Sofaweb.com Attempted delivery of inferior damaged incorrect sofa set then refused to refund money when I refused delivery Thornhill Ontario

The only information posted by the consumer that has any truth or merit is that unfortunately the sofa was damage in transit by the freight carrier, which regrettably we cannot control as freight damage does occur from time to time with any commodity.

The remainder of her report is simply slander from a disgruntled consumer who was uneducated about the product she purchased. We never lied about our furniture being made exclusively in North Carolina, as we manufacture and distribute high quality home furnishings in several factories in the United States and Canada. There is no reason to lie about this because every piece that gets shipped has a law label attached to the furniture that indicates the place it was manufactured. These labels are required by law and affixed to the furniture so there is no reason to lie about where the furniture is made. Her ideology that North Carolina is only place that fine furniture can be made is simply ignorant. While many of our products are made in North Carolina, her product was made in our Toronto Factory, where the quality of the products are the same as the high end products we ship form North Carolina. As any educated person would know, furniture with different qualities are manufactured by the many furniture factories in North Carolina, the entire State of North Carolina does not manufacture strictly high end furniture. The idea that any State's manufacturing sector would have a universal quality standard is asinine.

As the consumer stated the quality of the leather she ordered was the highest grade that we offer. This leather is pure aniline dyed leather, which means that color shade variation, natural beauty markings such as healed scars, insect bites, neck wrinkles, variances in the pores and grain of the leather will occur as no two hides are alike. These hides are ideal for consumers who can appreciate the finest leather available in the market place today. After all, leather is a natural product and like anything natural, leather will vary the same way wood and other natural materials do. Anyone who buys leather is aware that the rareness/naturalness is what makes this pure aniline leather such a valuable material.

Contrary, to what the consumer writes, she was charged a fifty percent deposit when she ordered and the balance 24 hours prior to shipping from our factory, as clearly outline in the Policies section of the website.

When the order arrived to our local delivery terminal the consumer claims that we were angry at terminal proprietor when he notified her that the sofa was damaged. To the contrary, it is our policy to fully inspect the order prior to delivery to ensure that is free of freight damage. Upon discovery of the damage we notify the customer to advise them that their order will be delayed pending repair and/ or replacement of the furniture if repair is not possible.

When she went to inspect the furniture at the terminal she claims that the furniture was a different style which might be the most ridiculous statement she made. Why would we make a high end, feather-down seating, eight-way hand tied, pure aniline dyed leather custom made sofa and loveseat that was the wrong style and leather and ship it approximately three thousand miles? Her statement it was vastly inferior to what I had paid for cannot be further from the truth, she order and got exactly what she paid for. Other than the freight damage, the two complaints she had were only leather related, one was that the leather wasn't the exact same color; the other was that the grain was not the same as the small swatch that we had mailed to her. Once again, we explained that these are natural characteristics of this grade of leather which she insisted was not true and refused to listen to our explanation.

She was acting irrational and irate so in an effort to correct any perceived issued we asked her is she could kindly take some digital pictures of the furniture with the swatch we sent so we could see the differences. We asked her to cut the swatch in half and place the finished side of the leather face up and the unfinished side face up so we could see both sides. When we send out swatches we keep a piece of the swatch for ourselves to have on file for each customer. Should the customer decide to order we attach half of that swatch to the production tickets and the other half we file with her order. Using the piece on the production tickets our leather cutters match the swatch to the hides that best match.

A few days later we received the digital images via email which showed a difference in the leather. We checked our cutting schedules to confirm that the correct leather was used in the production of her furniture which we were able to verify. The consumer notified us that she could not accept the furniture and was going to charge back her credit card without notice not giving us the opportunity to refund her purchase.

As a result of the furniture being on the west coast, typically we would have repaired and donated the furniture to a local charity as the cost to ship it back is very high. However, at this point we wanted to see the furniture for ourselves and the customer's perceived issues. Upon receipt of the furniture we took the swatch from her file and place it on the sofa and loveseat. They matched identically! Then we referred to the images that she sent us which displayed a difference in the leather. It was obvious that she had digitally altered the colors of the leather on her computer to make them look different.

To address what the consumer refers to a bogus testimonials on the Sofaweb.com, we are currently seeking the advise of our lawyers to see what can be done about the consumer's false claims and accusations regarding the testimonials. In order to protect the privacy of our customers we do not publish their entire names, however, each and every one of the testimonials is 100% legitimate.

Regarding our return policy, we do have a restocking fee like most other furniture manufacturers. We offer hundreds of styles and leather/fabric selections, which we custom make just for our customers. We do not stock any items, so everything is made to order. And like most businesses (especially online) we do not pay for the shipping costs of items being returned. This information is NOT a secret, and is easily located in the Policies section of the website.

Based on the leather being identical when we received it back to our factory, we have since concluded that the customer could not afford to buy the furniture and regardless of what she received she was intending on returning it. When she discovered that it was going to cost her money to return the furniture she fabricated a story about the product not being what she ordered and sent us digitally altered images so that we would take it back and not charge her the shipping and restocking fee.