Can’t recommend them due to item damage and the insurance being a one-sided affair. After a long wait for our quite expensive, custom made special order long rustic timber dining table, it was picked up from the supplier by Kent Albury-Wodonga to be delivered to us in Qld. Two or 3 weeks later, we hadn’t heard anything and chased it up, and finally got an apologetic phone call to say that the job had been “lost” somehow and the table had been sitting in the depot all the time. They got the shipment going and it finally arrived a week later. When the truck backed up, as soon as the guys removed the covers from it, I could see a huge bow in the beautiful table. We got it into the house and contacted the furniture manufacturer who was gutted. He reassured us that he’s made heaps of these tables and they’re rock solid. He said it couldn’t have bowed that much unless it had had very heavy items stacked or dropped on it. On further inspection, as well as the bowing, the edges of the table top could be moved up and down a bit, the legs could be moved and two of them had rope marks on them, and some of the main table boards had become misaligned. The supplier had paid the extra for insurance so he submitted a claim, and it took ages for anything to be done. We and he kept chasing it up and finally Kent said that they’d be getting a furniture expert to come and have a look at it as part of the process. They selected and contacted the expert, who was a Brisbane furniture restorer, who enjoyed a nice ride up here into the hills on his motorbike, and who seemed to have made his mind up about the table before he had even seen it. It was quite unprofessional - the guy stood and talked and criticised the table’s structure in a detached uninterested way. He honestly didn’t even seem interested in looking closely at it until I started pointing things out and asking questions. Along the way I asked about the company handling the insurance claim and he let slip that Kent doesn’t use an insurer - they have their own insurance arm. I was pretty shocked as it seems all one sided. Not long after, the supplier was told by Kent that they’d declined the claim as the table “wasn’t properly constructed” and that “it should have a centre leg”. The supplier was again gutted, as were we on his behalf. We can’t have any proof of what was done with the table while it was in Kent’s care, so it’s their word against ours that the table was mishandled. And then the insurance process is totally one sided, with Kent selecting an assessor themselves and making their own decision about whether they will compensate for the loss. So the poor furniture manufacturer, himself an expert with long experience in making many such items, after all the weeks of work and expense to make the table, managing a bespoke small business, doesn’t have any recourse and was left totally liable. He has offered to make us another table, or refund the money, which is incredibly generous of him as he’s a person of principle, whose dealings are open and transparent and he does the right thing by his customers, unlike Kent. But it’s not at all fair on him, or on us.

Approximate cost: $710