Norwalk The Furniture Idea

As an interior designer I have sold Norwalk but the quality dropped dramatically in 2007. I ordered a sofa, chair, and upholstered ottoman. The cushions became sloppy in the first month. I finally took my pieces to an upholster for a repair after repeated attempts from the company. The upholster completely took my pieces apart; added more padding and completely remade all cushions. Over a thousand dollars later I finally have comfortable, good looking pieces. I would never specify Norwalk Furniture for clients.

In 2002 I purchased 2 leather sofas with the intent of having these to pass down. After 9 years all 6 cushions started falling apart,cracking,tearing etc. I have seen leather furniture over 30 years old and was hoping mine would be the same. Buyer beware!!

Purchased sofa, loveseat and chair from Norwalk in Spring of 2006. Cushions on sofa started to sag after about a year and they came back twice to replace the cushions. Then they moved out of Florida. I had the foam replaced one more time by an upholstery company. However, the lining under the sofa came loose a few years ago and I stapled it back up. The material looks so worn (only 2 older adults live here) that even the carpet cleaning person said it wasn't worth cleaning. Today, we purchased a new sofa and loveseat. Will keep the chair and pillows (which were extremely costly) for now. Never, ever, but from Norwalk. Over the years I have had much less costly furniture last much longer. Very disappointed.

Like other reviewers comments -- be wary of ordering from Norwalk. We had an extremely pleasant sales experience with a sales associate at the Norwalk Burlington store. But then there have been many layers of deception and frustration. First, although we picked our furniture from the Norwalk (manufacturer is in Ohio)catalogue -- what we were not told was that the store used a lower quality manufacturer located somewhere near Vaughn. We are all for Canadian made -- but we thought were paying a premium to get the Norwalk quality workmanship. Our furniture was ordered November 2008 -- we were told it would be delivered within 8-10 weeks. It was delivered to the Stoney Creek warehouse in May 2009. We rejected the furniture at the warehouse -- seems were not matched, stripes were wavy (not straight) -- many many complaints ... we loved the design and choice of fabric -- just the workmanship was awful. We have made repeated requests to have our deposit refunded. Neither the store manager or the president of the company will return our calls.

Fellow consumers, be warned if you are considering Norwalk Furniture Idea. The only idea they have is how to take your money!

In December, 2007, Norwalk took $8,407.76 of our money, part of which was for a leather couch that was so defective even they didn’t want it back and approximately $5K of which was to “lock in pricing”. We ended up taking Norwalk to court and was finally able to reach a settlement. No we did not get all our money back but, after over a year of this agony, we just wanted to get back whatever we could.

The Terms of the Court Settlement required Bill Robertson, owner of the Norwalk store on Adelaide in Toronto, to pay the settlement amount, in full, on or before Friday March 6, 2009. When that day came, Robertson provided 3 post-dated cheques – which is in breach of the Court Settlement. He told our lawyer that “his business is in the toilet and that’s the best he can do”. He also threatened my lawyer that, if we were to get a judgment against him, he would put a stop payment on the post-dated cheques. My lawyer thinks that Robertson was just being spiteful. Whether Robertson’s business is “in the toilet” or he is just a mean spirited individual, do you really want to do business with someone like that?

Here are some of the things you need to be aware of:

• We had 5 industry experts assess the leather couch that Norwalk delivered to us – all of them told us that the only thing worth salvaging from the couch was the $100 frame; they were all appalled at the numerous defects in the couch.
• Norwalk will tell you that they have to send their Quality Assurance guy (Manny) to look at your furniture piece before they can provide you with a remedy – this will take several weeks before Manny finally shows up; in Court, Robertson told us that they don’t have anybody in Quality Assurance and that Manny is just a driver!
• Robertson has a tendency of hanging up on you and then refusing to return your calls, even when you try to communicate with him by fax and letters.
• “Locking in pricing” means you have just forfeited your money.
• Darrin Sutton, who works in the Adelaide store, has a side business in home renovations – he will insist on coming to your home because he wants to see what business he can drum up for himself.
• Darrin provided us with a “design” for our basement that totally disregarded the supporting wall and did not include the types of rooms we wanted – in other words, he couldn’t care less what you want; his so-called design was completely useless, required us to get all new furniture, and he gave us a quote of $133K to implement it.
• These are just some of the highlights (low lights?) of our very nasty experience with Norwalk.
• We can support all of these statements with written documents.

Another term of the Court Settlement forbids Robertson, and anyone associated with him, to have any contact with us. Let’s see if he can restrain himself from responding to this testimony or will he breach yet another condition of the Court Settlement.

Our couch came with under-stuffed back cushions, and after a few months the fabric on the throw cushions has started to fail. It took many calls over several months to get someone from the company out to look at the couch, and a couple more months to get things fixed.

Darren was very patient in guiding us from choosing the style, fabric, arm options etc.

We got a call a week earlier than expected delivery date. The delivery guys even came with floor saver pads for adhersion under the legs.

These people are unbelievably amazing! Every time I go in this store the people are so helpful and friendly. They can customize anything!!! So you like a table but not the legs of it? No problem! Colour? Not a problem, they have so many different stains for tables and fabrics for furniture. There was not one thing that I wanted to change that they couldn't accomodate, and I am a very fussy person when it comes to furnishing my home! Oh and everything there is so stylish and they even have really neat pictures to finish a wall or even an awesome piece to have on your table to give a room a bit more flare/interest. Yes you do pay the downtown prices for their products but it's totally worth it because the warranties are incredible! And a huge chunk of the things they have are made in Canada! This should be your first stop when furnishing your home!

I ordered a sectional couch. For the price ($3200), quality was not what I expected looking at the showroom. I had to later get a cushion substituted and although the company quickly serviced my complaint, for the money, I just feel that I could have spent my money better elsewhere.