Buying furniture online in India is tempting, oh, so tempting. Fancy photographs and Swedish designs, what could go wrong? A lot! Having been bitten not once but twice (disastrous furniture experience with FabFurnish and Pepperfry), I would NOT recommend any of you buy furniture from anywhere online (other than Urban Ladder — which provides great quality furniture!)
U&I Furniture – Website Review (UandIFurniture.com)
As a layman looking at UandIfurniture.com, I would be quite impressed. Clean cuts, solid wood, good quality designs. The motto of the company is “Luxury Within Reach” and so you do assume that you will get a good quality luxury product delivered. This pricing is also comparatively on the higher end (Rs 16k for an armchair — comparable to Urban Ladder prices, but with more variety).
However, looking deeper, I can tell that some of the designs are not unique (for example you will find many sites listing products similar to the Jenni Armchair, eg Baxton Studio.)
This is still fine, as long as the product that I’m of good quality and good price. This is where my problem arises. Furniture pricing is completely unstandardized with margins that are inexplicable to the end consumer. Below is an example of the price of the Jenni Armchair (manufactured by UandIFurniture) on sale on their website and on Pepperfry.com
The price of the Jenni Armchair listed on UandIfurniture.com is Rs 13,990 after discount (retail price of Rs 17,990)
Whereas the price of the same Jenni Chair by U and I furniture is listed on Pepperfry at a retail price of Rs 20,400 (higher than the rack rate on uandifurniture.com) and apparently at a 45% discount. I smell a scam!
Unsuspecting Online Customers
With all this confusion, I would not buy any furniture online anymore. Yet, a lot of unsuspecting customers do go ahead and buy furniture online. This forum is aiming to open up and lend voices to those of you who have had a genuinely good or bad experience buying stuff online. So our first review is by an unhappy customer of U&I Furniture (UandIfurniture.com).
U&I Furniture Customer Review
This is a guest review by a customer who purchased furniture from UandIfurniture.com.
Poor finish on the woodwork.
UandIfurniture.com staff talk professionally but they do not fulfil orders as per requirement. l ordered a customised dining table and bench and paid full order price. I requested that they send me a piece of the finished wood as I was most concerned about the colour of the finished product, which the organisation said they wouldn’t.
It was agreed that the furniture would be finished in clear varnish which would mean with no colour or tint added to the polish. However, the delivered furniture was with added tint. I requested that they either replace the furniture without any tint or send someone to take the tint off and repolish. I offered to pay half the cost I was told neither of this was possible.
I have also noticed that the workmanship of the furniture is poor, for example, the legs of the table are glued to the table-top rather then properly screwed; the wood and ply used on underside have many gaps and holes, and three corners of the table-top are poorly finished.
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