found floral, a photo by Duchamp on Flickr.

Our lovely mattress from four years ago by Simmons is failing. The side support wire is bowing out more than 2 inches and hence gives us no support. It just bows out sideways when we lay on it. I read the warranty and thought it wasn’t covered, but being frustrated, I finally called the store where we bought it. They sent out a service rep at no charge to inspect the mattress and after he left, a few days later, I got an email stating our mattress was determined to be defective and that Simmons agreed to replace it. Needless to say I was happy, but the customer service since then has driven me a bit crazy.

I called the store to order the replacement and I was informed that they would like me to try out the new replacement at the store. I agree. I went to the store, met a salesman and he pulled up my account. It clearly showed a credit for the full amount of my purchase. He first told me I could apply that to anything I wanted. I asked him to clarify that as it was not what I understood. He found out he was wrong. I could only apply it to other Simmons products. That’s fine, so I agreed to the replacement they recommended and wanted to set up delivery. The salesman told me he couldn’t do that to call the customer service number online.

So yesterday I went online to order it. I was told online that a customer service rep would call me once I tried to place the order. A woman called. She told me that they weren’t replacing my box spring, only the failed mattress, which is now a different model. That piqued my interest because the credit amount I saw at the store was for a full replacement of both the mattress and the box spring. I immediately called Simmons directly and they verified that they will only replace the mattress. Interesting how if I buy a new mattress, my warranty is void if I don’t buy the matching box spring, but if they replace it, it doesn’t matter.

Now today customer service called and told me that once I pay for delivery online, they will go ahead and ORDER the mattress from Simmons. I questioned the customer service rep, “But it says you have these in stock online.” He confirmed they did, but that since I was getting a replacement, it would come directly from Simmons for me.

That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence. I even told the guy why on earth would I need a special mattress for my replacement? Are they giving me something substandard or what? It makes no sense why they would do this as shipping a single mattress is more expensive, and companies don’t do things that aren’t to their benefit. I am not confident I am going to get an honest replacement at this point.

I would like an answer as to why they do this.

I called Simmons and the rep told me that they do this for inventory management only. They said the store pays for the other mattresses it receives and this helps keep the two separate, because this mattress will be sent at no charge. That sounds ridiculous to me. Frankly, if the store where I bought this gave me one of theirs, they could then take the replacement and put it back into their inventory and it wouldn’t be any different.

All I can say is this doesn’t do much for customer confidence in an already poor product. I’m concerned about what I will be getting…to say the least.