Is this right? Anyone know anything about amazon returns?

[Alabasterangel6]

I ordered a double mattress from amazon. It’s for a guest bed so spent around £100 (thinking it’s only going to be slept on sporadically, I’d usually spend more for one on a bed in daily use but money is a tight at the moment). It got generally good reviews (4.5 stars overall). What I stupidly didn’t note was that the good reviews were for the 3ft variation and the bad reviews all relate to the double.

We took it out of the packaging and it’s awful. Literally paper thin, squishy and soft and you can feel (and hear) every spring clunking. I left it on the bed overnight (unused of course)!in the hope that it might settle (in came rolled up and expanded out). No - day 2 and it’s just as bad.

I want to return it but it would seem I can’t! I’ve contacted the seller who says taking it out of the plastic wrap deems it as ‘used’ and they won’t accept returns. They’ve also said it’s pointless anyway as returning it would be at my cost and via a courier that would be in excess of £30.

Surely this isn’t okay? To sell something completely unfit for purpose (two adults could not sleep on it and it’s a double size!)?

I’m at a loss to know what to do and really can’t afford to just loose either the £30 or worse the £100?

Anyone got any ideas?

Raise a return with Amazon as "description on website incorrect", assuming that's the case. Otherwise "item defective or doesn't work".

Items from Amazon themselves have an "not useful for intended purpose" option, but the above is as close as you can get for a third-party seller. Amazon will come in on your side

Thank you.
The gist of the return email is that defectiveness of a mattress is subjective. However I do believe that it is indeed defective!

But I still don’t understand how I can return it when they won’t collect it and a courier is going to cost me a fortune which they won’t refund (and say they won’t refund the cost of the mattress either as it’s outside it’s plastic wrap).

I can't recall exactly how it goes, but after they've replied via the Amazon return process, there'll be some followup buttons on whether this is okay for you or not. Choose not!

Amazon should pay for it to be collected, don't worry!

So if I choose not will there be further recourse to still pursue getting in back?

Their initial email back says ‘returning the item will have to be arranged by yourself at your expense. Expect this to be in the region of £30.
Please also note we will levy a restocking charge of £30 as standard’ so getting the item back to them will cost me £60!! Surely not!

No option to accept or not! Just an email response! I’ll have to contact amazon directly but that’s never easy...

I had to do this with a smaller item recently and they told me to keep it but refunded the money. It was about £20.

The online chat is very useful!

Have a read of this OP:

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?tag=mumsnetforu03-21&nodeId=201819160

Yes you are within your rights to return, but they can charge you for postage

www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/i-want-to-return-something-bought-online

Thank you. I have been through all the links in that page already. The issue is that this item is sold through, but not by amazon. It’s via amazon marketplace. Therefore the seller has their own policies. This seller is selling mattresses at £80-£150 price range but their policy (which of course you don’t think to interrogate before purchasing, I just assumed it was the same as amazon) is to expect you to pay for any returns (even if the item is defective) and to charge a restocking fee.

Those two costs together add up to more than 50% of the item cost. It’s that which I am querying - that can’t be okay?

Whichever way I do it I’m massively out of pocket - £60 if I send it back and £100 if I don’t (and I’d still need to buy another mattress!)

azul thank you. But that article says the charge should not apply if the item is faulty. I wonder if a mattress that you can’t use (subjective, they say!) is faulty?

there is a live chat feature for amazon that you can use - I had a really good experience with it recently when I had to return a defective watch - that was a third party sale and amazon sent me a free returns label to send to a U.K. warehouse.

Don’t know if it would work for a mattress but worth a try!

I’ll give it a go from the laptop tomorrow. I just can’t reconcile it being okay to get away with that! Selling awful quality goods then making it impossible for the buyer to have any recourse.

They advertise the mattress as 7 inches deep, fully sprung with a memory foam top. I’ve just been in again and looked. It may well be 7 inches but I can squeeze it flat and keep the edge held flat together with one hand. That’s how shoddy it is. When you sit on the edge the mattress disappears altogether!

I received a faulty music system from a seller on amazon. He was a right dick about returning it and wanted to send a new one out instead, amazon refunded the £20 it cost to return it and would have refunded the cost if the system too if the seller refused.

I would not trust amazon reviews either. I used to get bombarded with messages offering me free shit in exchange for reviews, these reviews in exchange for free products used to have to be declared and your see reviews with "I received this for free for a review but I'm telling the truth and am unbiased" it's crap because people were leaving glowing reviews for products they hadn't even opened let alone used properly.

Amazon supposedly put a stop to them but they still happen as I still get messages offering me free products for a positive review.

Thanks for everyone’s help on this. Just to update (and so people don’t get bitten by the same thing)....

Neither amazon or the seller will cover the cost of returning the item. Amazon say it’s down to the seller. They have asked the seller to do it and the seller has refused and amazon say there is nothing further that they can do. Therefore to get this shoddy tat back I have to cover a couriers cost of £38 plus a ‘restocking’ fee of £20 which equates to 60% of the items worth and I am £58 out of pocket. I have tried every which way to get resolution and am unable. The seller says a mattress so thin you can feel the bedframe through it is ‘personal taste’ and that it is not defective.

I am so cross about this; it’s so unfair. I’d probably have been financially better off selling it but I wouldn’t want to give it to someone else it’s that bad.

Absolutely infuriating.

Leave an honest review. Take photos and use those. Include the fee details you've said here. (or just post the name here)

Try opening an A-Z claim with item not as described. Amazon will push them into action this way and the seller has 3 days to act in the case before Amazon intervention. Hopefully this should get you somewhere!

Agree with PP, go via Amazon A-Z Guarantee as this also includes items sold via the Market Place from Third Party Sellers. Good luck

They certainly include third party sellers, I am one! This is your best course of action OP, I hope it works out for you