I saw TMC's display in a mall and arranged for someone from TMC to give me a quote to reupholster my sofa. When the salesman came to my home, he claimed that he was also an antique appraiser for Antiques Roadshow. He admired my sofa and asked me what I thought it was worth. I told him that it had been given to me and I had no idea what it was worth. He then told me that to buy a sofa of such quality would cost me close to $8,000. He then said that the regular price to reupholster the sofa would be close to $6,000, but since he was “corporate” and did not rely on commissions, he was willing to give me a deal for $4,800. Needless to say, I was totally shocked and told him so. He asked me how much I thought it would cost and I told him that I didn’t know. When I told him that I could not afford anywhere near $4,800, he said that he would call his boss to find out if he could reduce the price. He them called his boss (or at least he sounded like he was speaking to someone on his cell) and said that although TMC mainly did high end furniture refinishing, they didn’t have a lot of reupholstery work at the moment so they might consider doing it for less. He hung up and told me he had great, news – the boss said he would do it for $3,600, providing I agreed to write a letter of recommendation to the company after the job was done. He went on and on about what a fantastic deal this was and I found myself signing a contract and giving him a cheque for a deposit of 50%, which he said was standard.
As soon as I had signed the contract, he took out a pair of scissors and cut a piece of fabric out of the sofa and then took out a permanent marker and wrote my name on the sofa in big black letters. I was shocked and said “well, I guess I’m committed now”, to which he replied “of course you are committed, you just signed a contract”. (I later learned that there are consumer protection laws in place in Ontario that allow you to change your mind within 10 days of signing any such contract, and in fact, this is stated in the fine print on the back of the contract). Then the salesman told me that as luck would have it, they had a truck in the area picking up someone else’s furniture and they could pick up my sofa within the hour. Sure enough, as soon as the salesman left my home, the truck showed up.
During the following weekend, I had a very uneasy feeling about the whole thing. I strongly suspected that I had been scammed. So I went online and found some reviews of the company. Some customers sounded happy, but many more of them didn’t. Other people had experienced the same slick sales pitch that I had, and some people complained about the poor quality of the workmanship. I then called another upholstery company in my area, described my sofa, and asked them what they would charge me. I was told that it would cost between $1,200 and $1,500, depending on the quality of the fabric. The following Monday I called my bank and found out that my cheque had not yet been cashed by TMC. I put a stop payment on it and sent TMC a registered letter advising that I was canceling the order. I was relieved that I had gotten out of the contract and decided to just forget about my destroyed sofa and buy a new one.
A few days later I received a call from the salesman and he wanted to know why I cancelled the order. I didn’t really want to talk to him, but ended up telling him that I felt the price was too high and that I was worried about all the negative reviews. He told me that the negative reviews were not true and were written by ex employees who had been fired. Then a couple of weeks after that, I received a call from another man at TMC who wanted to know why I canceled the order. When I told him about my experience, he said he completely understood why I cancelled the order and he said that the reviews were all real and not written by disgruntled employees. He said that he was aware of the image problems the company was having and he had been hired to turn things around. He said that if I would give them another chance, they would reupholster my sofa for $1,500 + HST and that he would personally oversee the process and assure the quality. My hunch was that this man was on the level and based on my conversation with him, I agreed to proceed and to also pay another $180 + HST for Fabriguard. I was of course worried that I had made another bad decision, but within two weeks my sofa was returned to me and I must say it looks beautiful and I am very happy with it.
The reason I decided to write this review now is that tonight I watched a story on CTV news about an elderly woman who was charged over $14,000 by TMC to have a sofa and some chairs reupholstered. The Toronto School of Upholstery subsequently provided her with a quote in the $3,000 range. She apparently borrowed the money and was just sick about the fact that she had been overcharged so much. The CTV news team went to TMC’s offices with their cameras and the owner stated that they stood by the quality of their work, but there was no indication that they were going to do anything for this woman. It made me very angry to think that had I not done some investigation of my own and initially canceled the order, I too would have been overcharged. It is especially horrendous that this company is ripping off elderly people who can ill afford it – shame on TMC Restoration.
