Fairhaven Furniture — Local services in New Haven

Stopped here with our kids and bought an inexpensive rug. In-store experience was... fine; sales staff are rather pushy, but while I may find that annoying I recognize that it's common + not remarkable in and of itself.

What happened after that, however, was a nightmare.

We'd ordered a new table along with the rug, intending to have both delivered together once the table was ready; later that week, however, they called my wife to offer to deliver the rug right away. She demurred - we didn't want to organize our day around being home for this - but they persisted, called back two more times, offered to waive the delivery fee, and eventually my wife relented and agreed to let them deliver the rug that Saturday. (in retrospect we should have viewed this as a warning sign)

The rug was delivered (half an hour early, interrupting our toddler's nap) and we proceeded to buy/size/cut a rug pad for it, reorganize our living room around it, etc. All was well until 6 days later, when Fairhaven called my wife to say they'd delivered the wrong rug and wanted to swap it for the correct one. (they would later claim that they had called us on the day they delivered it, but we have no record of that call and did not receive a voice mail or other message from them for 6 days)

Whether or not it actually was the wrong rug, I can't say; we regrettably didn't take a picture of the rug we bought, and I only had a brief look at it in the store (was watching the kids while wife browsed). They later sent me a photo of what they claimed was our rug and it didn't jog my memory; the rug we did receive matched my recollection better than that one did. In any event, it looked similar enough that we accepted delivery without wondering whether it was the wrong rug, and we were perfectly happy with it, had already invested money (for the pad) and time in arranging our living room around it, had already subjected it to a week's worth of toddler food spills, diaper changes, etc, and did not particularly want to expend even more of our scarce free time in rearranging everything again around another very similar new rug.

So my wife once again demurred, but then they kept calling her to ask for the rug back, mostly at inconvenient times - while she was in the shower, seeing patients, etc - and after one particularly high-pressure call (after which she was quite upset) I called them back myself and angrily demanded they never call her again. I was then put on the line with a different gentleman who I understood to have accepted my explanation that this looked like the rug we'd purchased and that we were happy with it and didn't wish to discuss the matter further. However, a few days later they resumed calling my wife; we blocked 3 different numbers and they turned right around and contacted us from a 4th one. Finally, after many many calls we agreed to return the rug for a refund simply to spare our family from any further interactions with them.

I should note here that the rug that we received was not in any sense special/valuable; a thin, scratchy, coarsely-made Super Kazak from Pakistan that was pilling after a week. I found a dozen others like it in 5 minutes on Google, most of them selling for less than what we had paid. Their behavior might have been a bit more understandable (albeit still inexcusable) if they had, say, accidentally given us a $20k handmade Persian rug or some such, but this was decidedly not that. They claimed this rug had already been purchased by another customer, but why they would view telephone harassment of us as preferable to simply offering their other customer a refund or virtually-identical replacement, or why that customer would even still want this particular cheap rug after it spent 2 weeks getting variously defiled in another family's living room, I can't say.

Anyway, we'll certainly never do business with Fairhaven again, and if you're shopping for furniture in New Haven I'd recommend sticking with IKEA; can browse as long as you like + won't be getting a call the next week demanding the return of your...

We have been visiting Fairhaven Furniture for years, I've bought tons of cool gifts, excellent cards, jewelry, accessories etc. When we moved and needed some new furniture for our new space, I remember our years lusting over their furniture and we beat a path to their door. We were overwhelmed with the task at hand (we needed bedroom, dining room and living room furniture) and we were trying blend it with pieces that we were bringing from our old home. We "thought" we knew what we needed but it was clear we needed help. I'm not a design-type person where everything has to match and so I was a little scared when they offered their design services (heck I'm pushing 70, I think I know what I want right?) but we are SO glad we took them up on this service. They listened to how we planned to use the space, looked and measured pieces that we were bringing along with us and then visited our new space and measured everything. We went back to the store and pointed out the pieces that we really liked and they came up with a master plan that is stunning, comfortable and works incredibly well. There is no way we would have gotten the same results had we not availed ourselves of this service. There was no hard sell to make us buy anything, their focus was totally on our tastes and budget, both Mark and Lao really listened to us and we could not be more pleased with the outcome. If you haven't been to this gem of a store, GO! I almost defy you to walk out empty handed. Even if furniture isn't what you're looking for, it's...

November of 2017 we placed an order at Fairhaven Furniture. We ordered a sectional, it was delivered with the wrong configuration. The chair we bought was delivered with a broken leg. We were sent a lamp that was a floor model, had a dent on the base and dirty lampshades. The quad console was delivered scratched and full of dirt on the inside. All of the above had to be re-ordered. The two end tables were delivered in one piece. Management admitted sending a floor model lamp without telling us. Why and how they thought they would try to slip this by us is just baffling. One of the owners insisted he could fix the chair. He came out to the house to try but he could not. It took approximately 4 months for our furniture order to be delivered correctly. Fairhaven Furniture made minor adjustments to the bill but they didn't offer. We negotiated. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. The final bill included a charge for a no charge lamp replacement. I felt pressured during the final delivery to accept a company hand marked up bill as correct. It was not correct. I have considerable experience as a consumer advocate and it felt like the owners were quite frankly, dishonest and lacking integrity. We are enjoying our furniture now but based on our experience, we cannot recommend Fairhaven Furniture. They certainly lost...