My boyfriend and I moved in together a few weeks ago and decided that we needed to upgrade our bed. We chose a King sized pocket mattress with a wooden bedframe from a local store. The store manager was very friendly and helpful and quickly got it set up, took our payment and helped to arrange delivery. It all started to go wrong from here. The earliest delivery date was nearly 5 weeks away and midweek, so we needed to stay at home. The charge for delivery was close to £35, even though we were spending a lot of money instore. We happily parted with a very large sum of money and went home to wait.
Eventually the delivery day came and the bed arrived very early in the morning, but the mattress did not. We were told ' Sorry, but it wasn't put on the van.' This wasn't very helpful as we had arranged for the old bed to be picked up in a few days time. I was then put on the phone to a very rude and unhelpful woman in deliveries who assured me that there was nothing she could do and the earliest they could redeliver would be a week, or more later. At this point the delivery office have made the delivery men search the van 3 times, been rude and condescending on the phone to me for about 45 minutes and generally left a bad feeling in my mouth. I was then forced to sign the delivery sheet (apparently they couldn't leave the frame unless I did), even though I only had half of the shipment.
It is very easy to feel held to randsome when you have parted with large amounts of money and have no product to show for it, especially when you have lost trust in the company you are dealing with. All I expected was for them to be polite and professional and try to sort it out as quickly as possible. That is not what I got.
In addition, when the mattress did arrive, it was clear that the delivery men didn't have very much regard for the product. All the packing was ripped and they dragged it through the dirt up to my front door, rather than carrying it. I was too dispairing at this point to tell them to take it back and bring me a clean package. (I mean, it;s not like people have to sleep on these things, or anything). If that is what they treat products like in front of the customer, I hate to think what they do when no one is looking.
After the bed eventually arrived (causing more time to be taken off work), I made an official complaint about our treatment. I was offered half of my delivery fee as compensation (because half the bed was not delivered) and told that having someone be rude was not grounds for any sort of company recompense, or apology. I was put through to an equally rude manager who informed me that their actions were within customer trading standards, so I had no right to complain. That conversation practically left me in tears. Apparently managers at Benson Beds think that it is fine for their staff to be rude to customers, so long as everything falls inside customer trading laws. This is not an opinion I share.
The complaint was investigated, but unsurprisingly the phone conversation was not taped so it was my word against the woman's and nothing happened to her at all (surprise, surprise). I recieved my very small sum of compensation (which was more like a slap in the face than an actual apology of any kind, but I took it because it seemed silly not to) and I am now doing everything I can to prevent other people sharing this experience of Bensons beds.
Their products may be nice enough, but unless you don't mind waiting for a very long time, misdeliveries and taking 2 days off work, potentially thrown in with rude staff and delievery drivers who don't seem to have much reverence for the property they are transporting, then I do not reccomend Benson Beds. I had some dealings with Dreams about 4 years ago, which went very smoothly indeed. I wish we had gone there!
