Low quality, flawed furniture at exorbitant price - no customer care

The quality and workmanship of a large, over-priced console I bought from Aura Interiors is terrible. Once delivered, I noticed the item was slightly damaged, had noticeable manufacturing flaws, was made with the cheapest hardware available and could not possibly be the ‘exclusive’ designer item it was claimed to be.

Unlike furniture stores that clearly indicate their ‘ba*****t or warehouse sales’ contain damaged or flawed goods and display items, Aura Interiors claims their Black Friday Specials are promotions on ‘exclusive designer items’. In the showroom, the flawed and damaged parts of the console had been disguised by a carefully positioned decorative lamp. The info sheet with price and dimensions had been stuck on the good side, to deflect attention from the flaws. Even ‘on promotion’ the item was almost 3x the price of any other consoles I’d seen. I hadn’t liked any other consoles, however, and I believed the story that it was a unique designer piece.

Once in my home, the console didn’t fit the space and looked cheap and nasty. I returned to the store the following day to let them know that it didn’t match the room I’d bought it for and I had buyer’s remorse. Despite the ‘no returns, no exchanges’ policy, I was emailed the following offer a few days later: minus the delivery and collection fees and a handling fee of 15% (R3200 total) they would take back the item and I could choose further items to the value of R12.000. Effectively, I would be paying R3200 to get rid of the item and still have to return to Aura Interiors to select things I don’t want or need. The shop would be in a position to resell the piece, having already earned a few thousand Rand off it.

Subsequently, I had a joiner evaluate the console and his feedback was even worse than all the problems I had noticed. In response, I laid out my quality, price and workmanship issues in an email to the store. The reply I got from the store manager 2 weeks later was, ‘we can no longer assist you and revoke the option to allow you a credit at the store less the handling fee.’