Sterling Sleep Systems (APPF Inc)

Hi Ray, We went back and reviewed your orders. We have been in the waterbed business for nearly 40 years, and unfortunately leaks can happen. Waterbeds in general have been in a slow decline in sales for the last 10 years or so, and tubes specifically, more so. That is largely due to the fact that the more seams you have in a waterbed, the more likely you are to end up with a leak. Tubes are often trade off. If you do get a leak, it is far easier to remove the leaky tube, and deal with a few gallons of water, and still be able to use your bed, then have a leak in an 8" softside bladder, and have to deal with over 100 gallons of water. That said, the 8" fill depth bladders are less prone to leaking. In the case of tubes, they tend to happen more than in traditional bladders. we used to do the "boxed ends" you mentioned. We actually had more leaks doing it that way. This was in part because making tubes with flat ends like that take special tooling, and if the tooling is damaged in any way, even if there is a nick in the welding surface, it can result in uneven, or incomplete welds which can in turn result in more leaks. But doing a flat butte weld across the ends, we have more control over the welds and for the most part, we have fewer leaks. But even still, we only ever put a 1 year warranty on the tubes. That said, we still would have worked with you on replacements had you given us the chance. Yes it is entire possible you would have ended up with tubes from the same batch, because like i said, we dont sell those nearly as often as the full size bladders, but when we have a recurring problem, we have our QC team pressure test everything else that is in stock to make sure we do not have a bigger problem before we resend replacement. We do our best to build and ship quality products. Since you brought this up, and even though you did not contact us, I am still going to talk to our factory team and take a look at the age of the tubes our there, and get them evaluated. As for the shipping costs, I believe we only charged you for shipping 1 direction, not both. Our warranty has been the same for a very long time, and shipping charges are only covered if it leaks within the first 90 days of ownership. If this had happened within those 90 days and you had wanted a refund, I absolutely would have done that for you, but as you are over 1 year from the purchase date, a refund is not possible. I am sorry you did not have a good experience with us. I truly am. We do make very high quality products, and have for many years. We take these matters seriously, and we do try to work with our customers when we are alerted to a problem.

Hi Jonathan, Happy to hear you are enjoying your mattress, but we are a little concerned about the 1 star . Did something happen???

Respectfully, that is a very unfair assessment of what happened. You ordered a 3" thick, Twin Extra Long (38x80) Extra Firm Latex. Which we shipped you. But you cant say it "was not as described". The length and firmness are both correct. You received exactly what you ordered. We only offer 1 size in the "twin" category and that is Twin XL (Extra Long), and we spelled it out on our website. You indicated that it was too long for your use. Which is fine. That alone is a perfectly acceptable reason to return something, and as you indicated, it was within the 30 day window. As it says on our website, that any products that are not a mattress (this is an accessory) has a 30 day return window, you are welcome to return it to us at your expense, and there is a 10% restocking fee.(summarized, but you are welcome to read it for yourself here, https://sterlingsleep.com/pages/shipping-and-return-policy) Most customers that return things to us ask us for a return shipping label, because our shipping charges tend to be a bit lower. We could mark them up, but we don't What we offer comes straight from UPS. In this case, it was around $35 for return shipping and a $30 restocking fee. That covers inspection and a new box for the item if it is returned in new condition. Its entirely possible that we cannot re-box it and may be out the product entirely, but we don't fault you for that. We would usually accept it and refund anyway. We are big fans here of working with customers as much as possible before the sale takes place. We are available to answer questions by phone or email, as well as our chat system when it is active on our website, to address as many concerns as we can before an order is even placed. I am very sorry this didnt work out for you the way that you hoped it would, however, in all of our interactions today, we never told you, you could not return it. We offered you an exchange, which was my mistake since we didn't have the smaller size in stock. We offered to cut it down to the size you wanted, and not charge you for the work if you paid the shipping. We offered you discounted return shipping tags to lessen the financial burden. You are still very welcome to return this to us if it is not to your liking. The shipping label i sent you earlier is still valid if you change your mind. I am not going to cancel it because of a 1 star review. We have a very long history of offering very high quality products, and working directly with customers. We imported the foam in this case, but final processing and shipping was done here in our factory, and all communications was through our office here in California. We take a lot of pride in what we do, and take it very personally when someone says we didn't meet their expectations. The only thing we can do here is present the evidence of what actually happened, and hope that this customer, as well as others that might read this complaint get a better feel for what actually occurred.