even find my details on the original rescheduled delivery date. So they had to call me back (which they did this time) and were pleased to tell me my ?earlier? delivery date was now 18 September, a day later than organised!

In conclusion if you order from Sofa Workshop Direct be prepared for no customer services, being lied to, and promotional information which is far from the truth.

On a slightly more positive note I have seen the goods I am going to buy in one of their showrooms and the quality seems fairly sound and the prices a
re re
asona
ble b
ut do
es this outweigh the above?

I will update if there is any problem with the items I ordered.

UPDATE - They have now rung again to try and rearrange the delivery date! Can you believe the gall of these people?! When I told them no they sounded very huffy as I was the bad guy.

UPDATE - I now have my sofa, finally, I am happy to report that it is very nice, no problems with the goods. I am also pleased to inform you that after a 3 page complaint letter Sofa Workshop have agreed to give me £50 back for the trouble they have caused. The cheque hasn't arrived yet but I'm not going to give up hope just yet.

UPDATE - I was told I would receive my compensation cheque within 7 days. It is now 10 WORKING days since then and still no cheque -are they lying about that too?!

UPDATE - finally I have received my compensation cheque - £50, not to be sniffed at but I will definitely think again before buying from Sofaworkshop again.

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