Seriously. I did. It doesn’t happen often, but today it did. It became an obsession and I worked through it and finally got it done and over with today. It’s a long story, but what the hell, it’s my website, and that’s what this is for, so here goes. Over a year ago, we replaced most of our furniture in our house with new, awesome, furniture we found at Bob’s Discount Furniture. We became huge fans of them as a result, finding their prices excellent for the quality and features you can get in furniture. After our initial purchase of a dual power-reclining loveseat for the basement and Kevin’s own big comfy couch with dual power recliners, we went ahead with a lot more replacements from Bob’s, including our entire master bedroom set and a dual power-reclining sofa for our living room and a separate recliner for The Warden. We made sure, at the time, that the sofa, recliner, and love-seat would be able to accommodate our “larger” sizes–we even chose specific models that had weight limits of 350-400 lb. and were heavy-duty. I was hovering around 300 lb at that time, and I am the heaviest in the family, so we were assured our size wouldn’t be an issue with the furniture we chose.
About three to four months after we purchased the living room sofa, we had an issue: The right-side recliner starting sticking, both when I raised it and when I lowered it. Something was catching on the mechanism, causing it to stop and get stuck, usually popping free, if we kept running the motor to recline or lower the recliner, but it sounded and felt horrible. Something was really wrong with it. This happens to be my dedicated living room “seat”, as this recliner is pretty much in the exact spot in the living room where my old recliner had been since we moved in. So we called Bob’s Discount Furniture. This issue started happening just when pandemic was getting its worst, and Bob’s Discount Furniture said they had stopped doing their service calls temporarily and asked us to call back after things get better and they’ll be glad to help us. We had purchased their 5-year Goof-Proof insurance protection on pretty much everything we purchased from them, so we felt good that waiting a few months wouldn’t be an issue.
So fast-forward to very recently. We still had the issue with the sofa, and several times a day I was painfully reminded of it every time my recliner would stick. I had found that I could do this weird jostle of my legs, pulling them to the right just as I was reclining or putting my feet back down to get up, at just the right time, I could avoid it getting stuck. This worked some of the time, but not every time, and half the time I couldn’t remember to do it when sitting down or getting up. After awhile of doing this I started to worry that maybe forcing the seat sideways like that might actually damage the mechanism even more in some other way than it already was. Anyway, so recently, with the pandemic starting to fade and many people now having gotten one of the vaccines available, we called Bob’s again, asking if they might have resumed their service calls, and we were told they have. So we setup a service appointment.
The “technician” arrived promptly on the date and time scheduled, and looked at the sofa. He could see where it was catching underneath when I demonstrated the issue–A reclining lever was getting stuck on the bottom steel bar located on the floor that serves as the base of the sofa. After seeing the issue and looking at it for a few minutes, he took a bunch of notes on the tablet he brought with him, then gave me a number for Bob’s and asked me to dial the number, confirm with the person who answered that I’m the customer, then he said she (the lady on the phone) will take it from here and explain our options to us. Then he walked out. We assumed he was looking at parts on his tablet before, maybe, and trying to figure out how to get it fixed, and maybe he was going out to his vehicle to see if he had what he needed for the repair. As it turned out, that was not the case at all.
The lady on the phone explained that it has been well over a year since we purchased the sofa, the damage was caused by the customer, and there is only a 1-year warranty on the sofa, so there is nothing they can do to help us further. I explained that we initially called well within the 1-year period when the issue started, but no one could come out due to the pandemic. She said she understood that, and even confirmed that they do have a note on the case of exactly when we initially called, but because it’s now past that one year, there’s nothing further they can do to help us. We then explained that we purchased the 5-year Goof Proof protection on the sofa, and she said that’s separate from Bob’s and we would have to file a claim with that company for the damage and they should be able to take care of us. She then provided me with the phone number to file a claim with that firm, so I hung up. Sandy and I both figured it was a good thing we bought the 5-year insurance plan, because that’s all we got now. Little did we know.
I called the number and got the details on how to file a claim for our repair. We had to go to a specific website and fill out a form, providing all the details of what happened to cause the damage (uh…sitting on the sofa…?) as well as the exact part numbers of the items damaged, including photos of the damage and the exact date the damage took place. After a couple hours I had everything filled out and the photos uploaded and I submitted the claim. After a few business days, the result came back: DENIED. ALL DAMAGE CLAIMS MUST BE REPORTED WITHIN 30 DAYS FROM WHEN THE DAMAGE OCCURED. Since the claim was filed over a YEAR after the damage occurred, it was clearly not something they could repair. It is clearly spelled out in their fine print. So at that point we were SOL with nowhere to turn. I tried to explain the whole story to the Goof Proof people, but nothing could be done. We were left with a bad sofa.
Fast-forward once more, just a little bit, to this weekend. Friday evening I crawled under the sofa again and looked hard at the issue. I knew exactly where the mechanism was jamming, and it only occurs when Sandy or I are sitting in my spot on the sofa. When we sit down, it drops a bit–just enough to lower the footrest bar a little to catch on the base bar causing a jam. In fact, that spot is clearly marked on the base bar by a large gouge left from it jamming repeatedly for over a year. I realized that there’s nothing we can do to keep the sofa from sagging when we sit in it–well, at least nothing we can do that won’t take a year or more–I’m actively working on my weight loss right now, sure, but not for this silly reason–but it looked like a chunk of that steel bar could be removed without effecting the stability of the couch frame at all. The steel bar is actually L-shaped and pretty thick. If a small section of just the vertical portion of the “L” was removed in just the right place, it would allow the footrest mechanism to clear the bar freely and the issue would be gone.
I slept on it last night, and this morning I thought about what could be used to cut out that chunk of steel. We have a lot of tools left from Sandy’s dad, but unfortunately no power saws. Just a standard metal hacksaw with a dull blade on it. Menards is only a few blocks from our house, so I checked their website and settled on a $99 Dremel saw that looked it it would do the trick. It looked small enough (the space under the sofa is pretty tight) and came with several blade types, including 3 that can cut through metal. I drove to Menards and picked one up.
When I got home I unboxed it, assembled the parts and plugged it in near the sofa. I sprayed a mist of water under the sofa first, and donned my goggles, knowing how metal-cutting throws a lot of sparks. I quickly learned this was not going to work. Even the small size of the Dremel saw was too big for the small space available under the sofa, and the circular blade was on the left side of the saw, so I couldn’t get anywhere near the proper spot where I needed to cut the bar–I could only get within about three inches of it. It was pretty close to the edge of the main sofa frame. I needed something much smaller.
I boxed the Dremel saw back up and took it back to Menards for a refund. Menards is always excellent with returns, so they had no problem crediting my debit card for the purchase. At least THIS didn’t become part of the whole issue. So I went back to the saw section at Menards and looked for something that would work, now considering the small confined space it would need to fit in. I ruled out all of the power saws they had. None of them would be able to fit into the space. So I looked at a dozen or more different hacksaws–some like Sandy’s dad already had, a few others with odd shapes and smaller sizes, but those wouldn’t work either. There were only two items that I found that could possibly fit, and they were pretty “old school”. Not my favorite choice in today’s day and age, but I couldn’t find anything else that would work, and just wanted this thing fixed once and for all. I settled on one device that looked much like a rubber screwdriver handle, but which held a hacksaw blade. It could definitely fit in the space I needed it to, and included two metal-cutting hacksaw blades. It accepts any standard hacksaw blade, so I figured this would do the trick, it’ll just require a lot of manual sawing on my part to get it done. I paid the $4.89 price at the Menards checkout, thinking “If this works, holy shit, it costed us a whole $5.00 to fix a big issue we’ve had with our sofa for over a year!”
I brought the mini hacksaw tool home and crawled under the sofa to get to work. As expected, it took some real elbow grease and a lot of time, but I was able to get a cut started and got partially through that steel bar before the blade became too dull and I realized I was no longer making progress. Good thing I had a couple spare blades. I changed it out and started making progress again. A little progress. Then on to the next blade. With the last blade, I made a second cut at an angle opposite the first cut, so they came together just close enough so I could use a pair of pliers to pull the chunk of steel in the middle back and forth until it broke off. I had the gap!
I had Sandy sit on the sofa and recline, and it still got stuck. Damn. I was off by about 1/2″ to the right. I needed to make another cut, but I was out of blades. Back to Menards. I found a a few 2- and 3-packs of metal-cutting hacksaw blades, but since this was my third trip to Menards today, I didn’t want to have to come back again, so I grabbed a few extra packs. Then I noticed a much-cheaper-in-total 10-pack of metal-cutting hacksaw blades for $8.99, so I figured that should definitely do the trick. This looked promising.
I came home and began sawing anew. I spent a good portion of the day under that sofa. I got it done though–3 steel metal chunks later. Both Sandy and I can now recline on the sofa with no issues at all. $15 very well spent!
We won’t be going back to Bob’s Discount Furniture anymore, and we sure don’t recommend their “Goof Proof” protection either. In fact, check this out:
It’s a totally different situation, but I sure wish I had ready that back in 2020 when it was first published. I’m sure we probably could have fought this with Bob’s or the insurance company for Goof Proof, and who knows, we might have even come out of it with a properly repaired of even a brand new sofa, but at this late stage in the game we just wanted to avoid having to make another pricey furniture purchase this soon.
By the way, the love-seat we purchased for our basement rec-room is an identical matching love-seat with all of the exact same features and functions and color as the living room sofa with the issue, it’s just slightly less wide than the sofa–and we’ve never had any issues at all with anything on the love seat–especially with my seat of choice, which is also on the right side, same as the sofa–at the perfect angle to the television, ala Sheldon Cooper.
JimTrottier.com 