Whisper Room booth has formaldehyde
I bought a 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 music practice booth to be installed inside a room in my New York City home. I spoke to the company in some detail before buying it, but there was no mention of offgassing. When I got the booth, despite leaving the fan on for a month and having 2 windows open in the room, there was a strong, immediately noticeable odor in the booth and in the surrounding room which irritated my wife's throat and nose.
I so wanted to keep the booth that I called in an air quality assessment firm (at the expense of $500), hoping to be reassured. Whisper Room does say (in the FAQs on their website) that the wall panels contain "trace amounts" of formaldehyde and (correctly) that the amounts meet United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards. But the amounts of formaldehyde in the air, both inside the booth and in the surrounding room, were revealed in the air quality assessment to be well in excess of European safety standards.
I personally have had 2 cancers and formaldehyde is a carcinogen, so I sadly decided to return the booth. I thought the company would understand what I had gone through and give me a break on returning it. So I asked the company -- politely -- to do so. But they made no concessions. They were going to charge me the 20% restocking fee ($800) plus the cost of shipping ($950). And I would be responsible for getting it properly packed. Whisper Room referred us to someone in NY who wound up selling the booth to someone else in the area, but charged us the same as if we had returned it to the company.
I would have loved to write a good review -- I was otherwise happy with the booth and happy with the company's service up to that point. read more
