Sleepy's Richmond

Based on an interesting ad, I called the Richmond Sleepy's store and spoke with a salesperson, explaining that I needed a mattress for an antique bed and that a standard double set had worked in the past. She told me that they had sets available for delivery next day. She also assured me that if the mattress didn't fit, I could refuse delivery and be given a refund. I drove to the store that day, purchased a mattress and box springs, and scheduled delivery for the next day (July 28, 2010). I explained carefully to the salesperson that I needed to have the bed delivered by noon the next day, as I had an appointment at a new job the next day at 1. She assured me that there would be no problem with that, and that the mattress would be delivered by 12:00. I also reiterated my question about refusing delivery if there happened to be a problem with fit. She again assured me that there would be no problem. At 12 on 7/28, the mattress still had not come. I called the store to ask about it and to tell them that I had to go to work. The salesperson couldn't get through to the driver of the truck to find out where he was. She promised to call me--or have someone from dispatch call me--to reschedule delivery for that evening at 5 or 5:30. She also promised to have them call and leave a message for me verifying that they would deliver that evening. I checked my messages a couple of times from work. No calls from Sleepy's. I left work early to meet them, just in case they came to deliver the mattress. No message,no delivery. This time, I called them to ask what happened. After a few confusing phone calls back and forth, they told me that the driver had decided that he couldn't stay that late. No one called to let me know this, so I left my first day on my new job early for no good reason.The next day, I called to cancel my order. A very nice CSR convinced me to reconsider and offered me a $150.00 discount. I agreed to try again. We arranged for delivery on August 9. The CSR assured me again that if the mattress didn't fit I could refuse delivery and receive a refund. The delivery was scheduled for anytime between 10 am and 2 pm on 8/9. The truck arrived at 2:05. The delivery men brought the mattress and box spring into my apartment and tried to put it in the bed. As I feared, it didn't fit. It was about 2 inches too long. Unfortunately, the two men trying to force the box spring into the bed frame didn't speak English. They began taking my bed apart and trying to make the mattress fit. I was trying to ask them to be gentle, but they didn't understand me. The sides of the bed were straining and they made a deep scratch in the footboard trying to make the mattress fit. I finally said "NO! STOP!" Using gestures, I finally made them understand that I wanted them to take the mattress away. They called their supervisor on a cell phone and let me talk to her. I told her that I wanted to cancel the order. To my surprise, she suggested that keep the mattress set and go back to the store to find a bed that fit it! Offended, I advised her that I planned to keep my great-grandmother's bed rather than the new mattress. She sighed heavily and said, "OK, well then you'll have to call the store to cancel the order." I hung up from talking to her and called the store immediately, asking to speak to the original salesperson. I explained what had happened and told her I wanted to cancel the order. She promised to take care of it. On August 19 (ten full days later) I received a voicemail from a Sleepy's rep named Marjorie asking me to return her call about the cancellation. (IWhy did this take ten days?) I returned her call the next day. She answered the phone with "Sleepy's Mattress Professionals." When I asked for Marjorie, she asked, "Who is calling?" I found this strange, since I was returning a business call to the number she had left. When I identified myself, she told me that I was speaking to Marjorie. She was curt and surly and refused to answer my questions about why I had to speak to another customer service representative, why it had taken so long for someone to call me back, and why my money had not already been credited back to my account. She was very short and rude to me, and was trying to get me off the phone as quickly as possible. I told her that I was considering reporting the company to the BBB. I noted that it was unfair that they had debited my account for the money the next day after the sale, but refused to expedite returning that money to me when they no longer had a right to it. She made the lame excuse that she had to fill out paperwork to send to the bank to make the refund happen. She was very dismissive of my concerns, and cut me off before I had the chance to remark that the refund should have been put in process the day I refused delivery, and that they shouldn't have waited ten days to call me about why I refused delivery--especially when I had already explained this to both the delivery supervisor AND the saleswoman at the store. In my estimation, Sleepy's is a company that doesn't have its act together. Except for the one telephone representative who offered me the discount and apologized for the inconveniences I had experienced, the others were all less than enthusiastic about helping me when they learned that I had had problems. They don't seem to communicate well between departments, and they have held my money for weeks after I cancelled the order.