"My Mattress Buying Nightmare" (Learn from my mistakes!)

[Boopboopadoop]

Hi,
I've been posting parts of my mattress buying saga on this site for months.
Now, I have finally written the entire story on my blog...http://chronicfatigue.typepad.com/mj/
If you are shopping for a mattress, it is required reading!

 

[PC4CAB]

Wow, that is the most melodramtic thing I have ever read!

 

[DaveStro]

I really hate you had a very difficult time shopping for a mattress, but I can add some advice for comparison shopping to make it a little more simple. If you decided you liked a model at one store then all you need to do is ask for a copy of the specs for that mattress and then go comparison shopping with the spec sheet. The other retailers should be able to show you the same mattress with a different name and different cover if they carry that model. If not they will have something very close or similar. Get Coil type (Pocketed, offset, bonnell, etc..), number of coils, gauge of wire and number of turns in the coil. The lower the number of the guage of wire the thicker the wire and the firmer the coil. The more turns or rotations in the coil the more durable the spring unit. So 6 turns is better than 3 turns. Write down each layer of foam name and foam thickness. So you will be comparing the same types fo foam.
To clear a couple fo things up these types of mattresses and coils have been around for a very long time. The pocketed coil has been in Simmons Beauty Rest Mattresses since 1925. Latex foam mattresses ahve been around since the 1940's, Memory Foam has been around since the 1980's and it isnt any better then any other poly foam that is the same density. What you refer to as genreric foam is what is in most all mattresses.Memory foam is warmer to sleep on for the simple reason it is a temprature sensitive foam and requires body heat to soften the compression ratio of the foam in order to conform to you better. Now the memory foam in most innerspring mattresses arent very temprature sensitive so you wont notice it anyway. Example: Tempurpedic changes compression ratio with every 3 degree change. The memory foam in Sterns & Foster changes compression with every 27 degree change in temprature. Dont fall for the cool memory foam line. If they use something to keep the memory foam cool you might as well just buy something with all HD Foam and no memory foam. Memory foam does cost more becuase of production and it is an open celled foam, but there is no need to pay the extra money if it is being kept cool or layered under layers of other foams.
The mattress thickness has gotten thicker over the years, but have mantained roughly the same for the last 10 years. As for the weight they are considerable lighter then what mattresses used to be unless your getting All foam and they are about the same weight as an old Stearns & Foster or Sealy Posturepedic. Comparing to a 25yr old mattress there is a huge difference in thickness even with a low profile box it is still most likely going ot be taller.
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. The best way to select a good mattress is to go into the store and narrow it down to 2 or 3 mattress comfort levels and spend 10 or more min laying on each one. Ask the sales person let you take some time just laying on them. He showed walk away and give you some space if he doesnt then ask him to leave you alone for a few minutes so you can relax.
Latex push back is a mythical term created by poly foam manufactures. Latex doesnt push back against you any more or less then any other foam. They will all push back with the exact same force and it is determined by gravity
The industry does realize that a very very small percentage of people can not find the right product for themselves. That goes back to "You cant make everyone happy".
There is nothing free in any industry. If the pillows were free you would be able to get them without the purchase of anything. If you have to buy something to get something free then it isnt free. If the problem was with the mattress why would you expect to get a refund on the pillows. It really baffles me how you speak liek it is a bad thing that you have to pay for delivery. Dont you like to get paid when you work? Your entire complaint seems to be revolved around spending money for a product and services. I am sure you like to get paid for any work you do? and you blame the retailers or the S-Brands for the prices. When you should actually look at the oil prices (Poly foams are a petro product), along with the rasing the cost for transporting the products bd materials. The cost of steel as increased dramatically over the last 10 years. The actual increase in mattress prices in the last 10 years is far lower than the increase in the cost of transportation and materials in the last 10 years. You can purchase a good quality King set for around $1100 and a luxury line for around $2500. You can spend far more than that for the all foam products, which will last longer, but if they arent cokmfortable it doesnt really matter.
Mattress shopping really isnt that complicated. You have quilting, Cushioning layers and coil system in an innerspring mattress. To compare the same brands all you have to do is ask for the specs and take that shopping with you and compare specs to specs. For memory foam ask about the density of the foam and how much memory foam is actually in the mattress. The higher the density the better. Most memory foam mattress only have a couple of inches of memory foam and the core High Density Poly Foam and not memory foam. The cheaper models will have lower density foams with very little actual memory foam and the more expensive models will be all to mostly all memory foam with a high density. Low density is 2lbs or less and high density is 5lbs or higher. Latex is a different breed, but you want to see if it is synthetic latex, blended latex, or 100% natural latex(Very very rare)
I wish you the best of luck with you mattress and hope you enjoy it as it sounds like you have purchased a premium line set.

 

[Boopboopadoop]

Thank you for that long, informative reply. You obviously sell mattresses. But I won't hold that against you.
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.

 

[DoreenA]

"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.

 

[RLTW]

Ok, not to be controversial, but that blog post is pretty pathetic. I just got back from a surgical unit in Afghanistan where as an officer and a surgeon, I was lucky enough to sleep on a very worn out air mattress on a military issued cot. Most of the men and woman serving here have it much worse… No shopping around for something plush and soft to sleep on... It’s the floor or the ground for most of them. Sorry you had such a hard time with such a pedestrian pursuit as finding a bed to sleep on. I truly felt for you when you had to suffer through "mattress death row…” You poor thing... How hard it must have been for you, walking from store-to-store with a Starbucks, lying on all those awful mattresses, and dealing with those horrible salespeople. I'm sure at the same time you were doing this, I was pulling fragments of an IED from some poor Marines’ shoulder and arm. If he’s lucky, he may have about 60% use of his right side after 18 months of painful PT.
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

 

[Boopboopadoop]

I would never, ever compare my mattress shopping "ordeal" with anything on the scale of what you've just experienced in a war zone. Or course your recent experiences put my "problems" in perspective and make them seem completely trivial. Because in the grand scheme of things...they ARE.
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.

 

[DoreenA]

Well, if everyone, including me, came here and discussed all the horrific things they've been through, then mattress shopping is indeed trivial and there's no need for a forum. Everyone who is not in a life and death situation should just suck everything up and stop complaining I guess.
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.

 

[RLTW]

DoreenA wrote:

Well, if everyone, including me, came here and discussed all the horrific things they've been through, then mattress shopping is indeed trivial and there's no need for a forum. Everyone who is not in a life and death situation should just suck everything up and stop complaining I guess.

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....

 

[JasonRatky]

RLTW wrote:
Ok, not to be controversial, but that blog post is pretty pathetic. I just got back from a surgical unit in Afghanistan where as an officer and a surgeon, I was lucky enough to sleep on a very worn out air mattress on a military issued cot. Most of the men and woman serving here have it much worse… No shopping around for something plush and soft to sleep on... It’s the floor or the ground for most of them. Sorry you had such a hard time with such a pedestrian pursuit as finding a bed to sleep on. I truly felt for you when you had to suffer through "mattress death row…” You poor thing... How hard it must have been for you, walking from store-to-store with a Starbucks, lying on all those awful mattresses, and dealing with those horrible salespeople. I'm sure at the same time you were doing this, I was pulling fragments of an IED from some poor Marines’ shoulder and arm. If he’s lucky, he may have about 60% use of his right side after 18 months of painful PT.

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

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.

 

[budgy]

Yeah I do have to say out of respect to thank you for serving your country and sacrificing yourself so others can enjoy the freedoms we have.
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.