Rubin's Furniture — Attraction in Madison

I have been a fan and customer of Rubin's furniture for more than a decade. My husband introduced me to them, and he has been a customer of theirs for more than thirty years. As longtime customers of Rubin's, we feel it is important to share our recent negative experience. We were frustrated and disappointed not with the product but with the after-purchase service received. We believe the quality of Rubin’s customer service and their standards have significantly deteriorated.

We recently purchased a beautiful green Natuzzi Speranza three-piece sectional couch as a floor model. We thoroughly inspected all the areas that were accessible in store and found no major issues. However, upon delivery, we discovered a coin-sized scrape down to the raw leather on the back of the couch. Our sales representative, JJ, told us that this happens all the time and that their leather expert would easily fix it.

After waiting two weeks for the repair, the "Repair" made the situation much worse. To fix one small corner where the color had been scraped off, he "spray-painted" a large area around with a color that did not match. He then tried spaying the undamaged adjoining piece for no apparent reason. Instead of one corner of one piece we now have obvious discoloration on two out of the three pieces.

In addition to deliberately spray painting a large area of two pieces, he managed to get very visible paint spatter across several feet of the leather effectively the entire side of the piece. His attempt to clean up the mess only exacerbated the problem, and when we expressed our concerns, he abruptly left, leaving us with no explanation and vague statements that "it will clean-up with a wet cloth when it is dry". My husband had to chase him out the door barefoot on the cold cement to ask what we should do next and how long we should wait for drying, only to be told, “JJ will explain everything.”

The paint spatter was in fact permanent as was the miss-colored oversized repair and everywhere he tried to clean up.

We immediately documented and notified the Staff at Rubin's about our experience, but were told to contact the manager in a couple days when they were in. To our dismay, she responded to our detailed description and multiple photos by referring to the repair as looking "perfect". We are including a photo so you can judge for yourself.

The manager insisted that the couch was a floor model and heavily discounted (looking at previous reviews, this is very similar to what was told to Matt S.)

The model was discontinued and looking at numbers from online retail stores, this model/year is offered for $1000 less to a brand new one only $1000 more.

She has never actually addressed whether the damage was pre-existing or happened after we made our purchase decision and paid. The location of the damaged corner could only really happen where it did if the pieces were separated for transport. This was purchased as a floor model, that does not mean any damage after we inspected it and paid for it and before receiving would be our problem.

We invested so much time in finding a unique piece of furniture we truly loved. We paid thousands of dollars to have it damaged not once but twice. None of which compares to the frustration and lost time post-purchase. Now, we are left with a spray-painted couch that has mismatched colors and white residue all over it. Not only our concerns were not taken seriously, but our hopefully uniquely negative experience and objective evidence were essentially ignored. Instead, we were given generic non-answers that may as well have been cut and pasted. While she finally acknowledged our frustration, she never admitted that this was not a ‘perfect repair’ and how much of a waste of time, energy, and trust this purchase has been for us.

They did offer in-store credit for something else at full price. Thanks, but no thanks! This is where we part ways with Rubin’s. We just wished we could erase both the 'botched repair' from our couch and this experience...

TLDR: I don't recommend ordering any custom pieces from here because if anything goes wrong the management will be very unhelpful.

Got (most of) what we ordered and it's nice. But the process was a stressful hassle.

Went in looking to furnish a basement that has a narrow staircase. JJ the salesman came out and did the measurements which was super helpful and then proposed a number of pieces. We changed a couple things but mostly did what he suggested. It was a lot of furniture and cost a lot of money, almost more than we were comfortable with but Rubin's has a good reputation and we really wanted some nice stuff.

He added it all up and we paid a deposit. He said it would 8-10 weeks.

About a week later we get a letter in the mail that says hey JJ quoted the price wrong, this is the actual price. The new price was over $1,000 higher. The letter didn't contain the word sorry or apologize, and it wasn't signed by anyone or offered any way to discuss it. I called and asked to speak to someone and they said they'd get back to me. Eventually JJ the salesman called, he had no idea the discrepancy was that large and seemed motivated to make things right but couldn't promise anything. I waited over a week to hear from a manager or someone and finally called back.

That day the person I needed to speak to was in and she expressed her frustration at JJ for making the mistake which I thought was unprofessional. Finally I said well we agreed to a certain price and it was already at the edge of our budget, what are we going to do about this and she said she'd look into it. She ended up giving a discount of about $700 so we still paid over $300 more than we originally planned to.

We gave a call 9 weeks in to check on things since we'd been told 8-10 weeks. The person who answered said JJ would call us back but not before telling us "you did order right before Christmas so 8-10 weeks is really pretty tight" as if it was unreasonable inquire about the time estimate that they gave us.

Finally we got the furniture a little over 12 weeks in. The first delivery were uncomfortable getting the couch down the stairs so they took it back. Also an entertainment unit had a subtle sag on one side drawer and a noticeable sag on the other side. JJ swore the couch would fit and said he'd send out warehouse guys the next week to bring it in and fix the drawer.

The warehouse guys did indeed bring the couch in with only a small scratch to the wall. They did not fix the drawer. They said they'd have someone give us a call to figure it out when they got back.

Waited another week, called JJ. He said ok I'll have someone pick it up and take it to get repaired. Then a couple hours later the manager called again and said actually that piece is sold as is since it was already discounted a lot. It was discounted a lot but no one mentioned that it was sold as is or that it was the floor unit which is probably how it got broken. I'm sure they'll have to repair it to sell to someone else but I guess they prefer that to making it right for customers who spent five figures on furniture from them.

Overall pretty disappointed, although the furniture is nice. I'd probably only buy again if it was something that was in stock that I could just buy, pick up myself and be done with the transaction.

Edited to add: They forgot to subtract the sales tax from the bill, so I once again had to call and have them mail out a check for the refund for the sales tax. Again no one...

Mr. Bill Rubin, we tried to give you another chance after all. Shortly after we started looking for a replacement from your store, we were informed abruptly to return the damaged couch and were given a one-week window. We were told Rubin’s would no longer be able to help us any further with our furniture needs. After weeks of emotional investment, wasted time, and unsuccessful attempts to work with your team, we were left without a couch and were still charged a delivery fee for a deeply flawed experience.

What hurts most is not just the mishandling of the repair or lack of ownership over what happened. It's how easily a decades-long customer relationship was discarded when we asked to be treated fairly.

We hope sharing our full story helps others make informed decisions.

Immediately after the negative reviews were posted we were contacted by Tama the office manager (we now know her to be the owner’s daughter too) who had denied issues with the botched repair from beginning. She told us they were ‘confused’ by our review and we should come to the store and select a different item.

We were even more frustrated that they didn't at least offer to do the replacement at their cost or give us discount from the original sale price.

Still hoping to salvage the situation, we suggested keeping the couch for a fair price given the obvious condition issues - mismatched colors, permanent spray-paint damage, and a failed repair. The only offer made was a 10% discount on our original $4,894 purchase. It is hard to believe that Rubin’s would put a discontinued, 7+ year-old, visibly damaged piece back on the floor and sell it for $4,400.

They informed us that they had received new shipments and we should come in and try to find something or custom order something and we could keep the damaged couch till the new one arrived.

The owner, office manager and our salesperson were all in the store and on the show floor. Initially they were in a meeting but during our entire time there not one of them approached us directly. Instead, we were passed off to a new salesperson, who was kind but unaware of the situation. We had to retell the story from the beginning. Despite that, we were still open to a resolution and began looking at swatches for a custom order.

A few days later, before we had finalized any replacement, we received an abrupt email from Tama Informing us that Rubin’s would no longer be able to assist us and asked for the couch to be returned within one week. We were told for a full refund, when we asked straight out if it was for the full purchase amount, we were told it would exclude the $139 delivery fee - ironically for the very delivery that may have caused the initial damage.

So, Mr. Rubin, thank you for your carefully worded response to our last review. We appreciate the public acknowledgment, but words are not enough to undo the damage - both to our furniture and to our trust in...