Sickened teen wakes up to the sound of termites gnawing through her new Argos bed

But five weeks of blissful sleep later she woke in the middle of the night to hear an ominous scratching sound in her room.

Fearing the worst, the family called in pest exterminators who discovered her new bed was teeming with termites.

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Her father John, who bought the £300 leather-look double bed from Argos, has since had to spend more than £1,000 having the house fumigated.

"I do not know what to do really," said Mr Hindry, a 55-year-old company director.

"I have this bed stuck in my house full of termites and I can't move it or they might get into the wood elsewhere.

"I have kept the bed and propped it up on tin foil so the little critters can't eat their way out.

"I have managed to catch a couple but the others seem to have burrowed their way back into the bed.

"The exterminators have told me these termites are incredibly rare in the UK and are usually native to North America."

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His daughter, a 19-year-old sales co-ordinator, said: "I did not know what it was at first. There was a little pile of sawdust by my bed and I thought I may have dropped some make-up.

"I thought, 'my dad will kill me if he finds out' so I covered it up and kept it quiet but then the noise just carried on.

"When I found out what it was it made me feel quite sick. As long as the bed stays I am not sleeping in that room."

The termites have been identified as powder post beetles.

They will be almost impossible to remove if they have laid their eggs below the surface of the bed's wooden frame.

"These things have ruled my life for the past week and I need to get the house fumigated again next week," Mr Hindry said from the family home in Titchfield, Hampshire.

After numerous calls to Argos, the company has promised to remove the bug-ridden bed, which was shipped in from China, and will investigate how the termites came to be there.

It said a product recall was unlikely as this was probably an isolated infestation.

An Argos spokesman said: "We would like to reassure our customers that these circumstances are extremely unusual.

"We will be looking into how this could have happened.

"We have arranged to remove the bed from Mr Hindry's house and have discussed a refund for the pest control treatment on receipt of the appropriate report.

"We hope that the steps we will be taking will help restore Mr Hindry's faith in the company."

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