LuvLMT's Profile

This is unreal! I'm sure my story will sound familiar....I bought a Pottery Barn Kids rug when I was pregnant to place in the babies' nursery in 2006 (4years ago). In the past 4-6 months, my daughter's room started to have the infamous burn smell that everyone else has mentioned. We had a white noise machine in her room that we threw out and then threw out the non-slip rug pad under the rug, thinking they were the culprit. When her door was closed, and we opened the door, it made you think that there was a fire occurring at that very moment, the smell was so strong. My husband finally took it to get it cleaned (we had it for 4 years and just thought it needed a good cleaning). After spending $125 to get it cleaned, he brought it home last night. I folded back the corner of the rolled up rug and the same smell was still there. Just like everyone else, I googled "pottery barn kids rugs burn smell" and came across this website. I was sick to my stomach reading this. My daughter has spent all 4 years of her life sleeping in her room with that rug in there and it scares me to death of what she has been exposed to. I somehow still had my receipt from 4 years ago. I first called the local pbk store and the store manager told me that there was a problem with the backings on the rugs a while ago but they have changed the backings and the rugs are all fine now. I do not want a store credit b/c I can't trust PB that the same thing will not happen again. After she realized that my purchase was made through the catalog, the store manager told me to call customer service. The supervisor that I spoke with acted like there had been no problems with the rug. When I referred to this website, he says that Pottery Barn does not read other websites; on their own website where you can post reviews about their products, there is no mention of the smell with the rugs. I told him that by the time many of the rugs start smelling, they no longer even sell that rug any longer. He kept referring to my specific rug "Taylor" and said that 17,000 rugs were made and only 12 have been returned. He made it like it was an isolated incident and said the best they could do was to give me a store credit. I told him I wanted the money refunded to my credit card b/c I will not buy another rug there. He said he would talk to the manufacturers of the rug and find out what could have caused the smell in my rug and if it was deemed to be a "recall" type issue then they would refund me. About 5 minutes later, he calls back and said that his supervisor was there and he spoke to him and they will refund my credit card. Obviously it is a problem they know about or else they wouldn't have refunded my credit card. He "assured" me that the smell was not toxic or they would have recalled the rugs (yeah right....they won't even acknowledge that it is a problem). UPS is supposed to pick the rug up after the weekend. I am tempted to keep it and call the Chicago media outlets to see if a reporter will run a story on this. However, I need the refunded money to buy a new rug. I don't even know where to get a rug from that will not eventually emit this smell.
I am absolutely disgusted at Pottery Barn Kids for knowing about this problem, denying it, and allowing these rugs to be in our babies' bedrooms.