Dear Conforama,

We had been looking forward to your reply to my previous five emails, and after nine weeks got the news we were expecting, “sorry we can’t help you, you didn’t buy our extra 5 year guarantee when you bought your sofa”. The sales-lady at the time of purchase ensured us the synthetic leather sofa was of top quality, and would certainly not crack or peel. She was so sure in fact, that was partly the reason why we didn’t feel the need for a guarantee, what could possibly go wrong? We skipped joyfully out of the store. But here we are now, four years later, with the aforementioned item of furniture shedding layers like an over-enthusiastic erotic dancer.

I suppose it was doomed from the start. We had asked the delivery guys were warned that we live on the very top floor with many stairs, but even after being offered twenty quid extra, the delivery men refused to bring it up the last two flights. It then took two hours and the help of a neighbour to get the damn thing up and assembled.

The cracks started to show after a year, and then the flaking, until now where the sofa just sits there openly mocking me, randomly dropping bits of itself whenever I so much as look at it. It sticks black vinyl fragments to whichever body part it comes into contact with. Once it successfully recreated a map of the Canary Island Archipelago on the back of my leg.

To reupholster the thing costs more than the €624 we paid for it, those stretchy covers look and feel like your sofa is wearing a pair of tights, and wrapping throws around it makes the living room look like a crack den. We considered peeling the remainder ourselves and living with the fabric revealed beneath, but unfortunately, even that material has about as much integrity as a politician.

I’ve found this isn’t just an isolated incident of one rogue villainous sofa, as last week I saw on facebook marketplace another poor soul offering up the same Conforama skin-shedding sofa in white. He was not asking for money, just that someone please take it away for free.

These sofas modus operandi is for larger pieces of crappy vinyl to rise up and dangle seductively, enticing you to peel them, while the smaller particles form a dust cloud akin to a pyroclastic flow from an erupting volcano. The daily clean up of this black dust caused my vacuum cleaner, after an all too short lifespan of dedicated service, to one day emit a burning smell, followed by a squeal, before heroically choking to death.

Now I see you are still selling these vinyl sofas and I do believe you are missing a trick. Why not make covers to fit them? That way if customers fail to buy the guarantee at the time of purchase, you’ll at least be able to flog them something else later on when their dogs poop has started coming out wearing little synthetic leather jackets.

Now, I could protest outside your stores, I could start an online campaign about your peeling furniture, I could take the issue up with consumer rights, or I could print t-shirts with a picture of my sofa and rant about it outside my local supermarket until I’m taken away, but in all honesty, I doubt I’ll do any of those things. Instead, I shall just mourn the loss of my vacuum cleaner, continue to sweep up the mess, and just make this statement to bring me a slither of solace:

CONFORAMA, YOUR SYNTHETIC LEATHER SOFAS ARE SHITE