Woman tells of 'bullying salesman'
AN elderly woman has told of her ordeal after she and her frail husband were subjected to a two-hour sales pitch and "bullied" into buying a £4,000 adjustable bed they could not afford.
On Tuesday, Craftmatic UK Ltd was convicted of engaging in "aggressive commercial practice" and fined 250 at Belfast Magistrates' Court.
The company went into liquidation in May of this year.
Speaking to the News Letter yesterday, 77-year-old Rosaleen Gallagher said she was left "in an awful state, shaken and crying" following the Craftmatic salesman's visit to her Belfast home, and warned fellow pensioners to be careful who they let into their property.
The mother-of-four first received an unsolicited phone call from a Craftmatic employee last April.
She told the News Letter: "I said I really wasn't interested but then
she told me there was a chance I could win the bed for free, so in the end I said it would be okay for someone to call."
A salesman turned up the very next day and spoke at first to Mrs
Gallagher's 78-year-old husband Seamus.
"Seamus is very hard of hearing so he was only taking some of it in – but then the man asked me if I had any health problems and when I told
him I suffered from asthma, he said the bed could really help," Mrs Gallagher said.
The salesman also told the couple that the bed could help Mr Gallagher, who is currently awaiting a hip replacement and has suffered six strokes, with his ailments, before revealing the price as 4,000.
MrsGallagher said:" When I heard how much it was, I said there was no
way we could afford that. Seamus and I have never put ourselves in debt, and that's when the man went out to phone his boss."
The salesman then returned with news that the cost of the bed could be dropped to 2,000, and asked Mrs Gallagher to speak to his boss.
"I still didn't want the bed but I took the phone from him because I
didn't want to be ignorant. He told me it was a great opportunity for us
and kept going on and on – I felt so pressured," she said.
Eventually, the Gallaghers reluctantly agreed to buy the bed, which
arrived two weeks later, but that was only the start of the couple's troubles.
Mrs Gallagher said: "The first thing the men who brought the bed
asked for was a deposit of 100, which I was able to give them as I
had been saving up. They gave me all the paperwork too, but I didn't
get the chance to look at it until two weeks later."
When Mrs Gallagher did look at the paperwork, she realised the bed
was still priced at 4,000, and called the company to ask that they remove it because she simply couldn't afford it.
"The man was really trying to intimidate me on the phone," she
said. "He told me the bed wasn't going anywhere because I was too
late to return it.
"I told him he shouldn't be speaking to a 77-year-old woman like that
but he just slammed the phone down on me.
"It was so stressful. I trusted them and they lied to me – my asthma came back and everything, I was so worried."
It was then Mrs Gallagher contacted the trading standards service
with her concerns, who not only managed to have the bed removed,
but also to get the couple their deposit back.
Of the court's decision to fine Craftmatic, she said: "I'm very
relieved it's all over but it has left me very, very nervous and I won't
open the door to anyone now. I think they should have got more than a
fine.
"I would hate anyone else to go through what we went through, so I
would just say to pensioners to be very careful about sales phone calls
and about letting people into their homes."
Mrs Gallagher was forced to relive her ordeal just three weeks ago
when a catalogue from a different adjustable bed company arrived at her home.
"I couldn't believe people like that still have my details, it shook me
up," she said.
"I just ripped it up and threw it in the bin immediately.
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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