Buyer Beware - City Furniture
 

I have the miss-fortune of purchasing furniture at City Furniture here in the Villages. Beware of their - no return policy on any purchase, even if the furniture is defective or does not perform as described the company will not give you a refund. They will not take a return without the 15% and you have 2 days to reselect with the store credit they give you. If you cannot find another item for replacement you are out of luck. Store managers are given no power of over-ride or extending the replacement timeline. Better to deal with a more reputable organization.

So true. As I posted before about City Furniture, they are a nightmare to deal with and are not customer focused. Go to Babettes or some other store that is family run and you can deal with reasonable people.

This is really bad news. As Villagers we're not accustomed to working with a third rate company. I had hoped for better when they took over. We dealt with Showcase Direct and Southern Lifestyles and they were amazing to work with. When we had a problem they were on our side to get it resolved to our satisfaction. They were a first class operation all the way.

Thanks for the warning.

To tell the truth, I am very surprised that they think they can appeal to our market. Thy charge for shipping and do not remove old furniture like Showcase Direct. I was ready to buy four hitches years and they wanted $30 per chair for delivery. I told them where to go.

I literally wince when I have to deal with City Furniture. Damaged furniture. Four and five deliveries to get an entire set. No calls when delivery is delayed. To say their customer service is poor at best is being overly kind.

Bought a King Koil mattress from them during their 4th of July sale. Mattress was of good quality, price was right, salesperson was very helpful and pleasant. HOWEVER..that's where the fun ended. They did not deliver as promised. When they didn't show up I raised purple hell on the phone with their "Customer Service" rep who told me they couldn't make good on their delivery promise because it would "inconvenience" another customer. I took my show on the road the next morning and went to the store and repeated my performance with the store manager. To her credit, the manager did give us some money off our bill for the inconvenience and promised that they would indeed have the mattress at our home the next day. It was delivered as promised. HOWEVER..we had been told that they would take away our old mattress. The delivery drivers refused to take it. I called the store manager on the phone while they were there, and she hemmed & hawed about how if the mattress isn't "pristine" then they wouldn't take it. How "pristine" is a 10 year old mattress? My temper again went into over-drive and this time she gave me the number of a man who would take it away. Said it would cost me $40. She took another $40 off our bill to cover the cost of the mattress removal.

The mattress is a good one. I hope it lasts as long as the last one we replaced. BUT..we will NEVER-EVER-NEVER darken the door of a City Furniture store again!

This is good to know as we will be moving in shortly. There are several items we need to purchase and will pass them by for sure.

Thanks for the feed back

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here and say that I have purchased two bedroom sets recently, on two different occasions, from the Spanish Springs store and everything went very well. We were pleased with the selection, the appearance, the quality, the price, the salespeople and the delivery. Maybe if we had problems like the rest of the posters on here I would feel different.

When I Found Out That....
 

....City Furniture is owned and is an outgrowth of a chain of waterbed stores in South Florida, I thought, "Uh oh". Not too much research determined that it was one of those places that had no brand name furniture and sold with the offer of "buy now, no payments for five years". Oh man, I thought, this isn't like the Southern Lifestyles we had all used and loved.

We were in the market for a couple new sofas and we had shopped "off campus" and found sofas that we liked. But we thought we'd at least give City Furniture a look-see. We went in and explained what we were looking for to the three salespeople who were standing talking to one another. One lead us to an area and gave us a pile of catalogs, telling us, "...see what you can find in these", then returned to chat with her colleagues. We were outta there in a minute and will never return.

There are plenty of good furniture stores both close by and in Ocala and Winter Park, Altamonte Springs and Orlando. We've been particularly impressed with the Ethan Allen store in Orlando and a couple in Altamonte. And of course, Babette's and White Furniture have a nice selections of brand named furniture. We've dealt with both before and can recommend them. Recently, we bought a nice easy chair from a place in Ocala and the transaction went like clockwork. The salesperson-designer was experienced and helpful, the order was placed quickly and efficiently, the price was right, the quality was terrific, and the chair was delivered (free) in about half the time estimated. The delivery guys took the old chair that was being replaced and said they would donate it to a local church resale shop. And for an additional sawbuck, they even moved a sofa from one bedroom to another for us.

The owners of City Furniture are in the process of finding out that a good thing for merchants to know about The Villages is that news travels fast. Of course, the bad thing about The Villages for those merchants that don't meet customer's expectations is also that news travels fast. Check the stories in this chain and if you haven't visited City Furniture, ask yourself if you should. The answer is pretty clear.

We had been regular customers of Southern Lifestyles. City Furniture had their one and only chance to serve us and whiffed...badly. Never again...there are too many good options.

Cross your fingers for me, I purchased a very expensive bedroom set from them. I put it on layaway because I won't be in TV until January. I will probably have it delivered in December and set up with my Home Management company so it will be there when I get there in January. I hope everything will be OK but I am very worried after reading how bad they can be.

I too visited City furniture in LSL and got the feeling that they could care less if I purchased something or not. Best thing we can do is as a community is spend our money elsewhere. They will get the hint.

Certainly everyone has their own experience and opinion. However, I recently dealt with City Furniture and had an excellent experience which included: on time and careful delivery, advance calls and follow up calls to check service. I know this company from South Florida, and they are not a fly by night company. Perhaps they are adjusting to their presence in the Villages even in terms of building their inventory and other suprport framework. But I can only say that my experience was excellent and I will buy from the again and recommend them to my friends.

Two years ago I purchased a motorized love seat from Kane's Furniture in Ocala. They guarantee their furniture for life and they mean it. About a year after we had the furniture, the motor quit working. I called the store and they scheduled a repair man who came out and replaced the transformer box. It worked like new and there was no charge.

No tax!!
We bought our furniture here in Ct during a big sale. We bought for the entire house. Because we were sending out of state to Florida, we didn't have to pay tax. We paid for delivery but it amounted to less or just about what the taxes would have been. We got a great deal from Raymour & Flanigan.

We highly recommend White's Furniture on 441/27. Family owned and really nice to deal with. They don't have the selection of City Furniture. They do carry Jameson mattress which are excellent! We have very bad dealings with Rooms To Go in Ocala.

I moved down from Jersey ordered my living room, dinette, bedroom, on line from rooms to go and scheduled it to be delivered exactly 28 days from order
date everything was delivered on time, assembled, place cleaned up, everything went perfect, I still can't believe how smooth everything went.

We have bought from City Furniture on three separate occasions. Each time we were treated well. Have used both stores. Delivery was the next day for each purchase. Driver coming from south Florida each time. Hopefully they will set up a warehouse somewhere up north if these stores do well.

There was an area on the headboard purchased that showed some flaw in the finish. We notified CF immediately and a refinish repair was set up. The area was small and the refinish didn't take long, though the refinishing materials didn't have a fragrance I enjoy....;). Repair was completed to our satisfaction.

I'm sorry some of you have had unpleasant experiences with the company. We have dealt with helpful, courteous salespeople each time and have had extremely quick delivery.

Same with me, will pass........... Thanks for post.

Our salesperson could not have been more helpful or pleasant. It wasn't until things got turned over to delivery & customer "service" that everything went haywire.

Our salesperson was great as well. A transplant from Southern Lifestyles. But was powerless to assist. Store manager was useless and while we were there was more concerned in ordering lunch than helping his salesperson and customer.

Now I'm Worried
 

I am in the same boat as a previous poster in that we ordered furniture while we were at TV (bedroom set and a wall unit) for delivery in January, once we are moved there. I hope we are among those who are satified customers...

Just spent some time reading reviews for City Furniture from Consumer Affairs.com and Yelp.com concerning customers from all over the state. The comments seem to reflect the experiences here. The ratio is about 4:1 with 4 write-ups being very unhappy with CF to one write-up saying that they had a positive experience, so it seems this is not a Villages only problem, it seems to be state-wide.

I hope they read the notices, and realize they have to improve their service to stay in business. A bad reputation will kill just about any business.

My City Furniture Experience
Yesterday I shopped for an entertainment center at both City Furniture & Babette's - at City Furniture, the floor sample had 4 of the 6 drawers that didn't glide easily - I had to tug to open the 4 drawers. When I questioned the sales person - she immediately suggested that I purchase a home warranty - she told me my only other option - once the item was delivered to return it for a 15% restocking fee. I questioned her further as I didn't think that could possibly be my only options - she restated the two options and then suggested that I should probably "shop elsewhere) !!!

I talked with Babette’s 1st today to make sure that their policy is not the same as City Furniture….thankfully it isn’t- As the sales person told me….we want to make sure our customers are happy as we know they will come back and will refer their friends (so surprising that City Furniture doesn’t know that!) IN any case, the policy at Babette’s is that their furniture is under warranty for 3 years and they would send a service person out to take care of a simple drawer glide issue immediately. The only time they charge a restocking fee is if the purchaser decided once the item was in the home that he/she didn’t like it.

I then called customer service for City Furniture at their main headquarters in South Florida. The person I spoke with was surprised by the information I was given yesterday and confirmed for me the store policy – I would have 3 days once the item was delivered to call to get the drawer glides fixed. I would not have to pre-purchase a warranty. Once the 3 days were over, I would be out of luck – but…that policy makes more sense than the information that I was given last night.

Obviously, I will NEVER purchase from City Furniture – but…as a result of my phone call, I was assured that someone from headquarters would contact the Spanish Springs store and review the policy with them.

As is my policy – I never am upset when I need to get something like this taken care of – the City Furniture rep wasn’t threatened and therefore listened carefully to me – asked clarification questions and made appropriate decisions.

It would have been more cathartic to scream & bluster, but..I’ve found that in the long & short run – being nice pays off!

I bought a side board from City Furniture with FREE delivery. I researched this exact piece of furniture and compared the piece to 2 different furniture/design show rooms back home. Found this piece to be $300 less than the lowest price back home. Delivery was as expected with no issues. I received a follow up call from my sales person shortly after delivery.
So, what happened to Southern Lifestyles? Are they no longer in business? Why not?

People are much more likely to take time and write a review for something that displeased them than if everything was good as expected.

I use product and service reviews to look for obvious negative trends. Even though most people won't take the time to post a positive review and you just can't please some people, I find that if you spot a common thread of negative experiences, you are best to just shop elsewhere. Life is too short.

I don't know what I am doing wrong because everywhere I go for shopping the people are very nice and never I had any problems with delivery, quality and service. Not with City Furniture and some years ago with Southern Living. No negative experience at all (sigh).

I agree with a previous poster about White's Furniture. Bought an entire bedroom set, noticed as it was being delivered that the headboard had a problem with the finish. The delivery person called about this, within 1-2 days the inspector came in saw the problem, and provided the options. Since I was not interested in having the head board refinished in the house, they replaced the head board within a week. Great service.

Although I like Babettes be aware the have a 25% restocking fee. Remember if you return furniture they can not resale as new.

We had gone to Southern Lifestyles for a bedroom set, a dining room set and a living room set.......but they were out of those sets and would have taken about eight weeks. We ended up at Showcase Direct for most things, Southern Lifestyles for end tables and coffee tables only and White's Furniture for bedding. Actually, we met a lovely sales lady that lives in The Villages. For all three stores, we were most happy with the prices and especially the delivery. Glad we did this four years ago. I think the best bet now would probably be White's at this point. If we were to sell turn-key and buy another (empty) house, that's probably where we would go.

Oh No!
 

We recently purchase a new home in The Villages and we spent considerable time selecting furniture from City Furniture. We comparison shopped (Babettes, Family, and Whites) and thought it made more sense to buy local so we were going to place an order with City next week. Now we're not sure what to do since it is a full house of furniture and given what it will cost we don't want trouble with quality or service. Yikes! Help....

Wr had a fantastic experience with Carlos from city furniture in spanish springs. Dining room set and matching picture. We could not be happier!

It has been my experience that you HAVE to read the fine print on any contract with any of the furniture companies, City, Bababettes etc. It is buyer beware and know what you want...refunds and returns that a common up North, do not exist for the Villages..at least in my experience

We puchased dining room, nook, and master bedroom furniture from City Furniture. The delivery staff was really efficient and courteous. The pieces were in excellent condition when delivered. A set of brackets was missing from the china hutch. Customer Service wanted the drivers to return the whole thing for redelivery. The drivers headed off a dissatisfied customer by getting a set of brackets from the store in LSL and coming back to install them. We really like the furniture and will buy additional matching pieces for the living room in the near future. Their drivers saved the day.

As much as I've groused about City Furniture, I have to give them credit when due. Clients purchased an entire houseful of furniture from them. I expected it to take several deliveries to get everything, with missing parts galore (their standard M.O. To date).

Delivery was on time and almost complete. The only issue I noticed was a slight blemish on an end table, which was touched up by the delivery guys right then. A couple of lamps, coffee table and sofa table were out if stock. David, the sales rep and I agreed that it would be best to have lamps be delivered to the showroom so the homeowners could have some lighting when they arrived.

There was a confusion about the tables being in and available for delivery by customer service. David was on top of it, got it all straightened out and the remaining tables will be delivered tomorrow afternoon. All in all, a pretty satisfactory experience this go- round.