…so I want to brag on a local company who did more than the right thing!

I just had the most awesome experience and I want to share it with you because service like this is so rare and when it happens the story should be shouted from the rooftops.

The bottom line:

I highly recommend City Mattress Factory (http://www.citymattressfactory.com/)  They are located at 900 Haltom Road, Fort Worth, TX 76117

Here’s why:

This is the frame that I’m getting. Called “Southwest” I’m getting it in “Mocha” which is basically what they call “black” LOL

I live on a very small income consisting of my monthly TMRS pension check and whatever money I can make by picking up odd jobs here and there.

To give you a perspective, a tank of gas is a major outlay.  No kidding, no exaggeration.  At the end of the month there is usually under $10 in my checking account and I get real creative with the food budget all month long to make ends meet.

So…buying furniture is not something that is normally in the budget.  However, two weeks ago, when I sold a PA sound system, I decided to use the windfall and replace my queen sized mattress and box springs with a Loveseat sized futon with ottoman.

Having a futon makes a lot more sense for me than a regular bed because, due to my sleep apnea, I sleep sitting up and have to use a bunch of pillows to keep me upright.  A futon with an ottoman fixes that problem. Also because I rent a room from my best friend.  Most of the time I’m in my bedroom, which fuctions as my “home office” and my “living room” as well.

The futon will serve as both sitting and sleeping where a bed is just for sleeping.  A bed takes up so much space and is only used 8 hours out of every 24.  A futon will take up much less space during the day, is more useful more of the time both during the day and during the night.

So I started looking around and pricing futons and futon frames.

Good prices on a quality product

This is a cut-a-way view of the mattress I got.

After a lot of looking, I quickly realized that yes, I could buy a very cheap frame and mattress if I was willing to also accept a cheaply made frame and mattress — think all metal frame and foam rubber pad.  Urk!

I really didn’t want to go that route.  I wanted to get a quality frame and mattress at a reasonable cost.

I continued to search but everything was so expensive, then I found a local company that makes mattresses, including futon mattresses.

They do not make the futon frames but they sell frames they get from Indonesia made of hardwood and which are very good quality.  I was impressed when I visited the showroom and looked at the frames in person.

By far they had the best prices I could find, not only on the frames but on the mattresses as well, AND they had a selection of mattresses to choose from!

Super nice staff…

Norm, the sales guy who took my order, the person with whom I’ve spoken with the most, has been nice from start to finish.  Polite, helpful, informative, and patient as I hopped from mattress to mattress in the showroom checking out the “tushie cushie-ness” of the futon mattresses.

The lady I spoke with on my cellphone while being lost, who gave me directions to the showroom / factory and who didn’t laugh when I said I couldn’t find Hampton road — it was actually Haltom road!  No wonder I couldn’t find the exit!  I didn’t get her name.  Sorry, but she was very nice!

Also very nice was the guy who loaded my frame and mattress onto my pickup truck from the dock took great care to strap down the mattresses so it wouldn’t fly out on my trip back.  Sorry I didn’t catch his name! Can you tell I’m awful with names?) He was a a slender African American gentleman; we were chatting while he worked loading my truck and I learned that he is my age in his early 50’s.  It was delightful to meet him and he did a great job!

Ordering, Picking it up, Ice Storms & Strikes…

So I placed my order with norm and scheduled to pick it up a week later, on the 25th.

Which of course was when we had our big Ice storm and the whole metroplex shut down on the 23rd and 24th.I called to see if the order would be ready, fully expecting them to tell me that it would be delayed.  To my surprise, Norm told me that I’d be able to pick it up as scheduled.

Wow!

The weather was still icky though and my truck bed was full of snow, so I asked if I could pick it up on Thursday the 26th instead.

So off I go, driving all the way over to Fort Worth, eager to get my new loveseat frame with matching ottoman frame and the two piece futon mattress to go on the frames.

When I arrived and paid for the futon set, Norm told me that a shipping container had been delayed so my ottoman was not available. They’d ship it to me via UPS at no cost when it arrived.

I was disappointed but since they were shipping it to me, that meant I wouldn’t have to drive back over and the UPS guy would be hauling the box up the stairs instead me.  BONUS!

These things happen and most of the country has been dealing with bad weather.  No big deal.  No problem.  The expected delivery of the ottoman was to be sometime this week.

Which brings us to today.

I called Norm to get a status check and perhaps get a UPS tracking # and learned that it would be mid-March somewhere around the 15th before they would get the ottoman and have it shipped to me.

I don’t know if you’ve heard about the dock worker issues out on the West Coast or not.  I had not; it wasn’t something that had hit my radar.  Their shipment which includes my missing ottoman is somewhere in one of those containers sitting on the dock while the Union workers and the shipping companies work things out and the containers start moving again.

Ok, now I was bit more upset, not angry, but very disappointed and upset because of the delay.  So I did pretty much what any customer would do in that position.  I asked to be compensated in some way.

And I got way more than I was expecting…

Norm told me that he only had the ability to arrange the no-cost shipping, which is perfectly understandable.

So, I called back to the switchboard and asked to speak with a manager / supervisor.   The gentleman I spoke with was the Production Manager and  was very nice; he took my name and number and said he’d give it to the owner, Mark Gerrick and ask him to call.

Norm called me back in a very short time and said that his supervisor had talked to the owner, Mark Gerrick and Mark had said to give me the ottoman at no charge.  Norm told me that once the ottoman arrives, they’ll ship it to me and when I get it they will issue a credit back to my Visa checkcard for $76.97.

Wow!

I was expecting the owner to call me back, and when I spoke with him I was planing to ask for $20 off the price. And, I would have been happy to settle for $10 off.

Having them give me the ottoman at no cost was WAY more than I had anticipated and super incredibly nice and SO UNEXPECTED!

Now that is what you call “taking care of the customer.”

Just wow!  For most folks that 76.97 is not a big amount, but for me on my income, it represents a HUGE amount.  So, officially, “thank you” to Mark and his employees.  And this blog post is my way of showing my appreciation for the way you folks handled this thing.

The next windfall I get (maybe when I get my income tax return) I will definitely be back to order a cover for my mattress from you guys!

So… this is a good company, a local company.

They deserve your business.  FYI, they make regular mattresses too in addition to futon mattresses.

Check them out.: http://www.citymattressfactory.com/

See you on the dance floor!