Where were all the customers?? (MFI)

Member Name: snizzle

Product:	MFI
Date:	28/08/01 (314 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap, wide selection

Disadvantages: need patience to put together

This bank holiday, we popped into two furniture shops, to look around. The first was Ikea, in Wednesbury, and the second was MFI in Wolverhampton. The major difference between the two shops was that Ikea was very, very busy, and MFI was almost empty. That says a lot about the two shops.

MFI sell furniture, everything from bedroom furniture to kitchens. All of it is the DIY type, that you take home and assemble yourself. This is why, they claim, that their prices are lower.

There are two main things that annoy me about MFI.

If you walk around the store, it is quite difficult to see the prices. Sometimes, they will have an overall price, for e.g. for a whole bedroom or kitchen. But, the individual items do not have prices on them. Why do they do this? It would not be so difficult to put labels on everything. In Ikea, individual pieces of furniture are labelled, as well as overall prices. It can also be quite confusing, as sometimes, the bedroom on show, does not match the price shown. You have to read it yourself, to work out what is included in the price. They do have leaflets, from which you can work out individual prices, if you can locate them.

The other problem that we have had with MFI is that twice we have found that the packs have things missing from them. Both times we have had to go back to the store to get the missing pieces. This can be very frustrating, especially when you are in the middle of putting something together, which is annoying enough.

I can't imagine how terrible it must be to have to put together a whole bedroom or kitchen together. How anyone can go through the ordeal is beyond, even for the money you are saving.

We also popped into a local shop, where they had a much smaller selection, but quite similar furniture. They said they would deliver and also assemble it for us. So, it's worth looking around, and not presuming that smaller shops will have more expensive prices. <
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I also noticed that the furniture is much better value if you buy a whole bedroom together. If you want just one item, it's quite a bit more expensive. I didn’t like this as they are forcing you to buy what they want you to, you can't choose your own items.

One last point, if you do shop here, be aware that you might have to wait a while for your furniture to be delivered, maybe even a couple of weeks. I don't think this is good enough, especially when you consider that stores like Argos offer free delivery (for orders over £100) within two days.

Summary: