This has been, without question, the worst customer service experience I have ever encountered.
After waiting seven weeks for my sofa to be manufactured, DFS arranged a delivery date. They simply didn’t turn up. No delivery, no meaningful communication, and no explanation. In total, three separate delivery dates were arranged, and on every occasion DFS failed to deliver as promised. Between myself and the company, there have now been well over 20 phone calls, countless emails, and hours of my time wasted simply trying to get them to fulfil what should have been a straightforward order.
When a sofa did eventually arrive, it was the wrong one. I then discovered that DFS intended to deliver this same sofa to the customer who had actually ordered it, despite it having been in my home for almost a month. Their solution was reportedly to offer that customer a £50 discount as a “gesture of goodwill”. In my view, once a sofa has been delivered to the wrong home and remained there for nearly a month, it is no longer a brand-new product. I would certainly not be happy receiving what was effectively a second-hand sofa, regardless of any discount.
From there, everything went from bad to worse.
After arranging yet another delivery, the correct sofa finally arrived—but it was stained. Rather than replacing a defective, brand-new sofa, DFS sent an engineer to clean it. Not only did the stains become even worse, but the engineer also managed to cut through the thread securing one of the sofa’s buttons, causing further damage to a sofa that should never have left the warehouse in that condition.
Following this, DFS eventually agreed to refund me. However, even then they failed to turn up to collect the sofa on the agreed date, once again without any notification, explanation or apology. It is astonishing that a company can repeatedly fail to honour appointments while expecting customers to continually rearrange their lives around them.
Perhaps most disappointing has been DFS’s complete failure to deal with my complaint properly. My formal complaint remains unresolved. It has not been properly acknowledged, promised escalations never happened, emails have been ignored, and the company has repeatedly failed to follow its own published complaints procedure. I have had no option but to refer the matter to the Furniture Ombudsman.
What is equally concerning is the apparent attitude towards consumer rights. A refund for supplying faulty and damaged goods is not a gesture of goodwill—it is a legal obligation. Yet throughout this process, DFS has behaved as though resolving issues caused by its own mistakes is an act of generosity rather than complying with its statutory responsibilities.
This isn’t a case of one unfortunate mistake. Mistakes happen. This is a consistent pattern of incompetence, poor communication, broken promises, missed appointments, damaged goods, failure to follow complaints procedures, and a complete disregard for customers’ time.
I have wasted countless hours taking time out of work, making over 20 phone calls, rearranging my schedule around appointments that never happened, repeatedly explaining the same issues to different people, and chasing responses that should have been provided proactively. The wrong sofa was delivered, the replacement arrived damaged, the attempted repair made it worse, and even the agreed resolution has been mishandled.
For a company of DFS’s size and reputation, this level of service is simply unacceptable. I cannot recommend DFS to anyone and would strongly advise potential customers to look elsewhere.