Thomasville Furniture Problems with Thomasville Thomasville North Carolina

I bought a CalKing Bedroom set and I was trying to find out how I can tell if the furniture is a Thomasville because the family I purchased it from listed it as Thomasville Bedroom Set. Where do I find the stamp or branding; because all I see is stickers that say Made in China! Did your furniture pieces indicate Thomasville anywhere???

Furniture Brands International (FBN) is a company in big trouble. Those brands include Thomasville Furniture, Broyhill, Lane, LaneVenture, Drexel and Henreand others.

I doubt product quality is remotely on their radar right now.Fraught with internal political battles, middle manager syndrome, and a descructive combination of old-timer employees and high turnover, they appear willing to cut any corners to boost their stock price.  

All in vain -- there stock price has crashed dramatically at current price, over $12/share in or around September 2012, to 1 and change now. 

They've received multiple de-listing warnings from NYSE:

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/blog/2013/07/furniture-brands-gets-another.html

They have an internal problem with racial and cultural intolerance...

http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/archive/1-24-08.html

I'm aware of at least one EEOC case on their books right now with multiple charges.  I'm fairly sure many other employees are simply too afraid to speak out, fearing retaliation, which seems to be their approach.

In june, they received an inquiry from Wall Street, regarding "unusual market activity".  They said their policy was not to comment.

http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2013/06/04/552063/10035263/en/Furniture-Brands-Per-Policy-Does-Not-Comment-on-Unusual-Market-Activity.html

 They managed a spot on the "5 dumbest things on wall street":

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11989849/2/the-5-dumbest-things-on-wall-street-this-week-july-26.html

A recent massive u-turn on their IT infrastructure technology shows they are in panic mode internally.Ralph is quick to talk about "Market Chop" -- blaming their poor performance on market forces.  Well, when the market gets bad, do more with less, and do it more efficiently.  Interestingly, His Ralphness got a raise, regardless of relatively recent massive layoffs.

 The Rosen Law Firm of NJ did announce yesterday that they would be purusing a class action against them

However, this is for purchasers of FBN stock, not consumers.

http://markets.ibtimes.com/ibtimes/news/read?Symbol=321%3A21445797&GUID=24832226

If you've invested, find out more here...

http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-184.html

As an ex-employee myself, I see a company that's like an old tree, rotten in the middle and unable -- or unwilling - to do anything about it. Without a sweeping management change, from the top to the middle managers, that tree is going to fall.

It's very sad for the 8000 employees (or at least those subject to middle manager syndrome) and the investors, but if ever a company has lost its way, Furniture Brands has.

Could they recover? It's conceivable, but unlikely without a massive management change, culling of the 'anything-to-keep-my-job' old-timers, the intolerant, and a rebuild  of of mission, values, and corporate culture from the ground up.  Most likely, the various brands will be sold off.

My Thomasville Queen Ann cherry bedroom, living room dining room sets - I furnished my whole home with it - also came with the caution note about plastics/rubber and their plasticer. It had been necessary for me to start over furnishing my home, and I chose Thomasville because it had such a good reputation. My intent was to invest in furniture that would become an heirloom for my daughter some day. Although the style and workmanship were good quality, the plasticized finish will prevent this furniture from ever becoming the heirlooms I paid the high price for.

Although the sales person never breathed a word about it, the plasticiser caution notes - several of which I still have - were attached to each of the 25 pieces: queen bed, headboard, large dresser, mirror, 2 tall bedside chests, amoire, bombay chest, secretary and hutch, coffee table, sofaback table and 2 stools, large china buffet and hutch, oval dining table with 2 leaves and 6 chairs (2 with armrests), totaling exactly $10,000.

To quote the notes exactly:  Headline: "CONSUMER INFORMATION, Plasticizer Migration." Text: "Plasticisers are an important part of the furniture finish. They are added to the nitrocellulose lacquer to provide flexibility which enables it to shrink and swell with change in temperature. If not added, the finish can crack. Since the plasticizer is part of the finish and can migrate to plastic placemats, rubber feet on appliances, lamps, camera cases notebooks, etc., it is important that non-plastic trivets, placemats, coasters, etc. be placed between these items and the finish. If the above precautions are not taken, the finish can darken, be stained, or permanent blemishes can be created. #239 12/03"

Please consider this quoted note to be an additional rebuttal to the gentleman from Thomasville's denial of the use of plasticizers.

The gravity of the problem is hardly described by the notes. Anything with plastic, vinyl, or rubber sitting on the finish brings the finish into a gelatinous solution which pools on the surface!!! and re-solidifies three-dimensionally to permanently mark it. Here are some examples from my experience: 1. A visitor to my home moved a chair from my oval dining room table. She placed a stack of table linens that had been on the chair onto the table. At the bottom of the stack was a tablecloth still in a plastic envelope. When I discovered it and picked it up several days later, there was a pool of lacquer about the consistency of pancake syrup between the package and the wood.

2. A vinyl briefcase inadvertently fell over to lean against the bedroom bureau so there is now a permanent imprint of the case and its handle on the side of the bureau. 3. I laid a Christmas linen napkin on the bombay chest with the point forward to "protect" the wood from the popular brand resin Christmas building decoration I placed on it. Instead the polyester THREAD!!! used to hem the napkin left permanent diagonal lines toward the point at the front on the surface of the chest! 4. I can't even display silk flower arrangements on my dining room table! I put several long stem silk dogwood branches on the table ON TOP OF a light-weight cotton voile runner. The plastic stems reacted even THROUGH the fabric to mark the whole length of the table!! 5. Some book jackets - especially on pricey "coffee-table" books - are imprinted with an ultra-violet coating imbedded in a printed-on, plastic-like layer. Those destroy the surface of the coffee table, too. So you can't even put a "coffee-table" book on a Thomasville coffee table!!

6. When the furniture was delivered, it was covered with sheets of construction plastic, and my coffee table had an odd, large matte marking on it. It turns out, it had been damaged ALREADY before delivery(!) by the protective plastic! 7. I have to use doilies and runners on every surface, and even they can cause problems (polyester thread, too light weight). If anything rolls past the edge of a doily or runner onto the wood, it mars the surface - SEVERELY MARS THE SURFACE, not just stains or "marks" it.

I can never relax and just lay anything onto any surface in my home without hesitating to ask myself if it's one of the Thomasville pieces. I have to educate (which insults) my guests about putting anything on a surface. I have to check after visitors leave to be sure they have NOT. Recently, I received an ad from Thomasville claiming that buying Thomasville would give me "peace of mind." Buying Thomasville has created constant worry and tension for me.

Why will it never be an heirloom? Here's how they fix the finish: Thomasville sells an aerosol spray to furniture repair people (NOT to customers). The repair person wipes the table to remove any oils from fingerprints, etc. then sprays the entire surface. Again it goes into solution, but is smooth and wet and shiny. When it dries, you have a glassy smooth perfect surface again - until, of course, you commit the sin of USING the furniture!

Thomasville has apparently quit using this plasticizer now - THEY KNOW it's a disaster of a mistake that they ever used it! According to the law, manufacturers must make "spare parts," etc. for ten years for cars, so I'm assuming those laws MAY apply to the spray that refinishes this awful furniture. But how long after that - certainly not by the time my furniture is old enough to be an heirloom - will they continue to make it?

I have a houseful of useless, expensive, trashy furniture sold to me by a supposedly reputable company, Thomasville. I will not waste the money to move it to my next destination. There is nothing I can do with it because my conscience will not allow me to sell it to anyone. Thomasville, where is YOUR conscience?

I found this site hoping to contact Thomasville in hopes they would make this situation right and replace this junk, but reading the accounts of other customers, I suspect that won't happen. If there is a class action pending out there, please contact me to join it!!

Thanks much for your thoughtful response.

Regarding cracks forming in our Thomasville Furniture in less than a year of ownership: We have 12 rooms of fine quality furniture (like we thought we were buying from Thomasville). All of that furniture is submitted to the same heat/air conditioning that we have throughout our house, but we're NOT noticing any cracks in woodworking joinery other than in Thomasville. Quite possibly, the humidity levels from the Chinese factory might be quite different than other furniture that we purchased that was made in the U.S. How many Chinese furniture factories have you ever actually visited? Probably none. According to what I read on the Web many of the Chinese factories are sweatshops, often employing children in the manufacturing processes, and the quality of the manufactured products is often determined by the frequency of the visits of government inspectors which is, more often than not, quite infrequent. Just take a look at http://www.pulitzercenter.org/openitem.cfm?id=701. Does this sound like Chinese factories have carefully-controlled working environments?

The staples in our Thomasville furniture were "deliberately" used in places where customers would NOT likely look. In the more obvious places, where a prospective customer might actually look, Thomasville doesn't use "stapled & glued" construction and does indeed display much better joinery & construction.

The Thomasville furniture tech that came over to our house was the owner of an independent company that Thomasville hired to do their repairs. In addition to working for Thomasville, his company also builds reproduction antiques as well as doing repairs on expensive antique furniture. He said he had over 40 years of experience doing this kind of work -- and yes he definitely did identify over 5 different types of wood species on the "exterior" of our Thomasville furniture -- including 2 Chinese hardwoods that he was unfamiliar with. He pointed to each of the species and didn't hesitate even for a second to identify them. He told us that very little of our Thomasville furniture was actually Cherry, although Thomasville did tell us that our furniture was "entirely made of Cherry". Yes, their sales staff did lie to us!

Thomasville's sales staff also misrepresented their furniture as coming from North Carolina -- when, in fact, it was actually made in China. Another major Thomasville lie. All of the Thomasville product literature that we received concealed the origin of manufacture. In fact, there's no mention of where it's made. If you go to any of Thomasville dealer's Web sites you'll also see the same thing. They never mention where their furniture is manufactured. They apparently have gone out of their way to conceal that their furniture is now made in China.

I did speak with Thomasville's VP of sales and he "denied" that Thomasville ever used a "plasticized" finish on their furniture. That said, when our Thomasville furniture was delivered there was a printed piece inside or attached to every single piece of furniture that said that the finish was plasticized and that it required "very special care" and was easily subject to damage. I don't know if Thomasville still distributes that printed literature with their Chinese-made furniture. We haven't bought any more Thomasville furniture, so I can't really say.

You're right that the fit of the drawers could have been corrected by Thomasville by taking the back of the cabinets off. It is relatively easy -- but, as you mentioned, it's also time consuming. It shouldn't have never been shipped from the factory that way. Thomasville did spend a few hours correcting "some" of our problems -- but they didn't want to take the time needed to fix "all" of them. Instead, they just walked away. Contacting Thomasville's corporate headquarters didn't fix the problems either. In fact, I did contact the president of Thomasville on "several" occasions via mail and email and also their boss. Neither of them ever even acknowledged my correspondence. Have you ever heard the expression "s**t flows down stream" -- when the people at the top don't really care about customer satisfaction, then you can't expect much more from any of their employees.

I also wrote to Thomasville's customer service, and they forwarded my complaint to our local Thomasville dealer. Our local Thomasville furniture refused to do anything further. At this point in time, it was a few months "after" our furniture had been delivered and paid for via VISA so we had no further recourse with our credit card company.

To sum up -- Thomasville mispresented the country of manufacture: they lied about the wood species used in the furniture's construction, they "deliberately" tried to conceal a very large 10" hole in the back of one of our bedroom dressers; they literally walked away from the "fit & finish" problems apparent throughout our Thomasville furniture; and yes, we're still having problems with our Thomasville furniture (i.e., furniture joints starting to separate, etc.) that will likely forever remain unresolved.

Are you a Thomasville dealer? From many of your comments, it sure sounds like you might be. Besides trying your best to defend Thomasville's shortcomings, you also apparently have an intimate knowledge of Thomasville's sales brochures. Hey, it was a valiant effort on your part -- but it's sure hard to defend lies and poor quality.