How Not to Buy A Mattress

Image via beddingmaster.com

I usually cringe at airing dirty laundry (even if it’s not my own) in public, but this really takes the cake and has pretty much sucked a bunch of joy out of my summer.  So I will say this now, and for the record, that if you ever decide to buy a new mattress, never, ever purchase one from Nasafoam.  I will tell you the story here, because I’m feeling really, really vindictive right now.  Sorry about that.

You may recall me mentioning that the Pie and I had purchased a new memory foam mattress through a Groupon Deal.  It was $500 for a $1700 mattress, and as broke students, that struck us as a really good deal (you can see it here).  The question was, did they deliver to Newfoundland?  Many companies don’t, so I posted the question on Groupon’s FAQ page and received a response that to ship to Newfoundland would be $225.  You can see the posting here.  You will also note, for a later point I will make, that nowhere in the fine print does it say it does not ship to Newfoundland.

Anyway, we were happy with that shipping price so we bought the Groupon and submitted it to Nasafoam.  We typed in our information, everything, and then pressed the “submit” button.  Normally when you order something online you get some form of record of your transaction, whether it’s something you can print or something that is emailed to you later as a confirmation that you actually bought the thing.  Several days later I’d received nothing like that, save the “Thank you.  Your information has been submitted” that we saw after clicking the button.

So I emailed Nasafoam and asked for confirmation that I had actually submitted the order and asked for an ETA on delivery, as well as a final cost with taxes included.  I was told simply that “delivery will contact you with final cost.”  At that point, I left it at that.

A couple of weeks went by and I started to wonder when my mattress would arrive, so I emailed again, and was told that it would arrive in 2-3 weeks from the date of that email. That sounded good.  I started making preparations to renovate my office and all that jazz in preparation for my houseguests.

Future site of my mattress. Oh wait, no, never mind.

Five weeks after the date of that email I still had no mattress, and I was starting to get a little cheesed.  So I wrote to Nasafoam and told them that I was cheesed, and demanded a final bill and a shipping estimate.  I got no response.  I emailed twice more with no results.  Then the Pie discovered that Nasafoam had a Facebook page.  On the page they were telling Groupon customers that the wait for a mattress was 4-6 weeks and at this point I was onto almost nine.  I posted this on Facebook and Nasafoam informed me that they had not been receiving my emails.  I have kept every one of their automated receipt emails so I know that is not true and told them so.  Eventually I sent another, slightly angrier email to every email address at Nasafoam I could find.

The response was unsurprisingly disappointing.  One email response told me that my order would be shipped in 4-6 weeks, which of course indicated to me that the person I had emailed my message to had not actually read it.  I responded of course that it had been nine weeks and received simply a “I see that!  Thanks!” answer to that.  The other response I received was a very frosty one saying, essentially, that they had told me delivery would contact me and that they had no control over when their delivery company would deliver any of their products.

Think about that for a moment.  A company has no control over the delivery of its goods?  What kind of crap company is that?

And of course there was no acknowledgement that I was upset (which I mentioned in a very polite way, of course), nor any final bill (which I had requested for probably the fourth time).

The next week I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.  I felt really good about this.

Nasafoam comes back with the response that I haven’t paid my final bill and that’s why they haven’t shipped.

I respond with the fact that they have not sent me a final bill.

They respond again to tell me I haven’t paid my final bill.  Which they have sent to my email address, so they say.  Which of course they haven’t.

I may have turned into Godzilla at one point in this process.  Also I know I definitely growled out “HULK SMASH” a few times as well.

Image (c) Marvel, via “Without Envy”

Rather than smash my head into the wall at the ridiculousness of this situation (and I’m in Portland at this time, mind you, so I’m using my dad in St. John’s as proxy while I try to type out all this nonsense on my smartphone), I suggest that my father call them with my credit card number and we can sort this out.

He calls.  The guy who answers, according to my dad, is an idiot.  He tells my father that  I apparently filled out the form wrong, and put in Nova Scotia as my mailing address instead of Newfoundland.  He had the form right in front of him, he said (which is nice for him.  I never got a copy of my order form).  I’d like to point out here that I have been working in the legal world for almost a decade and as such am an extremely conscientious form-filler-outer.  I do not make mistakes like that.  I double-check everything.  And the Pie was sitting next to me as I filled it out.  He also double-checks.  And, as I pointed out to Nasafoam, Nova Scotia postal codes start with B, while mine in Newfoundland starts with an A, and I sure as heck didn’t mess that one up.

Their response?  “Groupon is aware that we do not ship to Newfoundland.”

Really?  Could have fooled me.  I sent them a photo of the Groupon FAQ page where I asked them the shipping cost to Newfoundland.  Their response to that was just that I had made a mistake and should have been aware all along that they do not ship to Newfoundland.

And it just went on and on, response and rebuttal through the BBB where they simply ignored everything I said and made me look like the bad guy.  I pointed out their contradictions and blatant lies and they told me I was an idiot (or at least that’s how it felt to me).  The final verdict from the BBB was that Nasafoam was standing by their decision (to do nothing) and that they (BBB) were sorry that I was unhappy.  At least the BBB apologized. I’m in negotiations with Groupon right now to get my money back, and they’re being remarkably helpful, if a little slow, which has kind of renewed my faith in business.

When we returned to St. John’s, the Pie took a screen capture of the Groupon FAQ page where they give me the shipping quote for St. John’s and juxtaposed it next to the section of the BBB complaint where they tell me that I was “well aware it was for nova scotia only” (what? It was an Ottawa Groupon!) and posted it to Nasafoam’s Facebook page with a short paragraph about how not only did Nasafoam make us wait double the shipping time to receive our order but they lied to us and didn’t ship it to us at all.

The Pie’s graphic, with this commentary: “Nasafoam made us wait 11 weeks before telling us they would not ship us our mattress to Newfoundland. They also insist that we knew they only shipped to Nova Scotia but we were quoted a price to ship it to St. John’s, Newfoundland. They refuse to acknowledge any mistakes on their part and blame us entirely. Now a refund will only get us groupon dollars back and not our money back.”

Nasafoam deleted the comment and graphic the next day and closed their page to further posts.

Long story short, the Pie and I ended up sleeping on the floor while my parents were in town so that they could have our crappy old mattress.  The day after we returned to St. John’s we went to the lovely people at Cohen’s, and, for $600, purchased a similar memory foam mattress.  Add in $50 for delivery and they brought it right into our bedroom just a scant week later.  That’s it in that picture up there.  Isn’t it pretty?

Sorry for the venting here, folks, but I really hate it when people lie to me, especially when it’s a local Canadian business.  If you’re curious to know more about the crap that Nasafoam has put me through, send me a message and I can forward you our long and convoluted correspondence, together with the BBB complaint form (as I said, I keep meticulous records).  And if you’ve had a similar experience with some company who refuses to acknowledge any wrong doing, please feel free to rant in the comments below.  I’m ready and willing to listen.