Should I get a refund?

juliegalles

Hello. I bought a mattress from Eve Mattresses in October 2020. It came with a 100 night trial and for the first few months I loved the mattress and had no issues. Then  lo and behold in January 2021 I began experiencing pain during the night, which got worse and worse. I realised it was due to the mattress and reported the issue to Eve, 5 nights outside of the trial. They quite rightly said I was outside of my trial period. However, they are unwilling to do anything. They say it is a comfort issue and there is no mattress fault. This seems like very poor customer service to me. The pain is so bad I cannot use the product at all. I am now using a different mattress (my cheap old one in the spare room!) and the pain has gone. I feel that they ought to do something under the Consumer Rights Act as the product is less than 6 months old. It is much more than a comfort issue. A product causing this many issues is surely unsatisfactory.  What I am saying is that irrespective of the trial, because of the severity of my issue I should be covered by the Consumer Rights Act. They have been so blatantly uncompromising it makes me wonder whether this happens to them a lot. Can anyone advise me please? I'm so disappointed to have discovered such an unhelpful company. Thanks in advance. 

[Deleted User]

Get an independent report that shows the manufacturing fault and send it to them.

Aylesbury_Duck

They are entitled to establish if the mattress has a fault and is fit for purpose, or whether it's a matter of subjective discomfort. You are covered under the CRA for the former but not the latter.  In the first six months, it's up to the retailer to prove that the fault wasn't there when you bought it, it's not up to you to prove that it was.  Have they inspected the mattress yet?  If not, insist they do so.  If they determine that it is fit for purpose, that's the end of the matter unless you want to commission your own inspection to see if it comes to a different conclusion.  If there is a fault, they have to provide a remedy.

yksi

It took more than three months for you to realise there's a problem and I'm sure that the company thinks what many others will think - that it isn't the mattress causing this. If it was, why were you not in pain back in October? I suspect the burden will be on you to prove that it was fine for three months and then became unfit for purpose. Not trying to discount your genuine pain here, but I think in practical terms this will be a difficult fight for you.

JetpackVelociraptor

If you paid for your order using a credit card or finance, you can contact the credit card or finance company for assistance in getting the issue dealt with. If it's obviously faulty and the company won't deal with it, you should be able to do a chargeback or section 75 refund. The company may be able to fight against a chargeback or section 75 at which point you would need evidence to show that the product is faulty and that the company hasn't offered you a repair, replacement or refund.

Do you have any evidence to suggest that the mattress is faulty, other than it making your back hurt? For example is there a visible depression in the foam or something like that? At some point in the process you may need to bring in an independent company to do an inspection of the mattress and produce a report stating whether it is faulty, but if they don't find a fault you will be out of pocket for the cost of the inspection.

If you get them to agree that there is a fault, they have the option to either repair it (unlikely), replace it, or refund you. You can tell them which option you would prefer, but they have the right to choose which they will do.

Unfortunately just because sleeping on it makes your back hurt doesn't mean that the product is definitely faulty. The faulty part may be in your back! It could be due to normal softening of the foam over time, which wouldn't necessarily be a fault. Or something that has happened to the mattress to damage it without you being aware of it, like kids jumping on it or exceeding the weight limit. I would make absolutely certain that it is definitely a fault before you start spending any money on bringing in someone to inspect it.

JJ_Egan

OP as above you need to claim under Consumer Rights not warranty .

PS I found Eve a very very helpful company .

juliegalles

Thank you all for your comments here, I really appreciate your impartial viewpoints. They sent out a company called Homeserve this week to look at it and they determined the mattress is not faulty. (NB the mattress is also slightly out of shape and discoloured on the bottom so I had thought that would be grounds for it to be considered faulty but apparently not). So given the fact that an independent company says it is not faulty, does this mean that there is nothing I can do? It's left such a bitter taste in my mouth that a company can be so unwilling to do anything at all when it simply cannot be used anymore, even offer me an alternative product.

JJ_Egan

Inspected no fault found .

You could see if the Furniture Ombudsman handles mattress .

But if its not faulty you are entitled to nothing .

You can of course go down the small claims route but may require evidence .

CardinalWolsey

Assuming that there is no fault with the mattress, which on the face of it appears to be the case, what would you like the company to do with a second-hand mattress that has been used almost continuously since October last year?
If I was you, I would be looking at other areas of lifestyle that may have triggered the back pain. For me, it was the realisation that the "cheap" office chair I bought for working from home was causing me significant back pain, and asking my company to issue me with an ergonomic chair for home use and replacing my own chair with this restored my back in under two weeks. 

Penguin_

juliegalles said:

Thank you all for your comments here, I really appreciate your impartial viewpoints. They sent out a company called Homeserve this week to look at it and they determined the mattress is not faulty. (NB the mattress is also slightly out of shape and discoloured on the bottom so I had thought that would be grounds for it to be considered faulty but apparently not). So given the fact that an independent company says it is not faulty, does this mean that there is nothing I can do? It's left such a bitter taste in my mouth that a company can be so unwilling to do anything at all when it simply cannot be used anymore, even offer me an alternative product.

I don't know what to say, they have done everything required of them, no need for a bitter taste.