Furious family forced to sit on garden furniture for weeks after DFS ‘lost’ their new sofa

A furious family claim they were forced to perch on garden furniture for weeks when DFS ‘lost’ their sofa – before sending them a ‘smelly’ loaner sofa. Jessica Glanfield ordered the £3,000 sofa from the furniture company in December and was given a March delivery date, but says the sequel never arrived.

After an alleged second missed delivery promise the following week, the 37-year-old contacted the retailer in a desperate attempt to find her sofa. It was only after walking into the store’s Bristol branch, after sitting on garden furniture for a month, that the store manager revealed that part of her order had been lost in transit .

DFS then offered to send the family a ‘loan sofa’ for the additional ten weeks of waiting while they rearranged the missing sofa – but the dog trainer says the ‘disgusting’ sofa that arrived ‘stinks’ a dirty van. Jessica, from Stroud, Gloucestershire, said: “I stayed home for the birth.

“I make around £300-400 a day and had to give up that income but that’s fine, that’s what you would expect, but that never happened. We called and they promised us another delivery date about a week later.I rang before and they assured me it was coming.

“I took another day off and the same thing happened, it didn’t happen again, so we’ve now lost a minimum of £600 in income waiting for a couch that never came. We also sold our old sofa a few days before the new sofa arrived, so we have had to sit on garden furniture since then.

“My other half is recovering from major surgery and the surgeon said he had to sit in a certain position and he just couldn’t sit comfortably. We couldn’t really sit in the living room or use the front room at all, we just went straight to bed.We told DFS about it and they didn’t care.



Jessica spent £3,000 on the sofa suite

“We drove about an hour to our local store and met the manager who looked into our case and said the sofa had been lost. They now have to re-order our sofa which will take another ten weeks and I don’t even know if it will come then, I just don’t trust them at all.”

Failed deliveries left Jessica, her fiancé and their teenage son dragging garden furniture around their living room after selling their old sofa days before he arrived. After a month of not being able to enjoy their living room and the company admitting that the back of their new sofa had been lost, they were relieved to be offered a temporary loaner sofa.

But when the gray leather two-seater arrived in late April, the family of three were furious not only that they couldn’t all fit on the sofa, but also that it “stank”. The family is now stuck with the used loaner sofa for at least ten weeks while they wait for DFS to reorder and deliver their sofa.

Jessica said: “They sent us this loaner sofa which we were really excited to have, but it popped up and it’s this disgusting, dirty, smelly sofa that they obviously pass around people. I don’t know not what’s worse out of the garden furniture and that shoddy loaner sofa.

“There are three people living here and we can’t sit together because they’ve sent a two-seater sofa and it’s tiny so one of us has to sit on the floor. It’s broken in the middle to that my other half can’t sit on it and the mechanisms don’t work either.

“It couldn’t be more insulting, really. I thought they would have the decency to send us a reasonable sofa. It’s disgusting, you sit on it and it stinks like a dirty van. Now we have to have this for at least ten weeks.”

The mum says she messaged DFS countless online and spent ‘hours’ on the phone with customer service trying to get answers from the company about the status of her order. She claims a branch manager provided her with printouts of his communication with customer service and confirmed that the sofa had been lost, although call handlers never mentioned it.



Exchange of messages between Jessica and DFS
Exchange of messages between Jessica and DFS




Jessica says notes also showed call handlers marked the issue as ‘addressed’ and said ‘no further action required’ although the couch never arrived. Jessica said: “Every time I’ve tagged them publicly on Twitter they always respond with messages to appease us telling you to contact them directly and then when you do they don’t respond for weeks.

“The call centers were useless – there’s no way to talk to the warehouse or the managers and they just lied to us and kept saying it was coming. You don’t bother to call because you can’t get anything from them.

“Nobody ever bothered to tell us they lost the couch – they lost the back of the couch, so god knows how they managed to lose part of the couch and not the other part. It looks like to a story that is never going to end. I have never felt so frustrated in all my life.

Furious Jessica now vows never to shop at DFS again and hopes to let other customers know about her experience with the furniture giant. Jessica said: “We still don’t have the couch and when we finally get the couch we don’t even know if we want it anymore.

“I can’t believe any business can treat their customers so appallingly. I will never touch them again. When we were in the store I made a point of raising my voice to discourage other customers from buying from them.

“I want to go down to the store with signs warning people but I have better things to do with my life.” The couple have become so exasperated by their dire situation that they are now considering asking for a full refund and ordering a sofa elsewhere.

A DFS spokesperson said, “At DFS, we are committed to providing our customers with high quality products and excellent service. Unfortunately, [the customers’] the experience did not live up to the high standards we set for ourselves. Although the vast majority of our customers’ products are delivered on time, in rare cases human error can occur and cause a delay.

“In this case, part of [the customers’] the order was misplaced in transit and unfortunately could not be located. We re-ordered the product for the customer and loaner furniture was arranged for his use in the meantime.

“We sincerely apologize that the loaner furniture provided was not fit for purpose and did not meet customer needs or expectations. We have escalated the issue to our internal team to ensure that control of the quality is respected at all times.

“We are very sorry for their experience and have offered our sincere apologies to the customers. We have agreed to provide them with a full refund and have arranged for collection of the loaner furniture. We hope we have resolved the issue to their satisfaction.”

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