Noise Damages Health

Noise can damage health, both physically and psychologically. It can intensify hearing problems and raise stress levels, thus increasing heart rate, blood pressure, eye conditions, muscle tension, cholesterol levels and hormone secretion. Noise is a weapon used in torture and siege. It impairs concentration, and it can induce "neural hijack" states that lead to suicide and homicide. It need not be loud or continuous to raise stress levels. Anti-noise campaigners calculate that it causes about 10 deaths every year.

Additionally, many hearing impaired people suffer from a discriminatory hearing problem that is not related to volume. This defect of hearing is relatively simple: most sounds are heard but it is impossible to differentiate between them, rendering, for instance, the human voice indecipherable from the background noises. Understanding is fine when the voice is the only sound available, but any additional background sound can make English sound like a foreign language. This commonly occurs when muzak is played, either as a background or a foreground. The speaker then erroneously begins to shout, panic sets in and in the end the hearing impaired person hears nothing.
 

Furniture, Carpet Retailers, Garden and Home

Presenting a complaint to a head office is more effective than complaints at a local level. On this page I will list contact information for the head offices of those furniture, carpet and outlets in which you will commonly find muzak.
 

MFI

MFI is guilty of piping music into the majority of its stores. You can send the company an email directly from the website at:

http://www.mfi.co.uk/mfihomeworks/

You can also telephone 0870 607 5093 which will get you through to the customer service line, open Monday-Saturday, 9.00am-6.00pm. The address of the head office is: Southon House, 333 The Hyde, Edgware Road, Colindale, London. NW9 6TD.
 

Carpet Right

Why is it that carpet shops seem to find it obligatory to direct canned music at us? Complain to: Amberley House, New Road, Rainham, Essex. RM13 8QN. Tel. 01708 525522. Fax. 01708 559361.
 

Homebase

To complain about the muzak in these stores contact:

Homebase.co.uk, Customer Relations Department, Beddington House, Railway Approach, Wallington, SM6 0HB. Tel. 0870 900 8098

You can also send an email directly from the company website (click on About Us, then Contact Us) at:

http://www.homebase.co.uk/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/-/-/-

 

Ikea

Shopping at Ikea is made unpleasant by the piped music. Unfortunately, there seems to be no central contact address but you can visit the company website for the telephone numbers of individual stores. The website address is: http://www.ikea.co.uk/default.asp