The bed we purchased was one the King Koil “thermal/visco-elastic foam” Night Rain-Natural Response type beds on 1/25/03. I have to admit, a foam bed was not on my list of beds to purchase, but the salesman from King Koil was at Haynes Furniture that day and he made an impressive presentation to my wife and me. We bought the mattress, foundation, frame and mattress pad recommended at a cost of $1889 plus tax.

Over the last six months, I have awoken to significant back pain. I thought it was a result of “growing older”. However, I discovered that when I travel and sleep in a hotel bed, my back pain went away. By all accounts, my back pain was a failure of the six year old foam to support the weight of our bodies. At the end of every night, our premium mattress sags into the shape of a bowl and we basically roll to the middle of the bed. My wife weighs 110# and I weigh 142#. We are not large people by any stretch of the imagination.

An inspection was made by Haynes Furniture, the company we bought it from. The inspector took his measurements and pointed out a 1” diameter stain on the mattress fabric at the foot of the bed. Apparently, this stain made it through the $90 mattress pad we purchased with the bed. The rest of the mattress was flawless-except for the measurable depression and aforementioned sagging at night. Shortly thereafter, I received a call from Haynes Furniture. stating that King Koil had rejected our claim due to the bed being unsanitary. We contacted the mattress pad company and they sent us a professional cleaning kit. We cleaned the mattress according to directions and it looked close to perfect, or so we thought. A second inspection was also rejected for a "shadow ring".

Almost 3 months after my first call to Haynes, a third inspection was made. This inspector, as the others, took his measurements. He used the same process as the previous two inspectors. The bed had sagged almost 2” in the middle. This was over the minimum 1.5” required to have it replaced and an increase of ¼” since the last measurement. I assumed everything was acceptable and the warranty would be processed. I was mistaken.

The inspector made no mention of the “stain” until he walked out our front door and I asked him if everything “looked OK”. “Well you do have what appears to be some “yellowing” (his words) in one area”. Why he didn’t point that out to me when we were in the bedroom? I received an email from Haynes Furniture that our claim was again rejected.

As it stands, we are out almost $2000 for a mattress that we can no longer sleep on.

King Koil's warranty on their website is in extremely fine print-almost to the point of being illegible. http://www.comfortsolutions.com/lc/warranty.pdf It makes no mention of stains and uses the word "unsanitary". After our warranty claim was rejected the third time, I conducted a little research on the internet and found horror stories of warranties, just like ours, where the warranty was voided for not meeting the definition of sanitary-even though the manufacturer provides no definition of “unsanitary”. This is an out and out scam.

I also found that visco-elastic bedding is notorious for losing its resiliency and ability to provide adequate support. In many cases, the foam does “rebound” to pass the 1.5” depression test. However in actual use, after 3-5 years, the failure of the foam’s weight bearing capacity causes people to roll to the center of the bed.