Would you buy a sofa off eBay

[kiana2015]

I need a new sofa and don't really have the funds at the minute for £1,000+ sofa. I've been looking and eBay seem to have new ones cheap, is it too risky?

I've done it before. Or try FB marketplace.

I bought mine from ebay. But it was a private seller not a company so I could check it over, sit on it and make sure it was comfy. I wouldn't just buy one without "road testing" it first.

Not after I heard about how long fleas can live in furnishings no 😭😭😭

The ones I've been looking at seem to be an actual company selling new sofas

We moved, a couple of years back, to a different part of the country. From a reasonable ish part, price wise, to a really really not one. The move obviously murdered our free cash!

Bought a sofa from a company on Ebay, it was about £300, and i tell ya, it sure was a sofa.

The nice folk said on whatsapp i'd be able to check it all over before accepting. Nope, there were two pallets, one i was allowed to check, the other i was allowed to have after confirming i was happy.

The sofa i ordered was grey, the one that turned up was blue.

It turned up at ten past 11 at night.

That said, it was a perfectly reasonable sofa, and for less than a quarter of DFS at the time.

So i guess you pay your money, take your chance!

Our Ebay sofa is going strong 15 years later! Don't just put in "sofa" put in something really specific like "loaf 2.5 seater velvet sofa" - put in known brands that you have heard of and know are a bit pricey in real life.

Ikea ones are very solid and you can get replacement covers really easily too, like an Ektorp 3 seater - this one looks really clean and in pretty new condition for instance - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/276797893787

Honestly, unless I was looking for something with very specific measurements, I would always look to Ebay first for a sofa.

They're the ones I'd be more suspicious off, to be honest. You have no idea what the quality is, and at a bare minimum it DOES cost about a grand to make a decent sofa. If they're selling new ones as a business for £200 - £500, the catch will the the quality (even assuming they're legit).

Look for IKEA, sofa.com, Loaf etc.

This Loaf one will go for more, I imagine, but look! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/176773983658

Then you use shiply.com to get it delivered.

I recently bought one from a furniture charity shop. Perfect condition comfy couch and was £150. I certainly would buy from Ebay

I love buying second hand furniture on ebay, I have a gorgeous MCM Danish leather sofa I bought from a vintage company that sells on ebay, and vinterior as well as their own website (I actually contacted them direct to negotiate a discount). I also have a couple of Ercol chairs that I bought from local individuals who were selling them on ebay and had new cushions made for them.

A reupholstered old sofa in the fabric of your choice is a thing of joy (and no worries about fleas).

We bought ours from Next Clearance for £450.

I got a new sofa from ebay about 8 years ago and it's still absolutely fine! It is incredibly comfy and I'm not allowed to get rid of it 😀.

Ebay is just a way of connecting buyers and sellers it doesn't have any effect on the quality of what you buy though.

You need to be looking at the seller not the method of selling.

Try IKEA so that you can test the sofas out to check for firmness etc before you buy. You can definitely buy a sofa for under £1k at IKEA, they stock all price points.

The quality of IKEA sofas are good & they're a well known company. You won't exactly know who you're buying off on ebay so there's always an element of risk.

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/sofas-fu003/

22 million pieces of furniture are discarded each year in the UK, the only way to reduce that is for all of us to buy second hand and there are lots of good options to do that, whether that is a local auction house, vinterior, online auction sites (of which ebay is the biggest and has clear protection for the buyer), gumtree, FB marketplace etc etc.

You get much more for your money online. For example, a brand new Ercol Evergreen armchair is £2K+ depending on the fabric. You can get the same chair for £50-£500 on ebay and get it reupholstered in exactly the fabric you want for much less than that. You can also get classic designs that Ercol don't make themselves anymore. So which makes more sense, buying a new but low quality piece from IKEA and having to build it yourself then sending it to landfill in afew years because it's not quite right or getting a high quality piece second hand on ebay and being able to customise it so it's perfect for you.