Dunelm Luxury Furniture Dupes & Harvey's Sofa Nightmare

When you think of great sagas – a complicated and long story – you may jump straight to the Star Wars Trilogy, Harry Potter’s fight with Voldemort or the seminal works of Shrek 1, 2 and 3.

However my lovely readers, let me add a new and angry saga to your list – Lotty’s sofa tale, filled with rage, more rage and then blue velvet.

When I moved into my flat three years ago, I got an incredible deal on who little grey sofas. They were worth around £300 each, but a pricing mistake on the Homebase website meant I got them for £30.

They were fine, but small, hard and uncomfortable. They did the job. But one-day last year, my wonderful friend Freddie sent me a link. Louise Redknapp has done a collaboration with Harvey’s and had designed a velvet sofa collection, with my dream sofa in there.

Oh, the sofa was beautiful. It was everything I always wanted. Emerald green, sofa, luxurious – and I could lay out fully. No more sitting up right!

Of course, I wasn’t going to go and buy it straight out. You’ve got to be nuts to buy a sofa from a furniture company at full whack, right? So I waited.

I bought a new sofa from Harvey’s Furniture

I waited and waited, but it wasn’t going down in price until the January sales. There was a 20% discount, so just thought – well, let’s do it!

Not sure if you’ve ever ordered from a Harvey’s etc, but you can’t just pay and get a sofa delivered, they actually build it – so had to wait 10 weeks.

10 weeks came and went, and my boyfriend calls up to arrange delivery. Oh – by the way, even though I bought the sofa, my boyfriend put it on his credit card and I paid him back. The sofa was costing around £1,300, and with an amount like that, if something were to go wrong (and spoiler alert, it bloody well did!), we’d be protected by S75 of the Consumer Act, meaning the credit card company would be liable for the money.

Trust me, Section 75 protection is *chefs kiss* good. Spending over £100 on something, and a credit card is a good option for you (you need to pay it back at the end of the month ideally!) – do it.

Long story short and FOUR months later – thanks to a combo of Harvey’s Furniture not answering the phone, getting confused, not having enough dates, not turning up, cancelling delivery – they called to say THE LOST THE SOFA.

Harvey’s Furniture LOST my sofa

THEY BLOODY LOST THE SOFA. Anyone have a clue how that is possible? They didn’t!

If we wanted the sofa, we’d have to reorder and wait another 10 weeks for them to make it. The boyfriend who is pretty usually laid back, but had reached the end of his tether demanded some sort of compensation. They said they’d discuss this with us after we re-ordered. Which I found a cheeky.

I couldn’t decide what to do. They were treating us badly, but at the same time – what’s another 10 weeks I suppose? That sofa is beautiful.

Then I went on Harvey’s Facebook page and saw hundreds of comments from angry customers saying that the same thing happened to them. So here’s a new rule, see what people are saying about a company on social media before committing to spending your hard earned cash!

Something is up with Harvey’s Furniture

Like honestly – take a look yourself – there’s even a group set up by angry customers! The situations Harvey left people in were awful. I just wanted an upgrade in sofa, but there were disabled people with no furniture kept waiting six months etc.

This got me thinking. Either this is just standard, and Harvey’s Furniture treats their customers like this all of the time OR something was up. How can they lose so many sofas?

I thought there might be a blog on this. So I did a bit of digging. I replied to a few comments on the Facebook page, asking if they’d be up for sharing their stories with me and contacting Harvey’s press office with some questions. They never got back to me and they deleted my Facebook comments.

CHEEKY!

So that was that. It wound me up. I couldn’t be bothered with the sofa anymore, so demanded a refund. Luckily we got it, but others on the Facebook page aren’t as lucky.

So no sofa for me. My very good friend has these beautiful velvet sofas from Sofa.com. She’s had them for pushing 10 years now, so thought maybe I’d just bite the bullet and get one. Here’s the thing – the sofa and the footstool I wanted came to £2,400. YIKES.

It’s not that it’s not good value for money if it lasts 10 years+, but it’s also a lot up front isn’t it? There were no discount codes either, so was prepared to wait.

The same sofa for 1/3 of the price?

THEN! My sister sent me an identical sofa at Dunelm for under £500! There are small differences, but it’s pretty much the same. It’s a bit annoying that you can’t try a sofa out in the shop so you *know* if it’s comfortable, or SEE the colour (I was uhhmming and ahhhing between the emerald green one and the blue one and still not even 100% sure I made the right choice!).

Here’s my new sofa from Dunelm! It’s just been shoved in the living room for a minute – needs cushions/a picture behind it etc

But there were lots of good reviews, some customer pictures – so bought it. And guess what! Instead of the £59 delivery Harvey’s charge, it was only £10 and you get it in just THREE days.

And that was it – no dramas, lovely delivery people – got the sofa. I love it. I honestly have no idea if it will last as long as the one from Harvey’s or Sofa.com – but with such a big cut in price, I can live with it.

AND BREATHE. I didn’t really want to ramble for ages about Harvey’s. In fact, at one point I was so angry I was going to go nuclear. Write scathing posts/pitch the story to the papers/go full investigative journalist – but I’ve calmed down not. I might pick it up again – we’ll see.

Dunelm Furniture dupes

But I had a thought, I love a dupe (and a lot of you do too), so let’s fish out what Dunelm has, that are similar in other shops – but cost less! Oh, at this point I’m here to tell you that I’m not being paid by them/have no freebies etc!