Cratin ordered a micro-fiber living room set from Rooms To Go after being taken by an all-encompassing warranty. Five months later, Cratin began to notice stains on the fabric. Rooms To Go attempted to remove the stains on three separate visits, and then offered to re-upholster the marred piece. Cratin also noticed that the velcro attaching his couch cushion to the couch was coming undone. Rooms To Go again dispatched three technicians who could not resolve the problem, and then offered to reimburse Cratin if he decided to purchase additional velcro from a hardware store. Cratin is furious and wants to raise bloody hell, but to us, it looks like the Rooms To Go is doing their best. We ask you, The Consumerists, to decide who is right, after the jump:

I have been a loyal visitor to the Consumerist for about a year now, and I finally gave in and figured I should get some advice from you about an ongoing situation I’m having right now with the furniture chain, Rooms To Go. It was about 5 months ago that my wife and I purchased a “micro-fiber” living room set from Rooms To Go in Grapevine, Texas. The salesman was very nice and helpful (of course) and sold us an extra 3-year fabric protection warranty. He said that this was how it works….and I quote…

“If you spill anything or get a stain on your furniture, call us, and we will come out and fix it. If it can’t be fixed, we will replace the piece. If the piece is no longer in stock we will refund your money for the whole set, not just the piece.”

That was the gist of it and we fell for it. He also stated that with purchasing the warranty, we were going to have the couches treated with Teflon to make the pieces “virtually un-stainable”…turns out, he should have used the phrase, “stainable”. About 2 months in, we noticed we were getting water stains on the fabric. I thought it was funny that water was staining my couches. They sent somebody out to fix it…one time…two times…and then a third time. None of the technicians could take the stain out. So I called Rooms To Go yet again…this time I was told by the CSR that they only send out a technician 3 times (a fact I was not told by the salesman). It is at that point that it becomes too expensive for Rooms To Go to send out a technician to my home and that they were gonna send me new upholstery for my seats and would send another technician out to RE-UPHOLSTER MY CHAIR! They are going to send someone over to take my furniture apart, replace the fabric, and sew it all back together again, in my home. Now I don’t know if I am right about this, but I am pretty sure they use industrial size sewing machines to sew fabric onto couches and recliners….right? Also, how is this not more expensive than just replacing the pieces?

The second problem is with our sleeper sofa. The cushions (as I found out after I bought it) are velcroed to the sofa bottom. On normal sofa sleepers, the cushions are velcroed and the velcro is sewn into the cushion and material under the sofa bed part. Unfortunately, the material on our sofa is a tarp-like material, so it is not sewn but glued, because if it was sewn, it would tear. After two months of sitting on our sofa, we noticed that our couch cushions would slowly migrate off the couch and onto the floor, since the velcro kept on coming off. They sent someone out..he superglued it….it came off a week later….they sent someone new out….he hot-glued it…it came off a week later….they sent someone new out…he used spray adhesive…it came off! Then when I called they said there was nothing they could do, because under the warranty…it is categorized as “usage” and is not covered! Are you kidding me? I had the couch for 2-3 months and the cushions are falling off! It is not like I am developing a new sport called “Extreme Couch Surfing”! Anyways, we were told we could go buy velcro and fix it ourselves and they would reimburse me, but with their track record, I do not believe I would ever see that money.

After all this ranting, my only question is, what should I do? Find the president’s e-mail address? Better Business Bureau? Get in contact with the state’s Attorney General for Deceptive Sales Practices, since we were told one thing and then provided with another? I am just lost and don’t know where else to go? I just received my first flap of fabric for them to reupholster my chair with, and how much do you want to bet it has not been chemically treated with that Teflon stuff. I paid $300-something dollars for that, and I don’t think it had been done in the first place!

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