Skip to main content"I'm just in a panic," says Saundra Rice. "I'd like people to know that it's possible--you can write a check for any amount of money, and it can just disappear."
A year ago, Rice purchased nearly $30,000 worth of furniture at Roche-Bobois, a high-end furniture franchise in the Pearl District. Rice says she paid half the bill up front...and then six months passed...and no furniture arrived.
When Rice returned to the store this spring, she found its name had changed to Furnish, though owner John Kozloff was still in charge. Kozloff told her he couldn't fill her order because an employee had embezzled $200,000. Over the next several months, Rice continued to make inquiries.
"The only call I got from Kozloff," she says, "he said, 'Never go in my store again.'" She says she has retained a lawyer and held off filing a suit against Kozloff when he recently coughed up a single sofa.
Kozloff was unavailable for comment. Meanwhile, it seems Rice may not be alone in her tale of woe. Two former Furnish employees, neither of whom wanted to be named in print, say Roche-Bobois, based in Paris, revoked Kozloff's franchise because of similar problems in Portland, Seattle and Scottsdale, Ariz. (Hence, they say, the name change.) All three of Kozloff's stores have been the subject of complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau. And in July, the Oregon attorney general's office launched an investigation into Furnish's biz practices.
Even so, Rice isn't taking much comfort in the fact she might have company. After all, she has just one sofa to show for her $15,000.
"I don't know anything about these laws," Rice says. "But what kind of system do we have here that makes it possible for him not to eventually pay me?" Or, a year later, deliver the rest of her furniture.
WWeek 2015