Made.com sofa discolouration

[KRANEJ]

Hi, we have a Made.com sofa in our living room, about three years old.  It gets regular use and some sunlight reaches this room but nothing excessive. 

The velvet sofa material has badly faded several shades from dark green to much paler, in particular the area where we sit on the front corner where your legs rest.

We contacted Made to ask for a voucher or credit to buy a new sofa from them as we accept some wear and tear and happy to get a new one from them, but what we got was a very defensive and formal reply telling us we need an independent assessment to prove the sofa is defective and directing us to Homeserve to pay £48 for this assessment.

 

We don't want the expense or hassle if we can't get the right verdict from an assessor, and would welcome anyone's thoughts or advice on what will constitute defective v fair wear and tear?

[BankFodder]

I'm afraid that with a sofa of about three years old – they are probably right.

Our experience of sofa companies is that they are all extremely defensive when when people start querying apparent defects in their products. I suppose this is because they realise that if the items are returned, they will be unsaleable to anyone else.

Who is HomeServe? Are they linked to the supplier in any way? We would certainly say that in any event you would need to get an independent assessment and that if it cost you a fee – and it turned out that the problem was as the result of a defect in the item then you would be able to recover the assessment fee as well.

However, if you decide to use a different independent assessor – other than the one recommended by the supplier, then you should probably give the supplier notice that this is what you are going to do, inform them about the likely fee, and that you will be approaching them for a reimbursement of the fee if the assessment is that the problem is due to a defect in the sofa.

[CraigMcK]

We had a green carpet in the lounge. There was a rug in front of the fire. After a couple of years my wife fancied a new rug. When we lifted it the carpet was a totally different colour to the rest of the surrounding floor. The sun had bleached the colour out and under the rug was the original colour. It really does not need too much time to do it. I expect the expert may suggest the sunlight has caused the problem and it would be very difficult to argue the case.