Make sure the box spring is included in the price.
Oh, it’s not? Durr.
In my defense it had been about 15 years since my last purchase of a mattress set but still, seeing the additional 400.00 for the box spring on the bill sucked.
I was too embarrassed to say anything. :o
THIS is my biggest pet peeve. It prevents comparison shopping AND it prevents me from doing online research to find products that I might be interested in BEFORE I go to the store AND it is intentionally done to do so.
Here is how it was explained to me. There once was a time when all mattreses were sold by department stores, then these discount mattress stores opened up selling the same damned mattress for half the price. The department stores didn’t like this so they made the manufacturer put a different label on their mattresses so that they could say “oh those discount store mattresses aren’t the same as what you find in department stores, just look at the labels, the insides are different and everything”
Then everybody got into the act and the mattress industry basically private labels mattresses for every retailer. They don’t actually make them very different, they just stick a different label on them. If you are really motivated, you can compare apples to apples but they make it as difficult as humanly possible. They want to you make your decision based on emotion not on facts.
The saleman says “lie down on the amttress and see which one you like” and you say to yourself, wow this $1500 matress is a lot nicer than that $2000 mattress" the saleman replies “oh yes, those mattresses are on closeout because the new models are coming out next week and we have to get rid of them, the new matresses will be $3000 when they get here in a couple of weeks”
If you could compare apples to apples, you would know that the $2000 mattress is overpriced by $1200 (specifically so that other mattresses will seem cheap by comparison) and that the $1500 mattress is available across the street for $1700.
Someone could make a lot of money bringing some transparency to the mattress industry.
I recently bought an NXG king size mattress for about 50% off the “sale” price. I feel OK about the price because I was standing right there in the store, in front of the saleman while I called an internet mattress retailer to ask them for a price (the NXG is standard enough that the difference between retailers is usually a thin sheet of saran wrap somewhere in the middle of the mattress). The price they gave me was higher than the price the salesman was giving me. I asked them to match the price and they wold only meet me halfway so I bought it from the store when they threw in a couple of king size tempurpedic pillows and a body pillow.
Glad I went through the mattress problem 20 years ago. My mattress is still wonderful, but it was on the expensive side. I read this thread with interest because I imagine that my luck with it will end soon.
A word of warning: never buy a used mattress. Never. Bedbugs are back.
This is beautiful. Thank you.
Just went shopping for one a few weeks ago and found all the examples stated in the thread. Determined pretty quickly about the private label as the about-$500 mattress named after a flower had the same number of coils (and other items) as the about-$500 mattress named after a color at the store across the street.
For what it’s worth, we based part of our decision on the “non-pro-rated warranty” that the store was willing to give us. But when you do that, make sure you look at the fine print. Our warranty for sagginjg doesn’t kick in unless there’s a dip of at least 1.5 inches.
Store brands are made differently than the discount stores. The store brands have commisioned the manufacturer to produce to their specifications, with the types of filler, coil count, fabric. The beds in the higher range are made with wool and or silk fiber fill, silk, cotton, or blended fabric, memory foam padding. Mid range is either wool blend or plain poly fill, memory foam or just plain foam, and plain mattress fabric thats made out of rayon. The discount stores will buy whatever can be cheaply made so that can sell it by volume not quality. It does come down to you get what you pay for. I worked for over 25 years in a mattress factory, and have always bought the higher end bedding for myself and family and freinds. And yes it all comes down to the sales person, but in some stores they should have cut aways so that you can see what is inside the mattress for yourself and then you can make your own decision.
We did actually buy our mattress in a store that sold only beds, and the salespeople were all delightful and very knowledgeable (I’m not kidding - they really were). We did a lot of comparison shopping first, and have been very happy with our purchase.
Make sure the delivery arrangements take the old bed away, too, if you don’t want it any longer.
I think I paid like $80 for my last mattress, back in the mid 90s. Waterbed mattresses last a long time and are cheap, and don’t really require much shopping.
I found an excellent “real” mattress in a hotel in Los Angeles about 4 years ago. Wrote down the info on the tag and everything then started checking to see what it would cost me to get one. The mattress alone was like $3500, plus box spring, plus the bed frame because I have a waterbed currently. It was gonna cost me like $5000 to get a new bed and then I found out that I’d have to buy another mattress in 10 years or so! I said fuck it and am now happier than ever that I have a waterbed. I sleep like a frikkin’ baby in it, too.
We paid an embarrassingly high amount for our bed six years ago. It’s very comfy, so much so that hubby has a hard time sleeping anywhere else. We’re okay with it since we spend 33% of our day on it.
This shows an admirable command of the lie/lay issue. However, it’s a little like learning to juggle by watching a street performer juggling 5 running chainsaws at once while balancing on a bowling ball.
As for mattresses…I’ve leid down on a bunch as part of the buying process and found the $750 Queen/King and lower absolutely intolerable. I’ve also decided I don’t need to spend more than $1,200 on a King. As long as they come with a 10-15 year warranty and the store has been around a while that’s just my price range.
We actually used the 90 day guarantee last time we bought a mattress. We were torn between two models and went with the firmer of the two. After a couple if weeks of waking up feeling stiff we went back for the slightly less firm model. I still prefer our old one but the only way it’s coming out of our old bedroom is with a chainsaw. Ah well guests get a comfy place to sleep.
I think the warranty is from the manufacturer and the 1.5" sag is standard through the industry.
Most of the mattress salesmen I ran into were literally thieves or had no idea what they were selling.
Lay requires an object:
present:…**Lay **- Lay the book down. Now I lay me down to sleep.
past tense:…**Laid **- She laid the book down. He laid her.
past participle:…**Laid **- She has laid the book down.
The problem is that the past tense of Lie is Lay, but it’s a different Lay.