Marin Furniture Clinic

Very poor customer service… I couldn’t even go forward with them completing my repairs.

If you truly want to repair and preserve a piece of well loved furniture… Take it to the Marin Furniture Clinic. I just picked up my 2 mahogany chairs and piano bench from James. The wood restoration and the upholstery work was fantastic. The detail work was exquisite. A very professional, clean, talented and caring business. Don’t even think of taking your business anywhere else. The BEST EVER!

Like so many I have had mixed experiences with Marin Furniture Clinic. They upholstered a rocking chair and repaired and refinished a cane chair for me 7 years ago and did a beautiful job but charged a ridiculous amount of money for the job. I recently brought in a relatively cheap chair which i believe had a structural problem which they said it did not have. They felt the problem was due to bad and incorrectly sized foam in the seat cushion which i had just replaced with a top of the line dense foam. I also felt it needed a new slipcover. I decided the chair was not worth the expense of the repairs and new slip cover. When i called to say i would come at 4:30 to pick it up the male owner said they were getting ready to leave (at 4:00) and if i didnt come right away to get it they would charge me storage. I went right down to get the chair ready to sit outdoors with it until my husband could get there at 4:30 with a truck. When i got there the female owner who had quoted me the original charge that would have added up to over $ 1600 (repairs and slipcover) now said no problem i must have misunderstood about the time threat .they were open til 5 and the cost in total would be under $ 900. There is no way I would ever go there for any work in the future. They are bullys and charge what they think they can squeeze out of you.

Excellent restoration of an antique dining table. They take time, but the wait is worth it for the final product. Patience is rewarded with quality work.

I had three chairs repaired by Marin Furniture Clinic. I am very happy with the quality of the work they did. My only issues had to do with estimates of the cost vs. the actual cost. Discussing the issues by phone with James made it sound like the repairs I needed would not be difficult or expensive. When I brought them in the work required was considerably greater and the cost a great deal higher. This didn’t surprise me since there is only so much you could diagnose by phone. What did surprise me was that when I picked up the finished chair they «realized» they forgot to include the costs of replacing part of the seat rail on 2 chairs — even though this was exactly the repair they required. That added another $ 90 to an expensive bill. The caning work they did on 1 chair was great. Redoing the rush seats the other 2 was also very good. I don’t know how their prices compare to other places. Just wish they had either been thorough or honest about the costs from the beginning.

I shipped a Breuer chair seat for re-​caning and they did a beautiful job at a reasonable price. It took about two months to get the seat back but fortunately we weren’t in any hurry. I deducted one rating star for telephone customer service which, as others have noted, is not great. But based upon craftsmanship, I will likely use them again.
They operate online as
, have a mailing address of Britmark Inc., and bill under Marin Furniture Clinic – kind of confusing when I got my credit card statement.

I inherited a lot of antiques from my grandmother, who was a collector. I have 4 children and we used her furniture as we would any furniture for 10 years. Needless to say, many of the pieces were well-​worn, and broken, by the time I brought them to James and Lydia. They have helped me understand the value of my furniture and refurbished each piece with appreciation and care. I took pictures of my home, and Lydia was able to help me with picking out upholstery that was my style and worked with the rooms. They are both excellent at their craft. We are all very happy with our beautiful furniture, and I wish my grandmother could see how they have brought new life to her collection. They repaired our library steps, mahogany side table, dining room table and chairs, and the legs on a high-​back upholstery chair. They also covered a bunch of cushions.
My dad, who lives in San Diego, is driving up some of his pieces so that they can work on them. They are that good. «When you find someone you trust, it is worth the drive,» he says!

We have used Marin Furniture Clinic on 4 occasions in the last 5 years. The very first time was for our Breuer Chair’s re caning. I found the owner, James to be very knowledgable and very honest in his quote and took great pride in his team’s work.
We literally had brand new chairs after this experience. Since then we have had all of our outdoor furniture cushions reupholstered, my wife’s antique dresser refinished and even a vase repaired.
I would highly recommend their work and service. Surprised by the negative reviews here. If you are looking for someone to not share their views of what you might think should be done to your items to really resurrect its original condition, this is not the place for you. They know what they are doing and are not afraid to disagree with you for the sake of perfection. I have learned to trust them over the years.

We had the most impressive experience with Marin Furniture Clinic!!! We brought them a set of high end antique furnitures and they have done a structural repairs and excellent refinishing job and charged us a moderate price!!! Most importantly we were very pleased with the customer service!!! Thank you!!!

I agree with all of the other reviews. I just picked up an antique rocking chair that I had them refinish. I have been waiting for it for almost 2 months. First off I can say that the chair is beautiful. They did a fine job. However I am sure that many other places would have done equally a fine job. Furniture Clinic VERY expensive. However I agreed to the price before they started the wok so I cannot blame them for that.
However — THEY ARE THE RUDEST PEOPLE I HAVE EVER DONE BUSINESS WITH. There is a woman in there who has no business dealing with customers. I was spoken to in a disrespectful manor and bullied. Given how expensive they are there is no reason why I should give my money to such rude people. There are too many other places to go and I will next time. I need the cushion for the chair reupholstered but they wanted too much money and I have no intention of EVER doing business with them again. In fact I will go out of my way to make sure as many people as possible know what a horrible business they are and how rude they are to customers.
DO NOT TAKE YOUR FURNITURE TO THEM UNLESS YOU LIKE BEING TALKED DOWN TO.
Update: I found another upholstery place in Marin that is highly rated on Unilocal and he has asked for $ 160 to recover the cushion. (as opposed to the $ 500 Furniture Clinic wanted!)

I wish I could give zero stars. We went in with a chair to be restored (wood and upholstery) and all I can say is this was the worst experience with customer service I may have ever had.
Not only was the lady there incredibly rude, abrasive and tactless but she was pushy and continued using old sales techniques that anyone should be able to see right through. When I finally gave into a suggestion of hers for quoting purposes, she psychotically argued with me again and stated that she had suggested the other option… I felt like I was in a twilight zone! She argued with almost everything my husband and I requested, and when I could finally get a word in edge wise to have her give me a cost, the cost was through the roof expensive! No matter how great the quality is, this was just unreasonable unrealistic pricing.
When I took my chair away, she was trying to talk me into leaving it. I simply told her I was interested in getting quotes elsewhere to compare. She became flustered and disgruntled at this.
DO NOT GO HERE!

I had almost the exact same experience as the previous poster. My landlord left two tables in our house. He was returning on the 23^rd So i dropped off two table legs that had some chew marks and was Promised it would be done by the 22^nd. That gave them over 2 weeks to get it done. I called them on the 22^nd and they hadn’t even started yet. They finally finished it by the 29^th and by that time my landlord had already taken $ 400 out of my deposit for the furniture. When I went to pick up the furniture I explained this to the owner who Called me a liar and told me he would do nothing for me. After I refused to sign the Satisfaction paper the workers tried to get the stuff out of my trunk.
Everyone there is very disrespectful, unprofessional and tries to bully you around.
i now have two ugly $ 700 pieces of furniture I don’t want. Go somewhere else.

This was really the worst customer service that I have experienced from a business. On January 31^st, I took a ceramic plate to be repaired that had a very small chip out of the rim. I had been housesitting for a friend and accidently chipped the plate in the sink. As the pattern was no longer available in the stores, I wanted to have it repaired.
The gentleman of the store had another associate help me who was responsible for the ceramic repairs. I was suprised when he said that it would not be ready for 2 weeks, since it was such a tiny repair. I also thought the cost was a bit much, $ 45.00. But I paid the ½ down and left the plate with them. Almost 3 weeks later I called the store to see what had happened since I had not heard from them. The owner of the store was unbelievably rude to me and intimated I was a liar when I told him that the other gentleman had told me two weeks to repair. He said that was not true and it would take them 4 — 6 weeks and they would call me when it was done. I then waited and NEVER heard back from them. I was pretty disgusted with the treatment that I had received from the man and felt it was not worth getting upset about so I just let it go.
Now it is mid July, and I received a call from the same man at the shop. Not to tell me that my plate was ready, not to ask why I had not come in to pick it up, but to tell me they are taking me to collection for non payment of the bill. I told him no one ever called me about the plate being ready and he again called me a liar, yelling at me in a threatening and verbally abusive manner and then hung up on me. I immediately called him back but he would not pick up the phone.
I would not consider using this business again. The customer service was not acceptable.
UPDATE: 8÷03÷11 — Since this review, I was contacted by the owner (after filing a complaint with the BBB) and was given an apology if someone was rude to me, with the accusation that is was my error for writing my phone number on the work order using a hyphen between my area code and phone number instead of parentheses. If I didn’t get the call they insist was made to me on Feb 18^th then it was my own fault. The owner would not address or even give creedence to the fact that I called and was told it would take 2 – 4 weeks additional time at that same time? This was a real stand-​off. I did not feel heard at all. A simple apology for being rudely treated without all the justification why I was wrong would have been nice and accepted. I did pick up my plate and they did waive the final payment. An honorable gesture.
Just because I had a bad customer experience does not reflect on the quality of work done by this company. This review is based on my experience of their customer service only. I am sure they have many happy customers as they have been in business for many years.