Slumberland Belgravia

loulou41

The Belgravia is a luxurious quilted pillow top Divan Set with 1600 pocket springs and 70mm of Kontur-Zone technology Memory Foam that follow the contours of your body. This is £899 from dreams without drawers. I would welcome any advice from members, please. Looking to buy a new bed, I suffer from chronic back ache. I cannot find it anywhere on the internet to compare prices. Thanks

Tim_Deegan

loulou41 wrote: »

The Belgravia is a luxurious quilted pillow top Divan Set with 1600 pocket springs and 70mm of Kontur-Zone technology Memory Foam that follow the contours of your body. This is £899 from dreams without drawers. I would welcome any advice from members, please. Looking to buy a new bed, I suffer from chronic back ache. I cannot find it anywhere on the internet to compare prices. Thanks

I can only find the Slumberland Belgravia on the Dreams site, so I presume it is one that has been renamed just for Dreams because they have a price guarantee (a very popular ploy by large bed stores). Sometimes they are actually made to a lower spec than a bed that looks similar, and is made by the same brand (obviously done to misslead).

I notice that there is no mention of the density of the memory foam. This shoould ideally be between 60 and 70kg per m3, although 55 to 80kg is acceptable depending on personal taste.

The memory foam is slightly too deep, but not by much.

It is a non turn mattress, so obviously won't last as long as a two sided mattress. It is very important to turn mattresses on a regular basis (especially pocket sprung mattresses).

All in all it just appears to be way over priced, so I'd shop around a bit more if I were you.

dunkforbes

I have the Belgravia mattress. In my view there are major problems with this bed:

1) It ends up feeling nothing like it does in the shop. In the shop it is very, very firm, but after 2 months it will be very soft by comparison. The dreams sales people assured me that this would not be the case.

2) Within 2 months, there was a serious dip in it, that is so bad, it feels like the memory foam has completely flattened and you can feel the springs on your ribs, making it uncomfortable to sleep on Dreams sent someone round to look at this, who said that he could clearly see the dip, but that it was not a manufacturing fault.

3) Dreams sell it. The manager of the New Malden branch gave me a £40 discount and said that I would be able to do a comfort exchange indefinitely until I found the right bed (I have a bad back). When I tried comfort exchanging this mattress, they said that because of the £40 discount, the comfort exchange was not applicable (despite the manager of the store telling me the discount wouldn't stop me getting an exchange).

4) Some of the Dreams customer care staff are extremely rude on the phone, and refuse to put their comments in writing. Everything is handled by phone (for obvious reasons).

5) I've only told you half of the story, I have even more problems with Dreams, but just posted the most pertinent ones here.

If I could go back in time, I would bought a much cheaper mattress, and I wouldn't have bought it from Dreams.

Duncan Forbes
London

Tim_Deegan

This sounds like the common problem you can encounter when buying mdels that are exclusive to high street stores. They often reduce the quality of the mattress by taking out, or reducing the quality of internal components in order to make the mattress cheaper for them to buy from the manufacturer.

They will often design the mattress to have a very similar appearance to another mattress that is made by the same manufacturer. As allways they will give minimum information in the spec, so that it appears to be very similar spec to the more expensive model.

How many of you have been into one of these large chain stores and been told by the sales assistant 'this model is renamed exclusively for us, but is actually the same as ****** but is much cheaper'?

dunkforbes, have you tried contacting the manufacturer?

AllanT_2

I paid a visit to Dreams last weekend and tried out the Slumberland Belgravia. Admittedly it was very comfortable in the shop and we were quite impressed. The salesman, sensing an opportunity, told us that if we purchased there and then he would throw in a free headboard…which somehow became a 40 pounds discount (equivalent to a set of drawers in the divan) and a 10 year guarantee…of some description... However we explained that we weren’t in the market to purchase there and then, but that we were still very interested (which we were), at which point, he lost all interest…
Anyway, having read through numerous posts on these boards relating to other peoples experiences with Dreams, I am now fairly certain that the 40 pound discount/guarantee would have been used to invalidate the dreams 30 days “satisfaction guarantee” had we decided that we did not want to keep the bed - A number of other people have posted here that their satisfaction guarantee was not upheld because they had received a paltry discount/free sheet etc.
Needless to say we won’t be shopping at Dreams, but still on the subject of beds, I was wondering if anyone had any views on beds from John Lewis e.g. the pocket/pocket plus range? Thanks in advance.

Tim_Deegan

AllanT wrote: »

I was wondering if anyone had any views on beds from John Lewis e.g. the pocket/pocket plus range? Thanks in advance.

I'mpossible to comment on because they very very little about the spec. From what they do say, they seem to be over priced by at least £200.

Martin_H_3

I too have the Slumberland Belgravia matress puchased from Dreams at a cost of £999 in November 2008. I confirm that this is not a good product - although the bed was great when new, the memory foam has progressively lost its supporting qualities over time. After 18 months the bed is really uncomfortable for me now as I find myself sleeping with a curved spine. I don't think there is a manufacturing defect - it is more a characteristic of this generation of matress design. I did not expect much help from the shop where I purchased it from and did not get it, and all they advised is that I contact the manufacturer as it was outside their 1 year guarantee (which I would not have been entitled to anyway since a small discount was applied to my order at the time of purchase. I will see what response I can get from Slumberland - but they only offer a 1 year guarantee anyway. I will post again should I get a positive reponse from Slumberland.

Tim_Deegan

Martin_H wrote: »

I too have the Slumberland Belgravia matress puchased from Dreams at a cost of £999 in November 2008. I confirm that this is not a good product - although the bed was great when new, the memory foam has progressively lost its supporting qualities over time. After 18 months the bed is really uncomfortable for me now as I find myself sleeping with a curved spine. I don't think there is a manufacturing defect - it is more a characteristic of this generation of matress design. I did not expect much help from the shop where I purchased it from and did not get it, and all they advised is that I contact the manufacturer as it was outside their 1 year guarantee (which I would not have been entitled to anyway since a small discount was applied to my order at the time of purchase. I will see what response I can get from Slumberland - but they only offer a 1 year guarantee anyway. I will post again should I get a positive reponse from Slumberland.

The problem you are encountering is nothing to do with the generation of mattress, but is more likely to do with poor design, and poor spec on this particular model.

A good quality memory foam will soften only slightly over the first few weeks of use as it becomes worn in. However after that it should remain the same feel for many years to come. I suspect that they have used a thin layer of memory foam on top of a layer of reflex foam. Reflex foam is made up from loads of bubbles that can burst over time causing softness or even dips. Memory foam is open celled, so there are no bubbles to burst. It wouldn't surprise me if Slumberland, Dreams, or a combination of both have done this to cut production costs.

You were fully entitled to your 1 year guarantee (with or without discount), as this is your statutory right.

If you have any problems with Slumberland, then ask them what the design life of the mattress is. This is because within the design life, if a fault develops that is due to materials or workmanship, then the manufacturer has to pay towards the cost of replacement or repair. You do however need to weigh up the part of the replacement cost that you will have to pay, compared to what you could buy a better quality mattress on line for.

For future reference stay away from big brand names and big chain stores if you want good quality at a low price, and shop on line from a seller who gives a proper satisfaction guarantee that allows you to actually unpack and sleep on the mattress. This way it is in their interest to make sure that you make the right choice the first time.