Guarantees and warranties for mattresses

Nearly all beds and mattresses will come with a guarantee or warranty of some kind, however what you get and how good it will be will be largely determined by the price and quality of the product.

In other words, buy cheap and cheerful and you may have 24 hours to find a fault. Buy a top of the range leading brand or an orthopedic mattress and you may get a guarantee and warranty that, combined, can cover years.

Guarantee versus warranty – what is the difference?

This is the big question and it would seem that in most territories the two terms are interchangeable. Neither appear to have a legal status that differentiates one from the other although, as a generalisation, the term Warranty seems more popular in the USA and Canada and the term Guarantee more popular in the UK and Ireland.

Additionally, in the UK the term guarantee is more associated with a full refund in the event of a problem, hence - " a money back guarantee", whilst a warranty tends to imply a repair or correction of an identified and acknowledged issue.

In the UK this often leads to the following (and I give my bed and mattress as a specific example) –

"A guarantee for two years with a warranty for five years".

When I pursued the question as to what this actually meant I was told that, in the event of a serious problem inside two years, the bed would be replaced (no money back). However, if there was a problem after that an inspection would be made to discover if a repair could be made, if the bed could be returned to the factory and if some part of the bed’s components could be replaced. Failing that the bed would be replaced.

The other area, about which I could get no definitive response (this is from the supplier and not the manufacturer), was if the warranty was concurrent with the guarantee (which would seem pointless), or started at the termination of the guarantee. The general view seemed to be that the warranty started once the guarantee had finished, but there was no certainty about this.

Clearly the more you have in the way of warranties and guarantees the better, but exactly how they work is something that is not always made so clear – even when buying an orthopedic bed.

When will a warranty or guarantee come in to action?

The other factor is what constitutes a failing or inadequately performing bed or mattress.

You may find your new mattress uncomfortable or disappointing, however that is not a sufficient reason for making a claim using the guarantee or warranty. Both of these "insurances" will only be triggered if there is a failure of some kind and it is the manufacturer who, in their documentation, define precisely what these failures are (and are not).

The most obvious type of failure with a spring based bed is a spring collapsing and this "should" be easy to prove, however things are different with foam beds.

With a foam bed (e.g. memory foam) many people notice that the mattress will start to show a vague imprint of where the person (or each person in a double bed) sleeps. In other words this is a part of the bed where the foam has not fully recovered, or where, after repeated use, a permanent depression starts to become visible.

Most people will feel that this is not really acceptable and some may try to use the guarantee or warranty to get a replacement. Unfortunately they will not be successful. Nearly all memory foam manufacturers have a definition of what is and is not acceptable "displacement" (deflection or imprinting in the foam) and these "acceptable levels" can extend to dimensions as large as 25 mm or one inch (and sometimes more). This kind of imprint is considered normally by the industry and, even though memory foam is said to "recover fully", this is again a definition that is open to interpretation.

After saying all of that, it is important to point out that most reputable mattress manufacturers are desperate to satisfy their customers. They know that if you buy one bed from them then you will, at some time, be in the market for another and they want to keep you happy. It is also important to be aware that any kind of guarantee or warranty is better than none at all.