Ours is the typical story. Our sofa and recliner were 15 years old and needed replaced. We decided we wanted to get two sofas for more seating and flexibility if we move again. We started to look online to come up with some brands that we liked. We started out looking for Bradington Young but the store closest to us did not have any on the floor and tried to sway us towards Smith Brothers. We came home to research them but their website is basically useless. So then we headed to another store about an hour away. We got to see some Bradington Young. The salesperson started to show us around. She showed us the City Sofa from Hancock and Moore. We liked the sofa but not the leather on it. The salesperson went to find out and it did come in one other leather (Cavalier Mocha) which is what we wanted a chocolate brown. She added the price was wrong and had gone up but that is was on sale so the total was only $50 more. Then after more talking to her found out she had only worked there a year. So we said thanks but no thanks for now. When we came home, my husband started researching online and found Duane’s Forum. What a great wealth of information Duane provides! We spent hours reading the forum. Finally, the time came to contact Duane with some questions. From reading others’ questions and concerns about sofas we started to question our choice of the city sofa. We ended up finding another dealer that had a September sofa on the floor along with the City Sofa. So we drove another hour to a different store. They were very nice and seemed much more knowledgeable than the first place. We tried not to take up a lot of their time as we decided Duane had already earned our business from setting up the forum and answering our questions promptly. The September beat out the City hands down. Oh, price wise Duane blew them both out of the water.
We looked at the HM site again and narrowed it down to three based on measurements and looks. They were the September, Clivedon, and Quincy. We choose the Clivedon because it was looked very similar to the September but had less nail heads and more curves which appealed to us. The leather we choose was Antelope Nugget. We decided on this leather due to having a 5 year old and a 1 ˝ year old and that a protected leather was the way to go. It was definitely more money than we set out to spend but decided if we are going to do this we were going to do it right. The nail heads are – H-Antiqued , and wood finish – Oiled Walnut Distress.
Delivery happened just as Duane said it would. He billed the remaining amount when the shipper, Sun Delivery, picked up the sofas. Sun Delivery called that same week with a two day time frame and said they would call back the day before to confirm. They called back Tuesday with a time frame of Wednesday afternoon from 12:30 to 4:30 and they showed up a 2:00.
Below is copied from the email my husband sent to Duane upon Delivery ~
“If you sell any of these to anybody else warn them that the Clivedon will barely fit through a standard 36" door. As for the sofas themselves...WOW!
Those poor delivery guys got it through our front door only to realize that the opening to the family room was only 31" wide. They had to take it back through the front door, which didn't go well, with the sofa getting stuck in the opening. My wife discovered that it had got caught on the latch plate and had it not been still covered in moving blankets I'm sure the leather would have gotten torn.
They had to carry them around the outside of the house and bring them through the sliding door on the back of the house. Being only a 6' sliding door, again the sofas barely made it inside.
After all of that work they did, they didn't want to take the tip that we offered but my wife insisted and they capitulated.
The only thing that we noticed was some small slits in the dust cover on the bottom of each sofa. We think that it happened when they were uncrated. No big deal at all though.
We read on your forum the troubles that you had with Home Delivery. I can tell you that we are glad that we spent a few extra dollars and went with Sun Delivery.”
We are very happy with our new sofas and the experience with Duane and Sun Delivery. We will definitely be buying from Duane in the future.
