I just bought a Room & Board Loring sofa in October and I'm glad I did it then because they raised their prices dramatically for 2009. My $999 sofa went up to $1,199 - a 20% price increases in this economy seem bogus to me.

these have all been on their website for weeks......

i love the jasper

So... I can see all the price tags, but I'm not clear what your justification is that these are good quality?

You don't say what kind of frames they have - hardwood? jointed? double-jointed? corner blocked? laminated hardwood? What is the seating suspension? What's the quality of the fabric? What's the foam density? Whats the warranty? (the website doesnt discuss these either)

Sooo.... did you actually take a look at these pieces, or did you just pull things from the website?

I can personally attest to Room and Board's sofa quality.
I purchased a sofa and chair...within a couple of months, the pintucks that went around the arm-rest came un-done. R & B has great customer service (I really can't say enough about this...), and sent out a local upholsterer for a quick-fix. Within the next few months (before a year was up), the fabric was tearing/shredding at the seam on the arm rest of the chair. The same was happening to a lesser degree on the sofa. The folks at R&B decided to either refund our money or credit our purchase completely. We decided to give R&B another shot, and unfortunately I can't say much positive about the quality of our current purchase.

We've had the current furniture for a little over a year, and the cushions have failed to the point that we can feel the wooden frame on the back of our thighs. We both have pillows under our legs as I write, as it hurts to sit on otherwise. Also, we are a couple with no children and few visitors, so it is not as if we are overly rough on the furniture. To be fair, the second sofa that we got was probably the least expensive that they offered ($900?) at the time, but still a disappointing quality.

HonoluluSu- Can you tell us which R&B sofa you purchased as a replacement? I am interested in the cushion quality. I am thinking of going with the Dublin, but have seen some not very old Jaspars and it looks like the bottom cushions are flattened out like old pillows. I really like the Dublin and am hoping this wouldn't happen to it as well, since it seems like they have very different cushions. Any insight would be appreciated!

Thanks HonoluluSu! Thats the kind of information that keeps postings like this from being product placement shills!

(ps - I'm not saying anything is BAD about R&B - I just don't like unqualified statements being made. It shouldn't be too hard for AT staff to do a little legwork and give us the nitty gritty details - that is why a lot of us come here in the first place!)

Our current sofa is called "Tulane"...they don't offer it any longer. It looks much like their current "Westwood", just without the arms...so you can see that we don't have loose cushions, that it is a bench style.

More about cushions....the reason that I chose the "Tulane" for our second sofa was that the first (similar to "Eugene") along with the aforementioned BIG problems it had, the cushions drove me nuts. It had two long cushions, that never quite met-up in the middle....the shape seemed a little off, or the upholstery slipped a little. Of course, my eye went directly to that target where the cushions did not quite meet up...this would have eventually made me lose my mind! I could only see this situation getting worse, so for our second sofa, I looked for something with less cushions to bother with.

I have a friend in San Francisco who was shopping for sofas at the same time...she went to the R&B store and gave me a very detailed rundown of the quality of the cushions. She thought they were all crap...she opted for the Crate and Barrel "Petrie".

Good luck emilybeth...based on my experience, I would run the other direction. The Dublin has a lot of cushion to be reckoned with!

I also second honolulusu's comment - I bought the lenox sofa 1.5 years ago. hubby and I sit on it for at least 3 hours a night and now the cushions are already super thin and not offering adequate support. It's not as bad as honolulusu's situation but I'm already considering replacing the cushions with thicker, firmer cushions. the frame creaks on one side of the couch which annoys me to no end. so next time I will probably opt for a sofa from another company. of course the lenox was probably the cheapest sofa there, so that may have something to do with it. before I bought it I asked why the price difference, and the saleslady never gave me a good answer...this may be why!

I was a little leary of the quality issue with these sofas myself, but Room & Board is one of the only stores with a wide range of smaller scale sofas, which is what I needed. I bought the Portland pictured above mainly because it had a nice tailored slip cover option. Purchaed on line in Oct (after visiting the store and dealing with a brain dead sales rep), it was fine, comfy enough. Efficient, courtous delivery service too.

Post Christmas I decide I want to get a slip cover and discover the Portland is no longer offered. I kinda lucked out and found a slip cover in the right size on the clearance web page for under $100, not my first color choice but the quality is very nice. The giant chain store thing is a bit annoying, but I think you get what you pay for here.