Apr 18, 2008 3:43 pm US/Eastern
Your 'New' Mattress Could Be Used
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
Right now, Massachusetts consumers can walk into a store and unknowingly buy a mattress that someone else has slept in for as long as a month. It's an idea that didn't sit well with one State lawmaker, so he's doing something to change it.
"I thought it was pretty disgusting actually," said Rep. Louis Kafka of Stoughton.
Kafka first heard that Massachusetts law allows stores to re-sell returned mattresses while he was watching TV. He saw it in a Jordan's Furniture ad warning customers about the practice and assuring them that they don't sell returned mattresses.
Mattresses can run well over $1,000 and Kafka didn't like the idea of retailers being sneaky about something most people would consider a major purchase. "You think you're going to buy something that you're going to sleep on maybe for the next ten years. To think other people, doing whatever they did, slept on it for thirty days," he wondered.
It was an unsettling concept fro just about everyone we talked to. "That's gross, that's just gross," said one young woman walking across Boston Common. Annie Freeman of Boston thought it sounded unsanitary. "I wouldn't want them to do that to me, Lord have mercy," she said.
Kafka says everyone he talked to on Beacon Hill had the same reaction, so he wrote up a bill. "It will require retailers to notify buyers by marking the mattresses if it's a resale," he explained.
Getting a bill through the Statehouse usually takes months of dealing and debate, but not this one. "It passed the House and the Senate unanimously with no real debate because people thought it was the right thing to do," he said. Kafka jokingly calls this Eliot's bill because of the commercial that tipped him off to the practice.
Governor Patrick quickly signed the bill into law. Freeman thinks the law is a great idea. "If it's got a label, then that's up to the buyer if they want to buy it, then that's fine," she said.
The law goes into effect this summer. So if you're shopping for a mattress before then, you might want to ask about the store's return policy.
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