False information given by Dreams consultant

KevAB

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone can help me. My partner and I purchased a bed and expensive mattress from the Waterlooville branch of Dreams PLC in January. We were looking for a new mattress to hopefully aid my back problems but were very unsure about risking a large amount of money. The sales consultant who helped us informed us of the Dreams '40 Night Comfort Guarantee' and assured us that under this we could buy the mattress and if it was unsuitable then Dreams would exchange the mattress and we would be refunded the difference if the exchanged mattress was of a lesser value. He convinced us this was the best option so we took it.

We kept the mattress for 30 nights and as it did not suit us (or aid my back problem in any way) we would use the guarantee and contacted Dreams customer services. They informed us that they had changed their policies (after we made our purchase) and we weren't eligible for any refund if the new mattress was cheaper. I informed them we had made the agreement before the policy changed and were not informed that it would affect us. They were most unhelpful and told us the information was wrong and we could not prove the consultant had said it. In effect they called us liars. After another email to them, they then said we weren't eligible for the guarantee because we had some sort of discount (I believe free delivery). Again this was never made clear to us. After taking a customer services course recently I believe this is known as "giving false information to deceive and cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision they would not have taken otherwise”. We trusted the consultant who was very convincing and seemed in no doubt. We had doubts a few days later and went to cancel the order but the same consultant told us we’d have to pay to do so (he neglected to inform us there was only a one day cancellation period or any of the other terms and conditions for that matter) and said again we’d taken the best option. The store manager even reiterated that they refunded the difference of a cheaper mattress. Clearly we were deliberately mislead to part with our money. Is it legal to blatantly lie to customers to make them pay more?

We have been treated extremely badly, shown no respect and Dreams has made no effort to correct their mistakes. They’ve shown complete disregard for our situation. It has angered me and upset my fianc!e a great deal as we've been 'conned' into buying an expensive mattress we couldn't afford to be unsuitable.

If anyone has any advice for me on anything else I can do I'd be most grateful.

Thank you.

Kev

(P.S. If the advice is 'Don't buy from them again...' then don't worry, I definitely will NEVER do that again!!)

ILW

Can you prove what the salesman said to you?

unholyangel

What have the store said? Are they denying they sold it to you on that basis?

DCFC79

Don't you get any paperwork mentioning this guarantee ? I know Bensons for Beds do this.

dreamypuma

It's going to be difficult to enforce anything, unless you have any evidence of the promises being made to you.

If you have nothing to lose and there's no sign of cooperation, I would go to the store during a peak time and discuss you predicament with the manager (loudly) in earshot of all potential customers.

May result in you being escorted off the premises, but the payload will have been delivered to any potential buyers.

Dreams are shocking. I had one of there sales guys walk away from me in a huff, when I pointed out to him that the solid Oak bed he was showing me was actually oak veneer. DFS of the bed world.

tinkerbell28

Did you get in in writing? Also worth noting, that dreams changed ownership around that time, due to administration.

KevAB

Unfortunately we didn't get it in writing, and we didn't get a chance to look over the t&cs until the day after. He'd conveniently forgotten to mention we only had 1 day to cancel. When I first went to the shop the manager said 'Oh yeah, we did do that before our policies changed'. I was under the impression they had to honour the terms that were in place before any changes were made as that's not our fault and it's what we signed up for. Customer services tried this on and i told them the same thing, then somebody else emailed me saying it's always been their policy since 2007 not to do any refunds...so at the end of the day we were simply lied to. It's funny how the consultant is never available when I've been in the shop since. As for the manager...the idiot is fond of the line 'You'll have to speak to customer services'. They truly are conmen and judging by our treatment by anyone else involved in Dreams they are obviously trained to deceive customers in any way to get their money.

wealdroam

If Dreams changed ownership, as suggested by Tinkerbell, then any agreement you may've had with the old company is not necessarily binding on the new company.

That could well be what is behind the statement "our T&Cs have changed".

Poppy9

Do you have email evidence from Dreams saying they had "changed their policy" since you bought it. I know you say they then said it had changed in 2007 but if you have an earlier email saying they had changed policy since you bought it then you do indeed have evidence that you were verbally informed of your right to refund.

You may have to go to small claims court. It will cost you a few pounds, which if you win you get back. They might not defend the case in which case you win. If you lose it's not a huge amount to lose and you could get some publicity out of it in local rag about how badly they treated you!

ThumbRemote

Dreams went into administration in March. It may be that any legal recourse you had disappeared along with that. Realistically you'll need specialist legal advice on this.

Have you still got the original mattress, or did you swap it anyway?

tinkerbell28

Small claims is pointless. Dreams went bust at the start of the year. There was a buyout. The buyout took on x amount of stores, and re did the business. Whilst x amount were left to close.

The company buying didn't have to honour paid for orders from the old company, but did. A there was quite a bit of panic about that at the time. In the press from what I recall.

Your claim, if you went to court. Would be against the old, now defunct and broke owners of dreams. The company who sold you the bed. You don't have a claim against the new owners. It's a different company. At the point of the op. The company were about to go bust, if he went back for the refund in February.