Couch from Amazon

In My Humble Opinion
21

Well, neither Amazon nor Wayfair make their own furniture. They’re both just marketplaces for other companies. A few Chinese factories make all the furniture and then the exact same thing will get sold under a dozen different random brand names. Tweak it slightly and there’ll be two dozen more.

So yeah, it’s very likely the exact same thing at both places, just with slightly different merchants, shipping prices, return and service policies, etc. I’ve had good experiences with both and not really any bad experiences yet.

But really, you’re getting the same cheap crap of low to moderate quality, usually made of composite wood, no matter which specific merchant you buy from. The higher quality ones aren’t going to be racing to the bottom on Amazon and Wayfair.

That said, it’s still usually cheaper to buy the low quality stuff several times over than to invest in really high quality stuff… the difference is like 4x to 5x sometimes.

Wayfair and Amazon are where you go for the cheap shit, IKEA quality or just a tad beyond that. If you want something really durable, shop the other options mentioned in this thread. Feel the wood and check out the materials.

22

Strongly agree with everything you say above except in my experience Wayfair is a lot better than Ikea. As you said, it’s significantly worse than high quality furniture. I could only afford Ikea when I was young. Over the years I have upgraded to Wayfair or the equivalent and I expect it to last for the rest of my life.

Now that I’ve written this, I realize that my couches are from Pottery Barn which is probably better than Wayfair. I went to one of their stores to try them out in person first.

23

How do you feel the wood in upholstered furniture? Most of the time, it’s entirely covered. And how would you tell if it’s made from composite wood versus real wood?

24

I’ve put together flat-pack furniture from both Wayfair and Amazon and I concur with @Reply it’s all the same. It’s totally fine. Pressed board with laminate (at least, the several pieces my mom has bought), cam lock and dowl fastening. The quality feels the same as this 30-year-old flat-pack desk I’m sitting at right now, which I bought at the Container Store.

The flat pack stuff is shipped pretty mindfully - mindful to breakage, not to the environment - with tons of foam and whatnot. Typical instruction booklet. Some even come with the tools you need to put it together.

One time I opened the flat pack from Amazon and found a piece was cracked in half. I was able to contact the seller via Amazon and get a replacement piece sent.

I haven’t bought seating from Amazon or Wayfair. I have a friend who bought a couple armchairs from Wayfair and one came damaged. It took a while but she got a replacement, and was told to keep the damaged one (I think she sold it on Craigslist). Of course this is in the “before times” [pre-covid] so I don’t know how good or bad returns are these days.

25

Do you think that the cheaper to middle of the road (price-wise) furniture that you find at Hom, Slumberland, Ashley are any different than Amazon or Wayfair? Are they just marked up more?

26

I suppose the higher end stuff on Wayfair could be, but some cheaper stuff, not necessarily. But generally, yeah, my experience has been the same… Wayfair is better than IKEA, but not as good as furniture boutiques. For 25% the price and 60% of the quality, Wayfair (or Amazon) is by far the better value, though.

And one thing that’s easier to do on Wayfair or Amazon is to specifically look for metal furniture, which helps with durability.

Yeah, fair point. You can’t always tell, depending on the specific piece of furniture and its design. But with some pieces, you can kinda turn it over and look up its skirt (so to speak) and see how the bottom of it is put together, whether the legs are joined to the frame or just screwed into some plate, etc. Weight is another big giveaway; the cheaper materials tend to be a lot lighter. There are some couches I can carry singlehandedly (awkwardly), and others I can’t lift at all.

You can also, of course, ask… if you trust the salesperson enough.

I dunno… even if you can’t necessarily take a mass spectrometer to every piece of the furniture, build quality is generally something you can at least get in the ballpark of just by touch and feel. Much harder online, in my experience.

But in person you also don’t get customer reviews that point out weaknesses you might’ve missed, so maybe it all balances out…

I’ve had similar experiences with both Amazon and Wayfair too, with sellers sending me replacement parts if something was amiss.

Speaking of sellers, though… one thing to keep in mind is that these cheaper merchants are typically terrible with instruction manuals. They’re poorly translated and often full of errors and wrong images. Ideally whatever you buy is already mostly assembled, or if not, hopefully you are good with figuring out hardware assembly…

If you buy locally I think most stores will just deliver & install it for you, and take away the boxes and such afterward.

I’ve never been to any of those stores, sorry. Hopefully someone else will know.

But you can also try to do a Google Image search in the store (take a picture of something and Google it) to see where else it’s sold.

27

We bought a couch from Wayfair a few years ago. Never again. It was a Piece.Of.Shit. It looked like a couch but felt like a shelf. The back was too low, to boot.

28

That sort of thing is why buying in person is valuable.