Complaint Review: La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries - Greenville South Carolina

I ordered a Gibson Rockling Recliner with Swivel base, merlot leather, and airform cushioning on 5/06/2021 at the Greenvile, SC Woodruff Rd. store for $2416.74. When I received this chair I didn't have time to test it out so I had the delivery team just leave it in my living room and I went back to work. Later on in the evening I sat down in the chair, pulled the recline lever, and was immediately dumped backwards out of the chair.

I called customer service to put in a service request and a repair technician came out and inspected my chair after a couple of months. The technician informed me that during the build of this chair one of the assemblers broke off a screw in the base and instead of grabbing another base to install he just moved over and screwed it together out of tolerance.

Support bars were installed backwards, the swivel base had a lot of play in it and would spin freely like an office chair and the chair ratcheted backwards as soon as I sat in it. Literally nothing was installed correctly in this chair. After 3 visits from the repair technician I had the chair mostly where I wanted it except the tech wasn't able to fix the swivel base so I had him install a regular rocker base with no swivel. I called customer service and asked to speak to supervisor but was forced to relay a message that I wanted a refund for the $100 swivel base add-on.

The supervisor flatly refused the refund of the $100. I called the general manager at the store that I purchased the chair from and he said he would call me back the same day but never reached back out to me and when I called I was told he wasn't in. The GM seems to take a lot of time off or is using his employees to act as a buffer so he doesn't have to speak to customers. I contacted my bank BofA and was told by a customer service rep that I could drop the chair off and dispute the transaction.

I took the chair to the store where I purchased and was met by a young salesperson who took the receipt back to the manager and 5 minutes later he comes up with a paper in his hand saying we took care of it today. I know he just printed that out and had no intention of making things right with me in the first place, he was just trying to keep me from filing complaints against him and seeking a refund. I filed my payment dispute with the bank was promptly declined. I called into to my bank and it turns out that what the cs rep told me was incorrect and they couldn't chargeback a transaction that old since it had been months of waiting on repairs I was out of the dispute window.

Now La-z-boy has my chair and my money so I guess I'm just going to file a small claims suit against them to recoup the money. La-z-boy is not the same company that your dad or grandpa bought their recliner from. The frames are made of a composite board like particleboard with glue instead of hardwood which they claim is stronger but does not hold screws in as well. The assemblers rush through installing components out of tolerance and support brackets backwards. I paid way more for this recliner than I would've from a competitive because la-z-boy is supposed to be higher quality but it's not better quality. When a customer pays over $2,000 for a single recliner they shouldn't have to go through a bunch of repairs only to be left still uncomfortable and to be refused a refund on a defective $100 add-on. It's all about the money for this company and they've completely forgotten what has made them a success in the first place.