vs. SofasWorld.co.uk Part IV - The Ragin' Climax

I recieved a letter toward the end of July, from my "friends" at WorldStores/SofasWorld which I have neglected to scan and post until today.

Draw your own conclusions...

So there you have it. A rare written admission of fault by someone senior at a big company.

Anyone want £25 off online?

vs. Sofasworld.co.uk Part II

Last year I blogged in great detail about my feud with Sofasworld.co.uk here

Since then we have had problems with the sofa starting to sink, a behaviour you wouldn't expect in a couch that was barely 3 months old.

I contacted my "good friends" at Worldstores (the parent company) via their new email contact form - no doubt implemented following a lot of abuse to their customer services email address because I simply didn't have the energy to go through yet another 30 minute hold music festival.

In a shocking twist, they offered to replace the sofa at no charge. We readily accepted and (as history should have taught me) things went downhill from there...

They told us that the new sofa would arrive yesterday and it would be collected by a seperate courier firm. Of course, the collecting courier arrived and took one look at the sofa and ran fast, claiming it was too heavy. The new couch never arrived. I continued to not hold my breath.

Last night (you know, after the couch was supposed to have been collected), I recieved a returns form via email to attach to the couch.

Today, I recieved a phone call apologising for the lack of collection or delivery and promising that everything would happen today and indeed it did.

Approx 40 minutes ago, Sofasworld collected the old corner unit couch and provided us with... two two-seater sofas and a random corner section of a couch, not discovered until the couriers had run away at speed. Colour me unimpressed.

After yet another exciting phone call, I'm now promised ANOTHER replacement for Thursday (which will no doubt mean Friday).

I hate Sofas.

vs. Sofasworld.co.uk (Worldstores)

Seven weeks ago we ordered a nice leather corner sofa from sofasworld.co.uk which is a division of worldstores.co.uk - a group of websites that sell pretty much everything from bedding to playstations.

The sofa was out of stock but be delivered in 2-3 weeks claimed the website. As a concious online shopper I googled the company and.found a BBC news article discussing its success and also some consumer websites rating it 4/5 stars on average.

That was enough verification for me that they were not out to rob me blind so we ordered it and they took.the £600 from my bank.

3 weeks later the sofa had not appeared and the website still listed it as a 2-3 week wait so I emailed the customer services who responded that it was due back in stock the following week and apologised for the delay. Fair enough, these things happen.

Another week passed with nothing so this time I called them and after spending twenty minutes on hold, I spoke with a girl who told me that it was a build to order item coming from Poland and that it would be another week. I wasnt happy about this but only having another week was survivable.

I'm sure you can now guess what happened the following week and the week after that. More calls with the excessive hold times, more emails from me but the same excuses from them. My family had to sit on the floor for over a month because they did not keep contact and advise us of delays and problems.

I finally had enough last week and threatened to cancel my order. The girl put me on hold and when she came back on she had the suspicious good news that it was back in stock.

Then the cycle started over. They could not give me an accurate delivery date. I called up on Thursday to verify that it was out for delivery and they said yes. An hour later we got a call saying it would now be Monday. Saying I was not happy would be an understatement and i made this quite clear to them.

I opened a case with their complaints department (one person who was conveniently on holiday) and threatened them with legal action but the best they could do is deliver on Monday.

Which they did...just. The delivery note said that it was only to go to the door and then we would sort it so the driver just dumped it and ran, there were four feet missing for the sofa and it was a pain to get into the house.

So in summary, don't order from sofas world or any world stores company as you will suffer. You will suffer listening to the endless loop of 5-6 songs when on hold, you will suffer their lies and excuses and will suffer when the product finally limps its way to your door.

If you've found this page through googling because you have already ordered from them. Here are some staff direct dials of team leaders who will be somewhat more helpful than the five call centre staff they seem to have....

Michelle -  Team leader - 0208 408 6268 (Very helpful, deserves a better job)

Michael - Deliveries - 0208 408 6269 (didnt call me when he was supposed to)