Ashley Furniture Homestore

Comically bad customer experience - We arrived at Ashley (4500 San Felipe) on the evening of 2/20/13 looking for a Simmons mattress that had been recommended by a friend. We were led to the mattress room where we spent the usual time lying on a few different mattresses. After narrowing the selection down to a couple of choices, the sales person described the warranty on the mattress saying that we could return it after 60 days. She then said that she could work it with her manager that we could return the mattress within 30 days as well. I said that I'd need to have that "manager's warranty" in writing, and she said OK. We made our selection and informed the sales person. The sales person then told us that we would need to buy a mattress protector (for about $120, I think), or the manufacturer's warranty would be voided, because of our "sweat stains". We told her that we didn't want a mattress protector. We picked a delivery date, and then she asked her "manager" (who was another salesperson) to explain to us why we really should buy a mattress protector. After listening to about 5-10 minutes of the same pitch about the benefits of the mattress protector, we again said "no thanks", and proceeded to the "cashier's desk", where we were told to wait until our credit card payment was processed. After waiting for 10 minutes, we asked one of the people behind the counter when our bill would be ready, and they replied, "oh you want to pay" - so we had been waiting for nothing, since apparently no one informed the cashier counter folk about our payment. We thought it was pretty weird and left (after paying). The next day it got really weird. At my work, I received a call from someone who said that he was with Ashley's Sugar Land store. He said that he was auditing the purchase from the prior night and saw that there was a Manger's warranty in the file and that was not allowed. This seemed strange to me, because although I had asked for the written Manager's Warranty, I had never seen it, but apparently it had been put in the file. The Sugar Land person asked me if I wanted to cancel the transaction, and I asked what warranty would I have if the sale went through. The auditor told me that I would not have any warranty, and that there were no mattress returns. I told him that I was confused, and asked him to fax me whatever warranty applied to my purchase before I decided what to do. He said that he would fax me the information, and I gave him my fax number. The next day I received a fax from Ashley that basically just showed a copy of their store receipt. We decided that we had had enough of dealing with Ashley and we had no confidence that we would get what we wanted or would receive any satisfaction if we developed a complaint, so I went back to the store to cancel the purchase. After waiting for a while for someone to help me cancel the purchase, the original salesperson saw me and came over to tell me that she was sorry for the confusion, but that everything would be alright now. I told her that the train had already left the station. Then the cashiers told me that my purchase had already been cancelled (before I got there), and that there was nothing that I needed to do. I asked for a receipt showing the refund to my credit card. After much typing on the computer and whispering back and forth, they eventually produced a receipt showing the refund. The people at the cashier counter were professional and polite throughout, although I think that it was the first day for one of them and that's why that part of it took so long. I did get everything credited back on my credit card, and we bought our mattress from Macy's online (they allow returns).