Community Update

On March 24th, 2014, my husband and I purchased 1 mattress, 2 box springs, and a bedframe/headboard. Our experience in the store was fantastic, and the salesperson was very helpful. When the items were delivered in the middle of April, the mattress and box springs were sealed in plastic. The bedframe and headboard were not. There was no packaging or plastic on them. My husband asked the delivery person why this was and if there was anything wrong with it, and the delivery person responded that the items were fine. We checked them over twice for damages and found no visible damage. (On a side note, we did not accept one of the box springs because it was too large for the bed and it took us two months to be refunded the money for it. Only after calling the store multiple times and being ignored, did we receive a refund after filing a Better Business Bureau complaint. These two complaints are the only time I have ever had to do this to a company.) When the delivery men left and we were putting the bed together, we found a hangtag on the backside of the headboard marked “returned.” Again, we checked the bed for any sign of visible damage and because it looked okay, we kept the bed. About two weeks later, I woke up with itchy red welts on my fingers, similar in appearance to hives. Since I have had hives before due to allergic reactions, I brushed it off, thinking I ate or touched something I was allergic to. Over the next month, the welts became worse, spreading up my arms to near my shoulders. I only had new welts in the mornings after waking up. My husband works overnights and does not sleep in the bed at night, so he did not have any of these welts. Because he did not is the main reason why we thought that I was allergic to something which was causing me hives. Two months after the start of the “hives” I had hundreds of them between both arms and hands. I started to have severe headaches as a reaction and had to miss work numerous days. At this time, my husband was starting to sleep during the night and he was waking up with them too. That was when on June 23rd, we realized that they could be bed bug bites. We had slept in our guest bed Friday or Saturday night and neither of us had woken up those next mornings with new welts. However, we had slept in the Ashley bed Sunday night and when we woke up Monday morning, we were both once again covered in these itchy red bumps. We checked through the bedframe, mattress, and headboard and found the headboard was infested with large bugs. We immediately called Ashley Furniture to alert them to the problem and an exterminator. I spoke to the Customer Relations Director, Diney, on June 24th, and she stated that this company does not generally believe it gives bed bugs to anyone because all furniture is new and packaged. However, our bed was not new or in the package. She stated she forwarded our pictures and information to the people necessary and promised to contact us with a solution within 24 hours, but two days has passed and we have heard nothing. The exterminator searched the house with a canine dog on June 25th and found bed bugs only in the headboard. He explained that they were adult bed bugs, which take between 2 and 4 months to become that life stage. Since this is the exact timeframe that we had the bed and that it was delivered as a return and not new, it is only logical that the bugs were transported into the house as eggs or recently-hatched eggs. Since they are nowhere else in the house, it is highly unlikely they originated anywhere else but the headboard before it was delivered. Additionally, we had not travelled between those months we received the furniture and when we realized it was infested with bed bugs. The headboard was delivered to us without packaging with a return label on it. These bed bugs were brought into our house with the opened, unsealed headboard this company delivered to us. We are in contact with an attorney, and while we would prefer to settle this without one, if an attorney is the only way for us to receive reparations, that is what we will do.