Italian Classics Direct - www.italianclassicsdirect.com

After much looking for a Sofa bed I bought one from the Furniture retailer (ItalianClassicsDirect.com) in North London back in 2008. It then took a year of utter incompetence, outrageous excuses, false promises, lies and threats of court action before finally receiving the covers for it.

They twice sent the wrong covers and when I told them this, accused me of not being competent enough to fit them, even though one batch was a mix of covers for several different sofas! The attitude of the owner (Martin Barnett) was appalling, he lied to me on a regular basis regularly saying they were being picked up from his shop by courier the following day, I later found out they weren't even in the country. He refused to speak to my wife and hung up on her. He offered to take back the sofa as he "couldn't be bothered with me any longer", but I was happy with the product so declined. It even took 3 months for them to pick up the old covers following several threats to dispose of them.

I am not saying they are necessarily dishonest, although I'd struggle to use 'trustworthy', they are just incredibly disorganised (I dealt with at least 3 different people who promised to sort it out but didn't), but I would be wary, their website constantly displays items on sale, yet these prices haven't changed in two years - despite being told they were due to rise when I enquired.

Upon a visit to the showroom, the John Lewis name was frequently dropped into conversation, though there is no mention of them in their 'testimonials' section of the website (makes you wonder if any of these are genuine) and I doubt very much JLP would deal with such a company.

I was also told the mechanisms for the beds were "Made in Italy" as that's where the best ones come from. The Chinese writing on the packaging was a bit of a giveaway.

If I could give zero stars I would, but for the fact that I actually got my covers 13 months later, and that's why they get one star.