Have a picture of Dreams PLC?, please send it to us.
| Quality of service | 0.5/10   |
|---|---|
| Layout of shop | 3.1/10 |
| Value for Money | 1.2/10 |
| Overall rating | 0.4/10 |
By me3101
on 29th May 2007
| Goods purchased & cost | £350 |
|---|---|
| Quality of service | 0/10 |
| Layout of shop | 3/10 |
| Value for money | 5/10 |
| Overall value | 0/10 |
 me3101's recommendation | |
Not much. Reasonably good value I suppose, and plenty of beds. But if something goes wrong, it puts that into the shade.
Hard to know where to start. Appallingly bad service.
Let me recount to you our painful experience with Dreams, which has left us bewildered and vowing never to use their services again;
04/10/06 We ordered, from their Bromley branch, a single and double mattress and paid in full £348. The Products in questions were one single and one double Ready Matt Visco mattress and, for the record, said on the label '5 year guarantee, suits all base types, suits all body weights, usable in minutes'.
20/10/06 My wife picked up both mattresses, after chasing every 2 days for the single mattress, which was not in stock at the time of ordering. The manager of the Bromley branch, advised that he had found one in the Basingstoke store, and kept it at his home address, until my wife could collect it.
04/12/06 Six weeks after collection, we found dark marks on the base of the mattress.
04/12/06 My wife spoke to a lady at the Bromley branch, who said that, as we had had the mattress for over a month, there was nothing they could do about it. She basically said that we had used it wrong or our house/room/bed conditions were not suitable. We had not been advised of this one month 'returns policy', at the time of purchase, or that the mattress was not suitable for certain types of bed/house/conditions (in our case, I might add, perfectly normal ones). We asked to speak to the manager, and we were advised he no longer worked there.
05/12/06 My wife spoke to customer services and explained the situation. She referred the matter to the manager and then left a telephone message saying they could not help as we had had the mattress for over a month. Again, we had not been advised of this stipulation at the time of purchase.
06/12/06 My wife wrote a letter to the customer services department explaining her unhappiness at the situation.
07/12/06 We received a letter from the customer service department manager, who was 'confident enough to conclude' (based on what exactly we do not know - a hunch maybe?) that it was not a faulty good, but must have been as a result of environmental changes in the atmosphere!!
09/12/06 My wife wrote back and said that she did not accept the explanation, which was frankly ludicrous, and asked for the name of the MD and any regulator to write to.
14/12/06 The Customer service department manager responded, apologising that we were not happy, and providing the name of the Furniture Ombudsman (Qualitas), but not the contact details of the MD. My wife telephoned to obtain this information.
19/12/06 My wife wrote to the MD, saying we were not happy with the product sold to us or the customer care received.
18/01/07 My wife wrote again asking for a response to her letter of the 19/12/06.
31/01/07 My wife spoke to the PA of the MD, who said that they had not received the letter(s). She asked us to fax them to her.
01/02/07 The letters were faxed to the PA of the MD.
05/01/07 A response was received from the Customer Service department manager and not the MD as requested, saying that an independent inspector from a company called Homeserve would come and inspect the mattress and report his findings.
14/02/07 The independent inspector came to our house and inspected the mattress. He advised my wife that he would be reporting it back to Dreams as a manufacturing defect.
01/03/07 My wife chased customer services, who said that the mattress was going to be replaced by the manufacturer. A letter would be sent within one week advising the date of such delivery.
19/04/07 My wife faxed the PA of the MD, asking her why no further contact had been made, in spite of the advice given on the 01/03/07 telephone call.
01/05/07 A letter was received from the customer services administration manager, saying that, in spite of what we had been told previously, the Homeserve inspector had confirmed that the complaint 'does not originate from either a manufacturing or retailing fault'. She further stated that the inspector had reported that this mattress 'has been turned, and that this is, in fact, a non-turn mattress'! What this means I do not know and again, this was the first we had heard of it. As a matter of fact, the mattress had not been turned, but simply lifted when changing the sheet.
03/05/07 My wife spoke to a lady in customer services, to ask why we were now being advised the complete opposite of what has been previously agreed.
04/05/07 We received a telephone call to confirm that they would not be replacing the mattress, as they believe it was not a manufacturing fault and must have been as a result of it being 'turned' or damp conditions. She offered another inspection at our cost, but said she doubted they would change their mind. She also confirmed that, whilst the inspector originally said that he believed it was a manufacturing fault, as he said verbally to my wife, they decided to ignore his 'independent' opinion, and conclude differently.
As you can see, this long drawn out process has been entirely unsatisfactory, in our view. The customer service has been appalling, and in the vast majority of instances, we have had to pursue information and responses. No responsibility has been taken by Dreams to acknowledge the situation or try to resolve it, unless pressed to do so. We have, at all times, been treated as if we are stupid, unsophisticated and do not understand what we are doing.
There are also a number of issues with statements made by Dreams which are either contradictory or disingenuous. For instance;
1. why does the mattress say it comes with a 5 year guarantee?
2. why did nobody selling the mattress advise of the 'phantom' return period of one month, in spite of the 5 year guarantee?
3. why did the mattress not say that it should not be 'turned', that there are certain 'environmental' conditions where it was not suitable, or that it was not suitable for divan beds?
4. why did the 'independent' inspector say to us he was going to report the problem as a manufacturing defect and Dreams confirm this, only for Dreams to change their minds?
5. more importantly, if the inspector was truly supposed to be 'independent', why did Dreams chose to ignore his findings?
6. why did the MD not respond to letters addressed to him, even as a matter of courtesy?
7. why did my wife constantly have to chase Dreams for responses, in particular after they had said they would change the mattress?
My ultimate conclusion is that Dreams decided, early on, that the fault was ours, without any evidence whatsoever, because it was a mattress for a child and, obviously, they secrete nasty things like urine, sweat and drinks into their beds and that was clearly the cause of the problem. They never entertained the thought that the product might be faulty itself. For the record, the evidence I have is that it was not caused by the child, who neither urinated in the bed (generally 9 year olds are past that sort of thing) or spilled a drink in it (he might have sweated a bit, I can't deny that, but hey, don't we all?), though I did not expect for one minute Dreams would believe me, as clearly I cannot be trusted, can I?
I put all this in a letter to the Chief Executive and co-founder of the company, in the hope that he might take some responsibility, but, needless to say, someone else responded.
| Helpful | Unhelpful | Agree | Disagree |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Total Respect: +1
rob350
on 8th Dec 2007
Bill Houston on 20th Dec 2007
jk66 on 1st Apr 2008