Awful Customer Service - Avoid at all costs TLDR: Awful company, deceitful, do not accept their generic no refund stance, read their policy, challenge and do not give up if in the right, be prepared to take legal action if need be Bought a super king wooden bed frame a little over a year ago. Bed was faulty from delivery, didn’t become clear until a few months later. Initial contact with Dunelm customer service was poor. Almost a year Iater was finally able to get them to send out a “technician” from their partner Emmeria Group. Confirmed the bed had a fault which was as a result of an inherent design flaw and that unless I was happy to accept a retrospective amendment to how the bed was fitted together, he would state that a repair was not possible and that he would inform Dunelm of this. I was advised that this could take up to 48 hours for them to receive 1 Week later I had not heard from Dunelm so I emailed them and asked as to why this was, in addition to requesting a full refund for the bed due to the fault and that as the fault is inherent a replacement was not an option as per their own policy. 24 hours later I got my first response stating “as per the warranty of this product, we won’t be able to refund here, all we can offer is a repair or a collection and replacement”. This was to be their mantra for many, many emails that followed where Dunelm attempted to do nothing other than fob me off. From this point on there were further identical responses from a different customer service agent each time before the responses and excuses begin to change to “ Under our company policy as outlined in our terms and conditions, when a faulty item is reported to us after a 30 day period, but within the 1 year guarantee period we are then unable to offer a refund, but are only able to offer a repair, where possible, although in this case the technician who visited you has acknowledged that there is a fault with the bed, which can’t be repaired, or a like for like replacement where a repair is not possible. So, I’m afraid that we will have to stand behind our initial decision to offer a replacement.” Beginning to get rather frustrated I noted that Dunelm’s website makes mention of Alternative Dispute Resolution services and they have a link to this on their website. This link unfortunately is of no help, as it merely provides a long list of ADR schemes, the majority of which only serve specific sectors that would not be relevant, of those that would deal in this area, Dunelm are registered with none of them. When contacted and asked regarding this their response was “In terms of the alternate dispute resolution that you mentioned, you will be able to make the complaint through any of the organisations mentioned all of whom are able to help. We are not registered with a single company or organisation.” Being a completely untrue statement, upon pressing further on ADR schemes, they simply opted to either not respond, or in instances where they did, they completely ignored the subject and answer questions relating to it. My next response from them was then advising that as the item was now over 12 months old as per company policy a refund was not an option. This was followed by a further email saying the same but in different wording. Both of which were responded to making clear that the issue had been reported long before the bed was 12 months old, and also citing the bed was stated as having a 5-year warranty when purchased on their website. Both points ignored and at this point email responses ceased. I gave them a week, then I decided that I was more than happy to incur the minimal cost to take this court as was confident that this would be found in my favour. I contacted them one more time via email and recorded post to notify them of “action before court”. A response was received acknowledging this less than 24 hours later advising that this complaint had been received and escalated and that I would receive a response no later than a few days later. As I suspected after making clear their numerous failures and breaches in my letter relating to court action, they swiftly changed their stance and were quick to advise that a full refund could now be offered and when would I like them to collect the bed. The above, whilst being long winded, is to advise and help others not be fobbed off by companies such as Dunelm, who sell, perhaps only at times, substandard products, and look to simply brow beat customers into accepting they have no rights, when in fact they do. I have reported them to Trading Standards to review their practices.