Mattress Forum

I'm not going to try to counter every one of your points.  I'm sure you know more about many of the technical aspects of this subject than I do.  And I wish I'd known some of those things while I was still shopping. 

But I will say that I DID try to obtain the names/makes of mattresses and look for those models elsewhere.  It was totally frustrating.  I liked one mattress in particular (a Serta) at a smaller, independent store.  Would have bought it there, but they didn't allow ANY returns or exchanges -- which is ridiculous.  So I got the detailed info and went looking for it at other places.          At another store, I was told that style mattress was "last year's model" and no longer available anywhere. At 2 other stores, they showed me something "similar", but it was never, ever, exactly the same as the one I first saw.  The sales guy would say, "Yes, I THINK this one is the closest thing to that other one you liked...it goes by the such-and-such name here...but I'm not really sure it's the same."  It was all VERY VAGUE.  The proprietary naming is just a collossal pain.  It does nothing to help the consumer.

Also, I'm not suggesting that mattress sellers don't have a right to charge for their merchandise or make a profit.  Of course they do.  However, in many stores, the sales staff pushes ONLY the high end models -- that happened to us again and again.  And a lot of mattresses do seem over-priced ($6-10K???).

Buying a mattress is such a big hassle...you want to get it right the first time.  In our case, we were shown a sample bed set in the store and told our mattress would be a "similar height".  They recommended the 5" box springs.  Got it home, and it was WAYYYYY higher than the bed in the store.  So we had to get different box springs.  And since we didn't want to use up our one return on just the box springs, I gave them back to the store and paid for a whole new (smaller) set of boxes.  Still, when it came time to return the mattress, I didn't get refunded for the original box springs...ONLY because I had returned them earlier, since I had no place to store them.  But...I should have been sold the 2" SPRINGS IN THE FIRST PLACE AND AVOIDED THE WHOLE HASSLE AND EXPENSE.

The "free" bonus pillows might not be "free", but shouldn't that be disclosed at the time of purchase?  We never would have accepted them if we knew we'd either have to return them or pay for them. 

And we completely understood that after your first return/exchange, there could be a charge for additional deliveries.  That makes sense.

Bottom line, at a lot of stores, you just feel like you're being "taken".  Not ALL stores.  In fact, so far, we have been satisfied with our most recent transaction (at Macy's).  But I have also read some very bad reviews about them, too.  I suspect that everything's hunky dory almost anywhere until you have any kind of problem.

Of COURSE you can't please everybody.  It's the same in every business.  But it does seem like the mattress business, in particular, goes out of their way to make the process harder than it needs to be.  And I DO think there is a market for a very simple, not-too-thick, NATURAL mattress made with a minimum of synthetic materials/memory foam!  A lot of us want those and can't find them...or can't find them for under $6K.  Not everybody wants a Temper-Pedic or Temper-Pedic wannabe.  Create a "new" old-fashioned style of mattress and it will sell!!

That's all.  Thanks for listening.

"You will easily find many complaints about every product sold and not just mattresses. You cant make everyone happy and not everyone will make the right choice off the bat."

Of course that's true and there are people out there who are incapable of being satisfied. I usually research any major item before buying and often find people who are dissatisfied with various aspects of any given product so I take reviews with a grain of salt, BUT researching mattress brands reveals reams upon reams of outraged and frustrated buyers, spewing venom at what they see as giant ripoffs. Another thing is that the complaints are virtually ALL about the same thing: Premature sagging of very expensive mattresses, and near-fraudulent warrantys. I refuse to believe these hundreds and hundreds of people are all just overly fussy and picky. People paying thousands of dollars for any item have the right to expect it to be serviceable for a certain length of time.

I happen to be a person very easily satisfied whose attitude is usually , "Oh, it's fine..it'll do!",  has rarely returned any item and doesn't expect total perfection, but this bed-buying ordeal has frustrated, exhausted and outraged even me.

My apologies to the forum for my post, I joined to learn more about selecting a mattress to sleep on, after being deployed for 6 months and sleeping in the conditions I mention above. I share my diatribe only as a vehicle to show all of us how trivial some things can be in the big picture

But then again, you could say the same about everyone who posts here.  No one is pretending that buying a mattress is some kind of life-and-death situation -- far from it.  Are we all just spoiled American consumers with no appreciation for how good we really have it?  Probably.  That goes without saying.  You can apply that assessment to pretty much everything we do in our shallow, overly consumerist society; MOST of it is trivial and no one would pretend otherwise.  I'm sure your perspective is bringing that fact out in bold relief.  I don't blame you for your outrage.

However, this forum is dedicated to helping people with the mattress buying process (which can be frustrating), and letting people vent a little.  Honestly, I don't take myself -- or my mattress story -- too seriously.  It was just good, somewhat humorous fodder for my blog.  That's all!  Sorry if it upset you.

But this forum is to find out "What's the Best Mattress", not the "I've been through so much and your sleep issues are very trivial to me" forum, and what happens in our little lives is important to us.

I have no doubt you have a little life... The tone of your reply suggests that in spades....

Thank you for your service.  On behalf of the entire what's-the-best-mattress community, I salute you & apologize for taking our mattress problems so seriously, when we really shouldn't even be discussing such matters- not while you're out there defending our country on an air bed of all things, for six months!  I think it's pretty obvious that our posts were directly equating mattress shopping to war, & that was inappropriate.  Thank you for providing some much needed perspective. 

Just whatever you do, please don't visit any forums that discuss high end a/v equipment, jewelry, or luxury autos etc.  If possible, the rants there might make you even more angry than you already are about a group of people looking for a mattress that doesn't hurt their backs at night.

/first world problems.

Please don't take one person complaining as them taking your service for granted.  

But two things you should not assume:

1. Tone - You have no idea the tone of Doreen's response, this is the internet. 

2. Literal translation of certain words or phrases like 'death row'...I assumed when I read the blog post that these were no doubt 'hyperbole' to make for a more interesting read.  I personally appreciated the use of it.  

I actually work with a vet that served for over 20 years, has done a lot of tours and a different perspective of the world and people than any normal civilian could ever have.  Now that he is retired from that, he now works in the mattress industry with us trying to do his part to solve these issues in the blog post (and make a good buck doing it of course).  

What a lot of your issues stem from is an inherent lack of transparency in our industry, I hope others read the blog post if not to serve as nothing but a warning for the potentially negative experience.