Having spent good money on Laura Ashley's Kingston Sofa and a matching arm chair, in Caitlin velvet fabric, it's disappointing that after only one year of use (based on a single person's use) that all the seat cushions have lost their "guts" in the middle and sag.
On contacting Laura Ahsley's customer service department, the initial response was "we don't guarantee the quality of our sofa cushions beyond 4 months"!!! after my horrified response in return, I escalated my complaint through to supervisor level.
After many more calls and chasing up and finally getting a supervisor to take ownership of the problem, their best suggestion was for me to send a seat cushion to them in Wales for weighing and checking! at my inconvenience and hassle... they reluctantly agreed for me to take it to a store who would then spend a week sending it to customer services and I'd wait a further week for it to be sent back to me.. that would equate to 2 weeks without use of my sofa... I could see little value in doing this since the review of the product would not be independant and on asking how many "cases" result in "inferior" quality, the response was, rarely.. so clearly there was little point in going to all the hassle.
I took the time to take some close up photos of the seat cushions and emailed over to the supervisor on my case... this didn't seem to help my cause, even though she thought it woudl be worth doing...
After further complaining, they reluctantly sent their "own" inspector out to look at the cushions and weigh them on site to ensure that the cushion fillers were of the right material in the first place and to the required weight.. naturally as you can imagine the response was that they were to spec and the inspector filed his report. I refused to sign the paperwork to accept this decision and their response to this end is that they are not obliged to assist any further.
After 6 phone calls, a number of emails later and the visit to my house, i embarked on moving house so had to leave the matter disappointedly.
I have since been to an upholstery and soft specialist in Fleet who has re-filled the seat cushions and transformed them.. they confirmed that the filling laura ashley use is not fit for purpose and they have to re-fill more from Laura Ashley than any other sofa retailer!
A no win situation... lovely looking sofas and chairs.. but quality not there sadly.. and NO customer service after care!
0 comments