Hastens

I was in the market for a bed in the fall of 2006. I ran into Hastens and immediately I fell in love with it. Several aspects contributed:
. this is a Company founded in 1852 in Sweden and it is still owned and operated by the same family. The customer needs in this area have not changed much and the thought that the same company had more than 150 years to improve on their product was very appealing
. the fact that they offer 25 years warranty showed an incredible quality commitment and how much confidence they had in their product
. The most appealing attribute though, was the main advertised feature of Hastens. Their beds are 100% natural. Their beds are made only with: naturally grown Swedish pine wood, wool, cotton, flax and horse hair. I guess they must have some iron into their spring, which might or not qualify as 100% natural. The main point though is you will not find plastic material or foam in their beds.
In conclusion, I fell in love with the brand and their brand promise, which is not that different from other high end bed makers, but it is certainly supported by the many concrete facts articulated before.
Here are instead the sad facts:
. After truly testing the beds in the store, I ordered an Excelsior bed on November 2006 and paid $ 9,375.70 for it. The Excelsior is the second most expensive bed they have in their line up. In other words, I bought one of the most expensive beds they have. The bed was delivered on April 2007.
. Just the very first night both my wife and I woke up with severe lower back discomfort we never experienced before. After a few days the discomfort evolved into severe pain.
. We contacted the store and where told this was normal adjustment to a new bed. We just had to have a little patience and everything would work its way and pretty soon we could start enjoying the famous Hastens sleeping experience.
. A few months later we were completely certain there was something wrong with the bed. We woke up every morning with the same lower back pain, which would then gradually disappear as we warmed our body up through the day. Moreover, we would not experience that pain when sleeping in another bed, for example while on vacation or traveling for business. With this conviction we went back to the store and demanded a solution. A sales rep came to the house, measured the thickness of the bed, laid on it, jumped on it and finally determined everything was all right. The famous 25 years warranty would not help because according to his assessment the bed was perfect, had no defects. The awful sleeping we were experiencing meant nothing to him.
. We escalated the issue to the company in Sweden. We contacted Mr. Johan Luukas from Hstens Customer service, who connected us with Mr. Erik Svensson, sales manager for Hstens in the US. The whole things dragged on for quite some time, but eventually and after some pressure from my side, I received this communication from Mr. Svensson on April 14 2008.
Dear Mr. *******,
Thank you for your email.
Your request for a solution to your problem has by no means gone unheard and we are working to get this resolved for you.
As there is some involvement not only from Hstens but also from the local retailer this has dragged out a little and we apologize for the delay.
Do however rest assure that we will take care of this for you and make sure your Hstens experience will be a positive one.
I will contact you tomorrow again with an update on your replacement order.
Sincerely,
Erik Svensson
Those words were written on April 14 2008 and it was the last time I heard from Mr. Svensson. As of today, June 1^st 2008, and after several attempts to contact him again, I have yet to hear how Hastens plans to follow through on their commitment to address the situation.
The morale of the story is very simple:
. We obviously ended up buying a «normal» bed, investing «only» $ 1,800. We are very happy with it and we typically spend a good 8 hours of sleep on it every night waking up refreshed and painless like we haven’t felt for several months on the 5 times more expensive Hastens
. The famous 25 year Hastens warranty is clearly worthless as they neglect even blatant cases like this one
. It is very possible the Hastens beds are worth their money and we just got unlucky. May be we got a very rare and defective bed. At $ 10K level though you shouldn’t get unlucky. Hastens should take care of their hopefully few defective units and most importantly they should stand behind their words.