Bensons said slumping mattress was our fault

We purchased three mattresses from Bensons For Beds at a cost of £5,459, delivered on 28 January.

- By Jill Insley

We paid £3,100 for a Hypnos mattress for our room and this was placed on our bed on 30 January.

We noticed after a couple of nights that the mattress appeared to be slumping where we lay. By night four, this slumping was quite considerable and, by night five, it was so bad that we could no longer sleep on it due to severe back pain. Fortunately, we still had the old mattress, which we put back on the bed and continue to use.

I contacted Bensons, providing photographs showing a slump of up to 70mm when no one was lying on it. After consulting Citizens Advice, I sent a templated “complaint about faulty goods” letter on 10 February, asking for a full refund for this mattress. Bensons contacted me, saying it would send an engineer to carry out a report. On 20 February, the engineer came and reported the mattress had failed his tests. However, he also noted that the “turning routine” - rotating the mattress once a week for the first three months - had not been carried out. Despite being very courteous in its replies, Bensons refuse to budge on the refund, saying that we had not carried out the weekly mattress rotation.

The mattress is now in our spare bedroom and we want our money back. Please can you help?