David, Toronto

Fellow consumers, be warned if you are considering Norwalk Furniture Idea. The only idea they have is how to take your money! In December, 2007, Norwalk took $8,407.76 of our money, part of which was for a leather couch that was so defective even they didn’t want it back and approximately $5K of which was to “lock in pricing”. We ended up taking Norwalk to court and was finally able to reach a settlement. No we did not get all our money back but, after over a year of this agony, we just wanted to get back whatever we could. The Terms of the Court Settlement required Bill Robertson, owner of the Norwalk store on Adelaide in Toronto, to pay the settlement amount, in full, on or before Friday March 6, 2009. When that day came, Robertson provided 3 post-dated cheques – which is in breach of the Court Settlement. He told our lawyer that “his business is in the toilet and that’s the best he can do”. He also threatened my lawyer that, if we were to get a judgment against him, he would put a stop payment on the post-dated cheques. My lawyer thinks that Robertson was just being spiteful. Whether Robertson’s business is “in the toilet” or he is just a mean spirited individual, do you really want to do business with someone like that? Here are some of the things you need to be aware of: • We had 5 industry experts assess the leather couch that Norwalk delivered to us – all of them told us that the only thing worth salvaging from the couch was the $100 frame; they were all appalled at the numerous defects in the couch. • Norwalk will tell you that they have to send their Quality Assurance guy (Manny) to look at your furniture piece before they can provide you with a remedy – this will take several weeks before Manny finally shows up; in Court, Robertson told us that they don’t have anybody in Quality Assurance and that Manny is just a driver! • Robertson has a tendency of hanging up on you and then refusing to return your calls, even when you try to communicate with him by fax and letters. • “Locking in pricing” means you have just forfeited your money. • Darrin Sutton, who works in the Adelaide store, has a side business in home renovations – he will insist on coming to your home because he wants to see what business he can drum up for himself. • Darrin provided us with a “design” for our basement that totally disregarded the supporting wall and did not include the types of rooms we wanted – in other words, he couldn’t care less what you want; his so-called design was completely useless, required us to get all new furniture, and he gave us a quote of $133K to implement it. • These are just some of the highlights (low lights?) of our very nasty experience with Norwalk. • We can support all of these statements with written documents. Another term of the Court Settlement forbids Robertson, and anyone associated with him, to have any contact with us. Let’s see if he can restrain himself from responding to this testimony or will he breach yet another condition of the Court Settlement.