Consumer complaints stretch back years, but the couch was pulled after a scathing essay published by The Awl .

West Elm has quietly removed a couch from its website that some consumers have called "the absolute worst piece of furniture" they have purchased. Store employees in New York, Alabama, and Connecticut also said the couch is no longer available in stores.

For years, consumers have complained that the company's "Peggy" couch, a tufted midcentury-modern couch, has buttons that pop off, sometimes after just weeks of use. But the final straw appears to have been an essay published by The Awl last week, in which writer Anna Hezel described her arduous struggle with the couch, her first piece of investment furniture. Days after the essay was published, the popular couch was no longer visible on the company's site.



Some personal news. The Peggy sofa has completely disappeared from https://t.co/QdaNx0ADfI. 👀

Hezel's essay seems to have moved West Elm to deal with the issue, but the complaints date back far longer. "Just got Peggy couch & a button already fell out," said one consumer in late 2015. "Few others very loose. So frustrating. Can you help?"



Customers also took their complaints to Instagram, in comments dating back at least a year.



This February, another person complained on a Denver West Elm's Yelp page that the buttons on the couch started popping off after just weeks. She said she paid $50 to have the buttons reattached at an upholstery shop, but they continued to fall off. Hezel's essay for The Awl described a couch that "began to disintegrate in small ways" soon after buying it.

"We would scooch across a cushion at the wrong angle, and a button would pop off, leaving a fraying hole behind," she wrote. "We would lean back slightly too far, and all of the cushions would shift forward and over the edge of the couch in unison. As soon as one button had fallen off of our couch, it was like a spigot had been turned, allowing all of the other buttons to fall off, too." She said West Elm sent her a button-repair kit that arrived two months later. The kit included a wooden dowel, two buttons, and confusing directions that left her with fewer buttons than she'd started with.

