HOM furniture...will it ever end?

Warning, this post is of the whining variety. Yes, I'm very thankful for what we have, and what we have the ability to have, and understand that in the current economy ANYONE is at risk of loosing it all in a heartbeat. But still....I'm irritated....

You may remember my posts about HOM furniture, and the issues we were having with them. Well, let me tell you the latest....

First, we received a full refund for the entertainment center, but hadn't been able to find anything to replace it. We paid over $2,500 for this thing, and bought the TV afterward. We picked THIS entertainment center because it could be completely closed, protecting the expensive electronics it held from flying remotes when Angela gets into a mood. We were also able to lock it so that she couldn't open it if we didn't want her to. Since HOM didn't have anything else that suited our needs (that we could close and lock and hold the huge TV we bought to go on the other one), and after MUCH negotiation, they gave us our refund.

But there was still the issue of the leather sectional, which we also paid over $2500 for. Both Dean and I loved our sectional, but we didn't like the defects! So HOM agreed to send us "replacement pieces" for the sectional. The sectional had one love seat, and one chair that were defective. (the color was peeling off the piping on the seams. The rest of the couch was dyed leather, as ALL the parts were supposed to be. But the piping was painted vynly instead) When they say "replacement pieces", what does that mean to you? To me it meant they were going to replace those two pieces of the sectional. BUT I WAS SO WRONG! When the tech showed up in September, he arrived with two COVERS that he was going to sew onto the couch. Yeah, they were new leather COVERS...the he would sit in my living room and SEW ON to the couch! Ummmmm NOT HAPPENING! I am not dumb enough to believe that this couch would EVER be the same again.

We spent THREE months dealing with HOM again, but they would not budge. They would not give us a refund on the couch, instead offering us a store credit. So three weeks ago Dean and I went to pick out a new couch. I don't know if they really didn't have anything I liked, or if I was just determined to not like anything in the store. It's all crap in my mind. Anyway, Dean found a sofa/loveseat/ottoman that he liked. It's ok. We had about $400 left over so went looking through the store to figure out what else we could buy. Well, the following week everything in the store went BIG sale, so we went back and had the price dropped significantly, leaving us enough to also get an entertainment console for under the TV (still bums me out that we can't get what we really NEED for the tv) with a few dollars left so Dean picked out a couple accsent candles. LOL

We weren't expecting anything to be delivered until Dec. 14th, but they called the day before Thanksgiving to say they could come today. So they arrive, and one of the guys was really quite annoying. He asked why they were picking up the sectional, "What's wrong with it?" he asked? I showed him where the color was peeling off it. "Oh, that'll happen with heavy usage." HEAVY USAGE? This stuff started peeling TWO MONTHS after we got it! Then he commented on "yeah, if you don't spend the money on the good stuff, that's what happens." Ok...this is just a delivery guy right?

They bring in the couch, and I hate it. It is exactly what we ordered, so they got that right. I just hate it because I really liked our sectional. Not only that, but we decorated around the color of our sectional (that was kind of a cherry brown), and this one is very much the wrong color for what we've done in the living room.....sigh.....But, it doesn't have any defects that we can see, so that's good, right? Be thankful Leah, just be thankful.

Then they bring in the enterainment console. They barely had it unwrapped from the plastic and I can see two problems with it. First, there is a big (3-4 inches) scratch across the top of it that someone has tried to cover with a TOTALLY different collor stain! (like, this is light brown and they used something close to BLACK) and then there's a nick off the front that they tried to cover with yet another color. I then checked all the doors and see that where they have GOOPED on stain, it's already flaking off, and once one of the doors is closed a couple of times it's going to have big chips in it.

We had the delivery guys take the console back, and since it's in stock a different one will be delivered tomorrow. The annoying guy *almost* had me speak my mind to him when he made more comments. I'm going to talk to customer service about this, because it was totally uncalled for by one of their DELIVERY guys. I'm so disgusted with the furniture industry as a whole right now. But he is right though, we're buying CRAP, yet paying a lot of money for it! I'd love to find a store that sells decent stuff. There are a couple, but we'll be spending significantly more than the $6,000 we spent for crap.

By the way, if you're in MN, all the stores (Schneidermans, HOM, Becker, Slumberland) order from the SAME companies and the same catalogs. We know...we've been in every one of them and looked through all their catalogs! So don't think you're going to see something in one store that you won't see in another. They only difference you MIGHT find is the price, and if you tell them that Store A will sell it to you for $x, you're likely to get the price down even more. But again, the stuff is all crap. You're better off to find some amish guy to build you from 100% wood (no laminate, no filler, no but solid wood!) and get it exactly the way you want.
As for us, we're still looking for that Amish guy.

*edited to add*: This post gets A LOT of traffic from google searches. If you've also bought from HOM furniture, and had problems, please leave a comment!