Dial-a-bed Claremont

Title: Walked in with cash and a clear budget — walked out disrespected. Avoid the Claremont branch.

My family and I visited Dial-a-Bed Claremont this morning ready to buy a medium-comfort double bed, cash, with a clear budget of R6,000. Beds in exactly that range were on promotion, on display, right at the front of the store. What followed was one of the most disrespectful retail experiences I’ve had. The salesperson, Ryan, refused to even discuss the promoted beds in our budget and insisted we do a full comfort test first. Fine — we did it in good faith. When we came back to talk price, he flatly said “we don’t have that” for our range, then pushed us toward beds at R8,000 and R10,000. Every question I asked about comfort, weight capacity, or guarantee on the beds within our actual budget was met with negativity — clearly designed to talk us out of what we came in to buy. While Ryan was still in the middle of helping us, a second staff member, Tumi, inserted herself into the conversation uninvited and began speaking over him. She pointed toward my daughter and said we were “shopping for a teenager, for kids,” and that as we get older our needs change — implying that was why she needed to “bring understanding” to the conversation. My daughter is 21 and told her directly that she is an adult. Tumi continued regardless, lecturing us on bed quality in a patronising, condescending tone, and at no point did she actually listen to what we had already told her and Ryan about our needs. We were calm, clear, and consistent about our budget the entire time. Not once did staff listen to what we actually said we needed. We left, walked into a competitor, and bought the exact same category of bed — medium comfort, double — in cash, at our budget, with zero friction. I would not recommend anyone shop at the Claremont branch. If you go in with a set budget, be prepared to be argued with, condescended to, and steered toward beds you didn’t ask for. Management needs to seriously address the way customers are being treated at this store.