Sleep Number bed..frustrating!!

[Laura24]

If I only knew 6 years ago what I know now, I never would have purchased this type of bed system! We have had to replace the baffles, foam pad and mattress pad twice...once for falling apart and another for "black mold" on the foam padding. Customer service stated they were aware of it and replaced it all, no problem. Ok, 20 year warranty, that's what should be done, from a health risk point of view- absolutely should be done. Now, two years later, the plastic suppport system has cracked and thinking my 20 year warranty should cover it, I called customer service again....wrong! I was told they redesigned it with more reinforcement, but I would have to pay the pro-rated rate. What....what about my 20 year warranty....sorry there is a chart that explains the pro-rated charges. Never, ever saw that chart or was informed of the chart by our salesperson, honestly! Lesson learned. I'll endure this piece of junk bed system for a while longer, there isn't much else that can be rebuilt on this bed. (Hope I didn't just jinx myself!) Sorry for the rant....I just wanted to share my bad experience with this bed and company. Oh, and the CS rep was so unprofessional. When she wanted my cc number to charge me for the pieces, she didn't make me aware she was ready for the number so I didn't say anything.....next words out of her mouth were... "OK go for it"!! What??? Who speaks to customers like that?

 

[surfergirl602]

We didn't receive any fine print or chart on the bed either. We got ours four years ago. We haven't had any problems with it, but had with the pump system. When she told me I would have to pay for it, I was flabbergasted. Wrote a letter to the head of consumer products or whatever is listed on the BBB and got a response back that they have been trying to contact us at xxxxxxxx.... which was the wrong number! We listed two correct phone numbers in the letter we sent them... idiots, so now I have to write back with the correct numbers.... again.

 

[cassiez76]

i had a friend order one and they never would deliver it. she had the frame, but that was it. after 6 months, she contacted her credit card company and got her money back. sleep number never would help her.

and my m-i-l bought one and the pump broke within a week of having it. she also had a really hard time with them and said come get this POS outta my house. took awhile to get money back, but she did get it.

i thought they would be really cool to have one, but after all the horror stories, no way!

good luck!

 

[bfeller]

Sorrry that you have had so much trouble with your bed. We have had ours for 5 years and love it. No problems whatsoever. I will now go knock on wood,

 

[kaytieeldr]

NOT defending Select Comfort in ANY way, but the warranty was pretty easy to find at their website http://www.selectcomfort.com/eng/customerService/warranty.cfm?lefNavId=2 and backs up what the OP and another poster were told: after two years, warranty coverage is pro-rated depending on the age of the sleep system.

 

[bicker]

Yeah, typically we consumers don't dig all the way down to find all the details of the terms and conditions we're agreeing to when we buy something, and/or don't work hard enough to understand it all. We typically just want what we want and don't want to be dissuaded from our decision by details. I'm doing it right now. We're buying a television soon. I've been reading literally thousands of messages on various A/V forums about competing sets. If you believe the worst reports (and I have no reason to disbelieve that any of it happened), then everything in the entire world is crap, even things that cost thousands of dollars; and nothing is ever going to be good; and when things go wrong it is going to be a bloodbath. And so on. There are details of whatever television we purchase that I simply don't want to think about because if I did then I wouldn't make the purchase, and I'd move onto the next model, and go through the same process with that one, again ending in disaffection.

Nothing is ever arrayed solely for our own benefit. Everything is always a combination of the good with the bad, and that's incredibly frustrating sometimes, especially when "the bad" happens.

Something else caught my attention in the OP, though. The CSR sounded like s/he was just being familiar/casual. That's pretty common, these days, and not unprofessional afaic. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, perhaps, but I, personally, find the rote deference, that CSRs used to be told to treat customers with, to be inane and very annoying. We're each doing our jobs ... the CSR doing theirs, and me as consumer doing mine. I don't need any "Mr. Bicker"-this and "sir"-that silliness. That sort of thing, which some would consider professionalism, I consider being false, and would stoke my suspicion.

 

[Laura24]

Yeah, typically we consumers don't dig all the way down to find all the details of the terms and conditions we're agreeing to when we buy something, and/or don't work hard enough to understand it all. We typically just want what we want and don't want to be dissuaded from our decision by details. I'm doing it right now. We're buying a television soon. I've been reading literally thousands of messages on various A/V forums about competing sets. If you believe the worst reports (and I have no reason to disbelieve that any of it happened), then everything in the entire world is crap, even things that cost thousands of dollars; and nothing is ever going to be good; and when things go wrong it is going to be a bloodbath. And so on. There are details of whatever television we purchase that I simply don't want to think about because if I did then I wouldn't make the purchase, and I'd move onto the next model, and go through the same process with that one, again ending in disaffection.

Nothing is ever arrayed solely for our own benefit. Everything is always a combination of the good with the bad, and that's incredibly frustrating sometimes, especially when "the bad" happens.

Something else caught my attention in the OP, though. The CSR sounded like s/he was just being familiar/casual. That's pretty common, these days, and not unprofessional afaic. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, perhaps, but I, personally, find the rote deference, that CSRs used to be told to treat customers with, to be inane and very annoying. We're each doing our jobs ... the CSR doing theirs, and me as consumer doing mine. I don't need any "Mr. Bicker"-this and "sir"-that silliness. That sort of thing, which some would consider professionalism, I consider being false, and would stoke my suspicion.

Your probably right that she was being familiar/casual...but to me it's the lack of professionalism and most definitely respect. I don't know her and she doesn't know me..so what prompts her to be so casual in a business scenario? It's like being called hon or dear, excuse me???? Save the terms of endearment for someone you have a relationship with. When I buy a product, I expect to be told all the pertinent facts....that's what a salesperson is there for, to sell me and inform me. My salesperson obviously didn't give me the "ifs and buts" , possibly afraid of it being a potential deal breaker and I know I'm guilty of not digging deep enough. I do know this, however, thanks for forums like this and the numerous review sites available to everyone on just about everything, people like me may just have saved many others like us some major headaches. As I said, wish I knew then what I now know about Select Comfort, Sleep Number Beds...unreliable and costly to maintain and I know I'm not alone in this opinion. A life lesson learned!

 

[bicker]

A lot of it has to do with personal preference, and there is no way to know which will work best for a customer until the customer tells you. You prefer the formal; I prefer the casual. But when the telephone rings, no one can tell if it is someone like you calling or someone like me calling.

One of our CSRs here tends to call people "buddy".

Regarding your comment about "thanks for forums like this and the numerous review sites available to everyone on just about everything, people like me may just have saved many others like us some major headaches" -- you can find criticisms of practically every consumer-facing company, and typically as a function of how many customers they have, though not linear: The bigger the company is, the greater percentage of their greater customer base complains, practically regardless of the actual level of service quality provided.

We were just discussing this on one of the A/V sites I frequent. We're talking, specifically, about plasma HDTVs, and how Brand X is being criticized it one thread as being substantially worse than Brand Y, and of course in another thread the roles are reversed directly. (The two brands, in that case, are companies of roughly the same size, so I would expect to see roughly the same amount of criticism directed in each direction.) It makes it incredibly frustrating to comparison shop, because if you believed the vicious things that the worst critics say in each of the threads, you'll quickly come to the conclusion that everything is crap, nothing is any good, and you'd be a fool to buy anything, ever.

Does Select Comfort have any competitors of comparable size?

 

[kaytieeldr]

Comparable size? No - but I would tend to think, given their propensity for imitating everyone else's products that Bob's Stores might have their own version of the Sleep Number Bed.

In complete fairness to the company - and not defending the product itself in any way - they do specify the bed has a 20 year LIMITED warranty (my emphasis). Oops, that reminds me - I better go check Woot and see what warranty, if any, comes with the ITouch I just bought!

 

[bicker]

BTW: Full Disclosure: We've had our Select Comfort bed 3-4 years, and haven't had any problems. We have come, over time, to regret the purchase, though. For the first few months it was okay, the bed being pretty-much what we thought it would be. We really had no reason to return it during 30 day in-home trial, other than "it's not our old waterbed" which really wouldn't get us anywhere, since neither would any other bed be a waterbed, except a waterbed, and we weren't going to go back to a waterbed because of the hassle. (That's still the case.)