Skip to main content You are hereHome » Insect & Pest Info » Home & Health Pests » Bed Bugs ENTfactHome & Health PestsStinging or Biting Pests Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Purchasing A Mattress In Chicago Before buying a mattress, there are certain things every consumer should know. In most parts of the country, including Illinois, used mattresses can be resold as long as they meet certain labeling and processing requirements. Also, in the City of Chicago, the law requires that deteriorated, secondhand, reconditioned, or altered products cannot be advertised or sold as new. How to Know If You Are Buying a Used Mattress: By law, there must be a conspicuously posted label describing the contents of themattress and any bedding. The label must state whether the bedding is made from all new materials, or is made in whole or in part from secondhand material, otherwise called “refurbished.” Requirements for selling refurbished mattresses:
All used bedding must be taken apart by a refurbisher, and inspected for stains, pests, odors. No material or component of used bedding that is soiled, has odor, or is infested may be reused. Ask if the retailer sells used or refurbished bedding. Look at the label attached to the mattress to know if you’re buying a new or a used mattress. If you’re looking to buy a new mattress, make sure your mattress has a “new” mattress tag. Ask the retailer to write “new” on your sales receipt if you’ve been told you’re buying a new mattress. If you don’t see any tag, consider doing business with another retailer. Otherwise, you simply don’t know what you’re buying. Ask about the retailer’s return and refund policies, and get copies in writing. Beware of Bed Bugs: When buying a used or refurbished mattress, the possibility of bed bugs arises. Bed bugs are small wingless insects that bite people and pets and do not transmit diseases.
Their name comes from their preferred living quarters: mattresses, sofas and other furniture. A bed bug problem may not be detected in the store and typically begins after bringing it home. Signs to watch out for are clusters of black specks on your mattress. Bed bugs have an oval body and range in color from white, to a golden brown or orange. If you suspect bed bugs, take immediate action by contacting the retailer. If you feel you have been a victim of fraud click to file a consumer complaint with the City of Chicago or call 311. Click to download the Purchasing A Mattress in Chicago Fact SheetIn a summer when bedbugs have crawled deep into New York City’s psyche, no one is more anxious than those shoppers who live to scout secondhand clothing shops and used-furniture stores. They are connoisseurs of what is hot, hip, a bargain. They know where the flea markets are and when the vintage shops are open.And they are scared that bedbugs from the home of a former owner still call that $20 designer jacket or that fabulous $65 chair their castle.
That explains why a puzzled-looking Elizabeth Borné was standing on East 23rd Street one afternoon last week. Should she risk the $325 sofa with the paisley fabric that she had just seen in the Housing Works thrift shop near Third Avenue? Was it worth feeling jittery and jumpy about something whose history she could not know? Would she fret every time she invited someone over or curled up for a nap?“I like and I want it,” she said. “It looks sort of reproductiony. It’s quirky, it’s eclectic, it’s rustic-slash-retro. But my first thought is bedbugs — and bedbugs are freaky.” Ms. Borné is hardly the only secondhand-store shopper whose first thought has been Cimex lectularius, the speck-size common bedbug. In the spring, the first question from a student at a Fashion Institute of Technology course called “Is Vintage for You?” was, “Have you ever experienced any issues with bedbugs?” “One girl in particular in the class had an issue,” said the instructor, Bridgett Artise, a fashion designer and an author of “25 Ways to Deconstruct, Reinvent and Recycle Your Wardrobe.”
“She said, ‘I had a problem with a jacket.’ She said they were in the lining, so it was hard to know they were even there.”“They” might find a funky 1950s housedress as appetizing as a so-last-year strapless number. “Obviously, these bugs do not respect economic level or social status or neighborhood — they found them in Abercrombie & Fitch,” said Jose Medellin, a spokesman for Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey.And so secondhand-store buyers worry about something the size of a lentil that could have been on a pipe near the ceiling or in a book on a shelf before it made the jump to clothing or furniture that was consigned or given away. Ms. Borné, a nursing student, said she had looked at pictures of bedbug bites online to see how they differed from spider bites and mosquito bites, just in case she ever needed to know. Ms. Artise said: “I only worry about newbies, new vintage shoppers. People like myself already know the telltale signs, and what to do.“
The first thing I always tell people who buy vintage clothing is if they see any type of anything that looks like it might have remnants of bedbugs, put it in a plastic bag and freeze it. You keep it in there, I would say, for at least three days. It can’t survive freezing. And after it thaws out, I would take it to a dry cleaner.” Lisa Slocum, a lawyer who bought a velvet coat for $33 at the City Opera Thrift Shop —“I just can’t resist a bargain,” she said — lived through bedbugs a couple of years ago. “I swore if I ever bought anything in a thrift shop again, I’d wrap it in plastic and take it right to the dry cleaner,” Ms. Slocum said. “You really do believe you’ll never get rid of them.” The infestation was enough for her to stop making the rounds of vintage shops “for a while,” even though she had no evidence they came from the stores she had frequented. “I’m a hard person to stop from secondhand shopping,” she said as she left the City Opera shop on East 23rd Street.
Managers and clerks at vintage stores said that they were getting a lot of questions from customers but that the bedbug epidemic did not seem to be putting a dent in their business. “I’ve never seen a bedbug,” said Tiffany Collings, the manager at Beacon’s Closet, on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where party dresses sell for as little as $10. “We’ve never — knock on wood — had a problem with bedbugs, but it’s absolute and utter sheer luck.” Ms. Collings said some customers asked what precautions the store took. “I tell them, ‘If you’re worried about bedbugs, I’ve read about bedbugs. If you put clothes in a dryer under high, high heat, it’s supposed to kill the bugs and eggs,’ ” she said. “We’re looking, physically looking at clothes” when a customer brings in clothing to sell, and if she saw a bedbug, she said, she would hand the item back.Housing Works said it fumigated its stores and its processing and distribution center in Long Island City.
For furniture, said Matthew Bernardo, the senior vice president for business service, Housing Works has a screening policy: someone from Housing Works inspects it at the prospective donor’s apartment first. “We always say when people set up for us to pick up furniture that we have the right to refuse,” Mr. Bernardo said.Mr. Medellin, the Goodwill spokesman, said Goodwill Industries sprayed all its 39 stores and its processing center.“We do not take home pickups, and we have not received any reports of bedbugs,” he said. “We have an ongoing contract with an exterminator. We asked them, ‘Please, make sure that we’re covered for bedbugs as well.’ ”Mattresses are a particular concern, because many consider them the passport for bedbugs through the city. Gale A. Brewer, a city councilwoman who represents the Upper West Side, pressed for a ban on used and reconditioned mattresses. It turned out used mattresses were already covered under a state law passed years ago requiring that they be sanitized, thus killing any bedbugs, before they can be resold.