Dot Patio & Home

UPDATE:
I took my broken chair back to the DOT location where I purchased it about 10 months ago. I could not find my receipt and I was very apprehensive about having to go through this.
However, I was very pleasantly surprised when the store representative took a look at the broken chair and said 'well, I have one more in the back' after which he went to the back, brought out the chair, and then put it in my car.
Needless to say, I was happy with the experience, not to mention quite relieved.
The rep told me that the store has recently come under new management (him) and that he doesn't really bring in this teak furniture anymore because he's seen that it doesn't hold up well.
Kudos to him. I will visit the store again with confidence, and I am changing my rating from the original rating of '1'.

Here is the original post from a few days ago:
I have made 2 purchases at DOT furniture over the past two years. The first was a cast metal bench (I would say cast iron but although that's what it looks like, I'm not sure). I bought it on clearance for about $60 and it has held up fine so far.

In contrast, I spent over $1200 on a teak table with 10 chairs. It was delivered to me in the fall, and I stored it on a concrete deck covered in tarps over the winter. I stored the chairs wrapped in their original plastic in my shed over the winter. By the time I opened up the set for use in the spring, there was already damage. The wood on the table was warped, resulting in an uneven surface. On some parts of the chairs you could see that the original wood chosen for the piece had unsightly knots and other damage-- why would they deliberately use a weaker piece of wood in the construction of outdoor furniture. By the way, the set was perfect in the showroom. There were two additional chairs that were part of the set but in the back of the store which I did not inspect.
I have oiled the set for preservation and beauty, because it lost color right away. Isn't teak supposed to never warp? That's whenI found out that there are different grades of teak. Clearly this was not the highest.
The warping of the wood has also affected our ability to take advantage of the extendable nature of the table. The parts are very hard to pull apart and fit together again.
As a last straw, my 35-lb daughter was sitting on one of the chairs yesterday when she announced 'look, the chair broke!' I couldn't believe it. A piece had actually broken right out of the seat of the chair!
I intend to bring the chair back to the store today and see what they will do for me. I will update after.

I purchased a patio aliminum table and chairs. Within a couple of months some of the pillows faded. A year later the aluminum began peeling off some of the chairs.. I've had much cheaper sets that held up a lot longer than this expensive set that I purchased from Dot. The company is not very customer friendly so don't expect much help from them if you expect them to take some action or responsibility for their poor quality products. Buyer beware!

We purchased our patio furniture at the end of the 2010 season (September) for $1200 (originally $2000). We brought it home, inspected each piece and then stored it indoor over the winter. The following Spring we were very excited to get it out and set it up on our patio. Within the first 3 weeks one chair failed (legs bent) and we had to send it in for repair. Fortunately we still knew where our warranty was and so the took it in with no problems. Dot-Patio had our chair for 6 weeks when I finally called to see if it would be finished soon only to find out that the chair was sitting in their back room (for how long, I don't know and why no one called us to come get it is also a mystery). OK, so we get our chair back. Yea! A few weeks later 2 more chairs fail. Same thing, bent leg. Well at this point I am getting upset. We only have 3 people in our family and we do not host rowdy parties every weekend. We only use the patio set to eat dinner or read the newspaper and enjoy a cup of coffee. Fortunately we are still within the 1 year warranty period so we take them in again. (side note, the Newmarket store where we bought the set is now on their 3rd manager since we bought the set; personally I think this in and of itself says something about the company) So we take the two chairs into be fixed and I start contacting the President of the company (whose phone number was on the website). We played telephone tag a few times and finally we got to speak in person at which point he insisted he never called me (even though I had the message on my answering machine) He was a bit rude (I'm being nice here :) and basically passed me onto the customer service department (whom I had also called 2 times without hearing a response) After several weeks of emails and phone calls, the long and the short of it was that they in no way, shape or form saw it as an issue they needed to rectify ant further than fixing the chairs (which they tried to make sound like they were doing us a favour when the chairs were still under warranty). They maintained that there was no manufacturing defect in the chairs even though 3 of 6 had failed in less than 3 months use. A 50% success rate seems a little low if you ask me. They made no effort to try to replace the chairs, offer a discount on new chairs or extend the warranty for us which tells me they know their products are not worth standing by. Not only will we never buy anything from them again I would discourage anyone else from buying from them unless they want to spend $1200 on a set that will not even last 1 season. The patio set sits on our porch this year, it looks beautiful, but I am scared to sit on any of the seats lest they fail again and then we will have to pay out of our own pockets to get the cheap construction fixed since our warranty is over. Save yourself the aggravation and buy somewhere else!

2 seasons ago I purchased a stell gazebo. I had to buy all the parts separately, the roof, the raincover, the screens. It was expensive. I took it all down at the end of season and stored it all carefully in my home. In one season the rain cover disintegrated, the screens and roof developed tearing. I went back to buy another rain cover as the roof is useless without one in the rain due to heavy leaking. I complained about the previous cover, nothing! I found out that not only did they have the same covers that had fallen apart, but they were charging $30 more for it the next year!! The manager advised that they were aware of the poor quality of the rain covers, and improved on them, however they were more than 3 x the cost of the original one! Poor service, poor products, I am never buying anything there again. No warranties, customer satisfaction is clearly not a priority. Stuff looks good, is expensive and is not made to last and they don't care!

We purchased a brand new in the box wooden tilt umbrella. We noticed last week that it was faded already as we had tilted it and it became so obvious at that time.

I spoke to a couple of people at different locations. They are suggesting that umbrellas fade...hmmm, when I explained that our old umbrella which was a darker shade hardly did in 3 years, they have nothing but blame for the elements, when I explained that I face easterly exposure in a lush neighbourhood, again, the Dupont location manager stated that well, it's an entry level umbrella. I will probably never step foot in the Dot stores again. I did purchase this umbrella on sale. I only wish I had not purchased the patio furniture from them as they obviously are not customer focused as one would expect from a neighbourhood shop. I would recommend Lowes or Costco as they truly have the respect that customers have come to appreciate, not only standing behind their product, but making amends unlike Dave who hardly noticed when I told him he had lost a customer.

Our patio set we purchased from Dot Patio began to break down - everything from the umbrella to the fabric on the chairs, to the finish on the table. We returned to receive warranty repair, only to wait 6 months to receive our furniture back. This is completely unacceptable. I tried to be polite, but the staff seemed not to care that it was taking that long, or that I paid top $ only to receive poor quality merchandise. If you're looking to replace your set every year, then this is the store for you! But if you're like me and don't use your patio set in the winter, you're much better off going to Lowe's - not only are their staff much friendlier, but the quality is similar for a much lower price.

I got the extendable table and 12 chairs and a lazy suzan. Quality was good, I just have to refinish the top of the table and it will be like new.

I attended the DOT warehouse sale to purchase some patio furniture in the off-season. I expected prices to be better than average given the time of year, but did not expect to find such an exceptional selection of patio sets and loungers at such low prices! Fully adjustable chaise loungers were priced under $100, and I picked up an entire patio set (table and four chairs) for under $500. Although there were some scratch and dent models for sale, the set I purchased was brand new. I highly recommend DOT for outdoor furnishings--the quality is above and beyond what you find in some of the big box stores, and the prices can't be beat!