Lastman's Bad Boy customers complain of long delivery delays for items advertised as available

Christie Gray bought a new couch and coffee table from Lastman's Bad Boy on the second day of 2021. The Toronto furniture and appliance company's website listed the items as available, and Gray says both were supposed to be delivered within a few weeks.

A year later, she was still waiting for the delivery — which she no longer wanted — and she was desperate for a refund.

"I've never experienced anything like this where they just don't care," said Gray, who estimates she called Bad Boy about 50 times and sent roughly 75 emails.

Gray paid $1,650 for the furniture through a payment plan offered on Bad Boy's website, but stopped making payments to the financial service after a few months because she hadn't received the couch or table and was trying to cancel her order.

That's when she started getting calls from a collections agent.

"This is collecting interest and damaging my credit record," she told CBC News. "It's really upsetting that a company can be getting away with this … get money and just not give [customers] anything in return."

After CBC News contacted Bad Boy earlier this week, the company got in touch with the financial service to begin the process of clearing Gray's debt from the Bad Boy order, refunding what she'd paid and waiving the interest. In an email to Bad Boy shared with CBC News, the financial company also said it would request that the impact on Gray's credit report be removed. 

Gray's experience falls within a pattern of delivery and customer service issues the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has identified in the nearly 1,000 consumer complaints the non-profit has received about Bad Boy in the last three years. 

The BBB pattern involves customers alleging they've not received the products they ordered, a lack of communication from Bad Boy about delivery concerns, claims in-stock items ordered from the website were not actually available, and waiting weeks or months for items that were supposed to be available right away.

Bad Boy was founded by Mel Lastman — who was mayor of Toronto from 1998 to 2003 and died last month — in 1955. Twenty years later, he sold the furniture and appliance company after being elected mayor of North York, but his son Blayne Lastman revived Bad Boy in 1991. The family now has a dozen stores across Ontario. 

Samantha Lastman, Bad Boy's director of business development, told CBC News global supply chain issues and staffing shortages related to the pandemic have affected the company's delivery times and customer service. 

"We're very flexible with our solutions. Now that being said, are we perfect? Of course not," said Lastman. "There are issues, but the majority of the customers are getting their deliveries because we have inventory." 

Lastman said Bad Boy has more inventory that is ready to be delivered right now than it ever has. But she added, "there are isolated instances where it says available and we don't have products and then it's a problem." 

Angela Dennis, president of the BBB for Central Ontario, said the non-profit contacted Bad Boy to try and get the company to address the complaint patterns the bureau identified in September 2020. Bad Boy responded to the BBB with a plan to deal with the complaints, which included hiring more customer support staff.