The Antique Reproduction Shop

Thank you for your review! We are trilled that you are happy with your product! The pieces look wonderful. You have been a pleasure to deal with and we have greatly appreciated your patience whilst we pushed through the small Covid delays, things are looking up now which is great! We look forward to having you back shopping again soon! Maybe one day when you are down in Melbourne we would love to have you visit our showroom. Thank you again!

Dear Mr. J Clements, We are very dishearted by your 3rd review though we understand your expression to offer your review to the public. We would also like to share our resolution. We are a very reputable family company that has been serving Australia since 1997. We would like to make sure we address your review and show you respect as a customer in a respectful and fair manner. We acknowledge that you have waited a longer period of time than normal. We don't want any customer waiting longer than they should. We manufacture and import 1000's of orders at a time and we are sorry that in your case your order had been delayed. We do understand that you have waited a considerable amount of time for your desk. Unfortuanlty issues arise in any normal business world and in cases like your order you have waited longer than our advised lead time. In an ideal world there would never be problems but sadly in a real world, delays can never be completely irradicated. In your circumstance, we have apologised and offered the following: We have offered a full refund of your purchase. We have tried to meet all your requests. We offered free delivery to you to the Central Coast NSW from Mooroolbark VIC for the inconvenience and wait. It was not desired that you had waited longer than you should, with your expression of concern we offered the above. The free delivery agreement has been accepted by yourself to which your desk is currently on its way for delivery. In relation to paying for delivery fee's as stated above before we had offered compensation including the delivery fee. When you placed your order for 1x 150cm x 75cm x 80cm desk, delivery had not been included in your purchase amount. Due to a minor human error fault in which out IT administrator made in the delivery system on the website, caused an error. We can provide documentation of this error from the IT administrator regarding this. In no way did we try to mislead customers or cause any misunderstandings. After 18 hours this issue regarding delivery fee's from VIC to NSW was found and addressed immediately. All orders placed within this 18 hours we addressed and we contacted you and all other customers within 48 hours to advise the cost of delivery fee's. We quoted you the cost to have the desk item delivered from Mooroolbark VIC to Central Coast NSW. The order at this stage could have been cancelled and fully refunded if you did not agree to the delivery fee. You decided to proceed with the order from this stage agreeing to a delivery fee. The order had an option of 2 delivery options to which you made a selection. We are sorry if you feel this was not fair or clear to you. We are very sorry for your experience. We guarantee should you ever wish to purchase again you will not wait longer than you should. The delivery options on the site are clear and issues like the above have been resolved. We hope you do enjoy your desk once it arrives on Thursday. Again we are very sorry for the inconvenienced caused. If we can help you further with anything please feel free to contact us.

Hi Sara,
Thanks for your review! Glad you love your chair. Hope to see you back again sometime soon :-)

Thank you so much for your review! We thoroughly enjoyed looking after you and helping you with your studio. Thanks for the images! It looks amazing! Good luck with your wonderful business, we wish you a prosperous future. We look forward to seeing you again sometime soon for some more goodies!

Hi Steve,

Thank you for sharing your review. Firstly, again we are extremely sorry that you have had such an experience. Our customer experience and the product we offer is extremely important to us and after 20 years in business, we are sorry that this time the customer experience wasn't to satisfaction. We have had thousands of happy customer’s over the years and countless customers that return time and time again. We believe everybody deserves the right to share their experience and opinion. I would hope that one would understand that any business no matter how big or small can in its time experience a problem.

We see that you have left a review in Feb 2017 on product review, another review in April 2017 on Google, several negative Instagram comments in April 2017 some on products you never purchased and this review on Houzz in May 2017. I feel saddened that after an unfavorable attempt in court in December last year by yourself and your wife Natasha for compensation that was more than double the purchase price, on top of your full refund, you feel the need to abuse your right to offer your opinion for others to review. I feel you are trying to maliciously shame a hard working family business in their right to success. I am sorry you feel the need to do this.

On a positive note, I will let you know that this experience has been a very valuable asset to building our business to be stronger and more productive. This experience has helped us continue to flourish. Since 2015 we have hired more staff to help myself with keeping up with sales, customer service and quality control. We have new manufacturing facility’s and procedures in place. We have a team taking excellent care of the quality of our timber. We offer warranty and guarantees on all of our product to protect the customer fully. We sell a product constructed of a natural substance. You can never 100% eliminate a natural substances nature. Every tree grows differently and not one particle of a natural product will be 100% the same. This is why we have measures in place keep the timber consistent and offer a warranty to the customer to make sure they are protected and get a product they can cherish for its lifetime.

Every day we supply to customers Australia wide that appreciate and love our product. I have great confidence in what we produce and will produce in the future.

Getting back to your review we believe that customers also should hear our side of the story in response to your review. We have not one single thing to hide, nor have we ever tried to hide anything. Consumer affairs made several attempts to resolve the situation with you, your wife and myself. You were already offered a full refund + a refund of any out of pocket delivery expenses before consumer affairs started to help remedy our situation. We agreed that you did wait longer than expected due to a manufacturing mistake and you were not satisfied with the quality of your order. We also note that the removalist whom delivered your bed, lost the parts you refer to, admits to this, though refuses to take responsibility for the damage on the bed as you collected the item from the depot after signing for it in good order. Consumer affairs said our offer was more than a reasonable offer. Consumer affairs advised that they could no longer help and that I needed to get legal advice as the customers were not accepting what they deemed a more than reasonable offer. I felt that a full refund, no out of pocket expenses and collection of the goods directly from your home was suffice. You continued to seek compensation on top of this offer so I hired a lawyer to help me resolve this situation. Being that I run a business, have a young family, I needed help! Every reasonable effort was made to resolve the situation and the need for a lawyer was strongly advised upon when demands were made and my business became vulnerable. This was in no way an attempt to scare you. I arranged collection of your goods and advised the refund would be returned after the goods had arrived back to the store. My lawyer then advised me after his attempts to resolve the issue with you, not to refund until we resolved the matter and came to an agreement. My lawyer tried to speak reason with you though you continued to seek compensation. The compensation you were requesting I was advised was not reasonable and was more than the initial cost of the customers purchase price. From here the advice from my lawyer was; this is costing a lot of money and resources and is causing great stress to yourself and your family, it would be in your best interest to offer a settlement amount to save any further stress and costs. So we made an offer to you in the attempt to end this situation. You accepted this settlement offer and we proceeded to resolve the issue. Your refund was returned in full. A generalized deed of agreements was drawn up by the lawyer for settlement. You then refused to sign this documents due to a confidentiality clause. I was told that this was a normal drafted document that they advise every client to have signed on a settlement. I was advised not to pay compensation without having the deed of an agreement signed. We could not come to a settlement and you proceeded with an Application to VCAT. Your application for compensation was now amounting to over double your original purchase price on top of your already refunded order amount. In your attempt, the courts awarded you the compensation we originally offered you that we said was still on offer on the day of the hearing + reimbursement of a mattress base from Ikea. The court did not agree with your means of merit for 90% of your requested compensation. If this is on the court register like you explain in your review then anybody who reads it will read/hear everything, not just small abbreviated paragraphs in each of our favor.

I understand that the courts did not resolve this to your satisfaction and that you may feel the need to express your discontent with online commentary. Please feel rest assured that we have made every effort to ensure that this does not happen again. This incident gave us the concern to make changes that greatly affect the issue you experienced to never happen again.

I believe neither of us are “winners” because we have wasted precious time in our lives that we can never get back. Steve and Natasha, I express my sincere apologies again for your experience. I wish you well for your future.

Cindy.