Bensons Beds 3 YEAR Struggle

scottwhittaker

Hi
I am hoping someone here will know where I stand with regards to my situation with Bensons for Beds so here is the story...

3 years ago we bought a king size bed from them for £450. It arrived and was damaged and so I rang them to tell them and they said they would of course replace it. They said they would contact me with a delivery date etc so I waited. I never heard anything so I contacted them again and was told nothing had even been arranged! So she went to book it again and I thought that was sorted. When I heard nothing again I rang back to be told it was out of stock presently and when it is back in stock I will be informed. So I waited.

Some months had passed by this time so I contacted them again and they arranged a delivery date and I received a text message to confirm it etc. The morning of the expected delivery date we dismantled the bed and waited in for them to turn up and replace it. No one came. I rang them and they told me it was out of stock. I asked why I wasn’t informed of this and…well they didn’t know. So we put the bed back together. Not a quick and easy job with a king size wooden bedstead.

Having not heard anything again for quite some time I wrote to them to complain about this and a lady rang me at about 9:30 one morning to basically apologise and confirm that the bed was indeed still out of stock but that she would endeavor to get it sorted for me and offered £150 off the price we paid as it was now on sale for £300 or something around that figure.

Months passed yet again and we still got nothing, no money and no replacement. I rang and got nowhere as per before. Some more time passed and given the damage to the bed (just paint chips really, nothing structural) I forgot about it until last year and wrote to them once more to find out why nothing had been sored. This was October I think.

I received a reply denying any agreement regarding us receiving some money off but that they were willing to send a replacement and offer us £75 back. In April of this year they arranged AND DELIVERED a replacement bed frame. The delivery driver asked me which parts were damaged and needed replacing and I told him the header and the footer so he replaced those parts and took away the damaged parts.

We set about putting it back together later that day and found that the bed was of a different structural design and didn’t fit together as well as the last bed - especially given we had half of the old design and half of the new design (he didn't swap the sides or struts and supporting legs etc.) Basically only about half of the screws line up with the holes that are drilled etc and this makes it quite a bit less sturdy that the original we had and paid for.

I wrote to them when I found time (which admittedly was about 9 weeks after receiving the replacements but it isn’t top of my priorities) to explain the problem with the new design and the old design not matching and they have basically told me they are not doing any more with regards to actually supplying us with the bed we purchased from their store 3 year ago. Never in the 3 years have we been supplied with anything which I would spent £375 on let alone £450. I told them that if I was going to be happy with a bed frame that didn’t fit together right I wouldn’t be paying those sorts of figures.

The reason they have given me for not willing to do anything else with regards to replacing the bed is…I took too long to tell them that the bed design was different and didn’t fit together correctly!( 9 weeks) This from a company that took 29 months to send me a replacement!! I could understand their stance more if I took 9 weeks to write to tell them that the replacements were also damaged as quite clearly it could have been something I had done and therefore was trying to ‘pull a fast one’ but they obviously know the design is different and therefore their driver should have been told to replace the full bed to avoid this situation.

Basically given their stance I do not know where to go from here other than maybe seeing a solicitor but I have never been down that route for anything so would love some advice. Is there anything else I can do?

Thank you for reading this far!

Regards
Scott

Whiteknight

Don't know if you are being serious as it seems both parties are to blame, yes the bed frame may have been delivered damaged but from what you have written you don't seem to have been very pro-active in getting the problem resolved. It seems you just waited (and waited) and when you finally got the replacement parts what did you do when you discovered they did not match - you waited nine weeks before reporting the fact!

You may have been busy but what did you do without a bed for those nine weeks. If you wait long enough I am sure someone will come along who can give you much better advice that me.

scottwhittaker

Whiteknight wrote: »

You may have been busy but what did you do without a bed for those nine weeks. If you wait long enough I am sure someone will come along who can give you much better advice that me.

Hi, it does fit together but its a lot less stable than the original as only about 4 of the 10 bolts actually line up now (given theres 2 different designs of bed). It is more than usable but still isnt as good a bed as we bought. I like to buy something and be more than happy with it and this has so far been nothing but a hassle. Also take the resale value into consideration - I couldnt sell this for anywhere near as much as I should be able to.

If they had sorted it at the begining when I was asking them to we wouldnt be this far down the line anyway. Like I said it has taken them nearly 30 months to replace it so the 9 weeks I took to notify them of something they should have been fully aware of surely pales into insignificance?

Tim_Deegan

scottwhittaker wrote: »

Hi, it does fit together but its a lot less stable than the original as only about 4 of the 10 bolts actually line up now (given theres 2 different designs of bed). It is more than usable but still isnt as good a bed as we bought.

The bed will be designed to be assembled using all the bolts. If you can't use all of them then the bed isn't fit for purpose.

As this is complicated due to the time issue, then I would contact Trading Standards, and the CIB.

There are quite a few threads on MSE that are full of complaints about Bensons.