As some of you might know I have recently bought a new sofa from CSL, it was a really nice dark brown leather corner unit, that was delivered while I was at SES New York, so about 4 weeks ago.

The guys in the store were really friendly, if not sometimes over friendly, but the sales guy we ended up buying from was really knowledgable and knew his sofas. He even knew from our description what DFS sofa we were replacing. The delivery was within 2 weeks and we got regular updates on the due date. The delivery guys, according to Becky, were really professional and efficient. All going well so far. Then last Saturday I sat in the corner and CRACK I was nearly on the floor. The corner had collapsed!

We knew we had a 5 year warranty on the suite but when you started to look into the warranty process and other comments on the web it started to make us really panic. If you search for CSL Sofas the top 10 is littered with complaint sites. Loads of horror stories about how bad the customer services were and how tight their T’s & C’s are that if you have pets, kids or even sit on the sofa that any issue is pretty much classed as wear and tear so they don’t do anything. So we thought we were in for a fight.

We got through to the store on Saturday who said they’d get their customer services to call on Monday, but they phoned that afternoon to say an guy would be out on Thursday to inspect it. I have been in London today, but Becky waited for the inspector … who actually turned out to be the repairer / experienced upholsterer, who looked at the sofa… said it was a fault and spent the next hour and a half fixing it. His only comment was that the piece of wood that had been used as the support was a bit poor quality as it had a knot in it where it had snapped. He put a much better piece of wood in and extra screws. The sofa is as good as new and is still covered by the full 5 year warranty. All hassle free.

So I’d just like to say if anyone is considering buying a sofa that whatever you read about CSL to take it with a pinch of salt as it were. People with a complaint are more than willing to publicise the fact but if they are delivering 200 sofas a day there must be alot of happy customers. Think of Ebuyer a few years ago, how non existent their customer services were and the phone number on the site never worked … and then look at them now. Companies can change and shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush forever.