"We went to talsma the end of February. We were told 8 to 10 weeks before we would receive our furniture . We paid cash, and are still waiting for our furniture. It is now the middle of July. Every time we call they just keep telling us it is not in. "
"We bought a Best brand reclining sofa from Talsma’s this spring. The salesman Luc told us it was restuffable, which was nice because our old sofa wasn’t; but we were a little worried too. We told Luc we didn’t want to have to service it right away & asked him how the sofa would wear. He told us it wears really well & would be quite a while before it’d need stuffed.
The sofa arrived on 7/2/12. 1 1/2 weeks later we noticed the outside seats had sunk 3.5 inches more than the middle seat. The cushions had totally collapsed & the sofa wasn't even 2 weeks old! Plus the 3 seat backs didn’t line up. Our old sofa is 9 yrs old & only started showing wear a 2 yrs ago, & the backs still line up perfectly. Wear this excessive was unacceptable & we called Talsma’s to request a refund. The CSR said we needed to try servicing it first. They sent a tech out & the guy was at our house less than 5 min. He lifted a footrest, wrote something on a paper, told us he was going to order more stuffing for it & left. I asked him if he sees this issue a lot with this sofa, and he said no; but the way he said it told me he saw it way more than he let on. We spoke with reps from other stores & they all said this sofa will probably need to be re-stuffed again before long, as it's filled with a material called Dacron.
Even though they would fix it under warrantee, we just couldn’t believe that a sofa needed to be restuffed after ONLY TWO WEEKS! We decided we didn’t want it fixed; we just wanted to return it & find another sofa. We called Talsma’s on 7/21 and requested a refund. The manager Doug told us this wear was normal, & even he needed to have his sofa restuffed within the first month (this contradicts what Luc said, so who was lying?). We told him the seat backs don't line up & he told us all reclining sofas do that. We sent him pics of our old sofa proving his statement was false. On 7/23 Doug emailed & said he got ok’d to exchange our sofa. We emailed telling him this sofa was the only one in their store that we liked, so we just wanted to return it. He emailed saying he wouldn’t return it & if we didn’t exchange it then we’d have to settle for fixing it.
On 7/23 we filed a BBB report against the store. Talsma’s responded a few days later & they basically parroted what Doug said, that Dacron filling in sofas is expected to collapse & they claimed we refused to allow them to fix the sofa. We never had the chance to refuse service; the parts hadn’t even arrived yet!
On 8/3 the svc dept called & told us our foam cores were in & they wanted to come out and fix the sofa. So now there’s a discrepancy on what needs fixed; Doug said it’s the Dacron filling & the svc dept said it’s the foam cores.
The BBB report wasn’t getting us anywhere, so we decided to go around Doug & talk to the owner hoping he’d be more reasonable. On 8/13 we spoke to Tim Talsma. We told him what had happened & asked for a refund. He had the AUDACITY to say “we COULD’VE worked that out but not anymore because you tarnished my reputation by filing a BBB complaint.” The owner of a large, profitable business was acting like a child because we filed a BBB report against his store. If his employees had taken proper care of their customers in the first place, we wouldn’t have “tarnished his reputation.”
We added this info to our BBB report & Talsma’s never responded. At this point, the BBB has closed our complaint as “unresolved.” They’re ruining their own reputation by not responding to the BBB report. If they had responded & the BBB thought their response was appropriate, then it wouldn’t hurt their reputation. But by not responding at all, that alone is hurting their reputation.
9-4-12 In reply to Talsma's response to my review: We tried resolving the issue with you guys in "a private setting" and got nowhere. That's why we filed the BBB complaint and posted this review online. I think we'll get better results in public."