Troubleshooters: Is fabric protection for furniture worth it?

Audrea Haas has two young sons, who spend a fair amount of time on her furniture. So when she was couch shopping at Rooms To Go recently, she paid special attention to the saleswoman’s demonstration on fabric protection. “She spilt Coke on the showroom furniture, and it just beaded right up with a rag, it was like it wasn’t even there,” said Audrea. “I was like, definitely yeah, I’m going to get that because I have boys, I definitely need to have it. I purchased it thinking it was going to do what it did in the showroom.”

Audrea paid an extra $140 to have her new couch protected. She thought it was money well spent, until she spilled water on her new furniture. As she showed us, the water soaked right through the fabric, and did not bead up at all like it had in the showroom.

WWAY called Rooms To Go to find out what went wrong. They told us there was a chance Audrea’s furniture had accidentally been shipped before being treated, but even if that was the case, they would still honor her three year warranty if her couch got stained. While that is better than nothing, Audrea is disappointed. “If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t have got the fabric protection,” she said. “I wouldn’t have spent the extra money for fabric protection. It doesn’t work like they showed me.”

Rooms To Go declined our request for an in-store demonstration of how the fabric protection is supposed to work, but we were able to find a demonstration online. In the video case, Scotchguard appears to work quite well, offering some protection against spills.

Despite Audrea’s bad experience, most experts we talked to still think it is a good idea to pay to have your fabric protected, particularly if you have kids or pets, if you eat on your couch, if it’s a light colored fabric, or if you paid a lot for the furniture.

While the level of protection may vary, at least you have a warranty to have the fabric replaced if the stain will not come out.