Bed company still up to its old tricks

Craftmatic even signed undertakings with the Office of Fair Trading in 2006 agreeing to improve selling practices, but despite this Rogue Traders is still receiving complaints about the company. The 2005 investigation caught Craftmatic salesman Saleem Pasha upsetting an elderly actress posing as a potential customer. When trying to explain the consequences of old age, Pasha said, "Are you going to say damn it, I'll just go to the nursing home, where basically somebody's going to wipe your bottom for you. Is that what you would like?"

Three years on, the company visited Veronica Toms. Even though she'd been diagnosed with memory loss the Craftmatic salesman persuaded her to buy an adjustable bed. Veronica thought she'd bought the bed for £800 but had actually signed up to a finance agreement and the bed would have ended up costing her nearly £4,500. Her son Chris wrote to Craftmatic and the finance company and after a six-month wait Veronica was eventually told Craftmatic had cancelled her contract. However, Craftmatic have not refunded the deposit of £300 and the bed has yet to be collected from her home. 

To see if the company was still employing dubious sales techniques, last month Rogue Traders asked an actress to pose as an elderly lady interested in an adjustable bed. Craftmatic told the actress a salesman would call and on the day of the appointment Saleem Pasha turned up with a trainee.

Pasha made some bold claims about the bed's health benefits. Consumer lawyer Denise Nurse found problems with Pasha's pitch in relation to The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 that aim to ensure traders act honestly and fairly towards their customers. "I can't see how he could substantiate claims about her health and he's not a doctor," she said. "It's a very clear prohibited act to make false claims that you can improve or cure an illness." Not only that, but the undertakings Craftmatic made to the OFT also seem to have been breached.

Rogue Traders wanted a closer look at the company's training. An undercover reporter applied for a job as a Craftmatic salesman and was invited to attend a training session. It was led by the same man from 2005, Julian Farley. Closing the deal was a key focus and trainees were urged to tell customers to keep their bed purchase from their family. Julian told his trainees to say to their customers, "Do you want to fall out with your son? Course you don't tell him. Now after a couple of weeks you might feel guilty. Then you can say to him, do you know what I did, I've bought a Craftmatic bed."

As Craftmatic's cooling-off period is 10 working days this delay in telling the family could pose problems if they wanted to cancel.

Craftmatic is owned by Stanley Kraftsow who resides in Miami, but Rogue Traders discovered that one of Craftmatic's American chiefs, Mark Ostrov, recently hosted a sales conference for the Craftmatic sales force. Despite being convicted of fraud in June 2000, Ostrov is one of Stanley Kraftsow's right-hand men. He's deeply involved in running the UK side of the business and is the brains behind the Craftmatic sales pitch.

Rogue's undercover trainee salesman was invited to Ostrov's sales conference. Rogue Traders presenter Matt Allwright tried to meet Ostrov to pose a few questions about the sales pitch but when he approached him, Ostrov hid behind a door and asked Craftmatic staff to call for the hotel security.

Rogue Traders approached Saleem Pasha to ask him about his sales presentation. Pasha insists that he has been retrained, is doing no wrong in his pitches and has hundreds of happy customers.

Statement from Craftmatic UK Limited to BCB Watchdog Rogue Traders 4 September 2009

We are disappointed that you should wish to feature Craftmatic in your programme. We wish to reassure your viewers that we take good customer service and fair dealings very seriously. We have in place procedures devised by leading psychologists to exclude visits to the potentially vulnerable. We also provide customers with the right to cancel without reason in the 10 business days after sale, twice the statutory minimum period.

The case of Mr Pasha will be reviewed when we view the evidence, pending which he is not conducting visits. It is not our policy to dissuade customers from seeking advice from third parties and steps are being implemented to ensure such an incident does not occur. To ensure calls to head office are not misconstrued separate calls for delivery dates and surveys registration are now not made.

We apologise to Mrs Tom and her family if any distress has been caused. Our staff did not perceive Mrs Toms to have any mental impairment but we responded to cancel the sale when a doctor's letter was received by us. We have no record of having received this earlier. As a matter of policy we do not take customers' old beds away. We have refunded all monies to Mrs Toms and have left her the bed as a goodwill gesture.

We have 75,000 customer appointments annually and complaints made are a very small fraction (0.16%). We believe we address all complaints fairly. Craftmatic is successful because it has a good product, testimony to which is the exceptionally high level of repeat business.

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