I don’t know if this is a local Indianapolis thing, but I’ve seen these handwritten signs for years here stuck in medians and whatnot (you know, smallish foam board signs stuck in the ground with metal legs). $200 pillow top mattress and box.
It’s got to be a scam or bullshit of some sort, but does anybody know about this? Thanks!
By the way, I hate when people think they can do outdoor advertising for free. One I see a lot is “1-800-Skydive.” Fuck that.
No clue, but I’ve seen the signs also and I’m curious about it. I’m guessing it’s similar to the “white van speaker” scam.
Where extremely low quality mattresses are passed off as top quality and you are given a very high pressure sales pitch. If you don’t buy it, they guilt trip you for wasting their time, imply that if they don’t make the sale they will be fired etc. Then after "taxes, commission, EPA disposal fees, mandatory charity donation to St. Jude, platinum extended warranty, anti bedbug spray, etc your 200 dollar mattress costs 700 dollars.
That is entirely speculation tho
Probably another "get less than you pay for " scam.
Why do you think it would be impossible to produce and market a mattress/box for under $200, that would meet the minimum quality standards of low income consumers? The real scam might be the outlets that are charging three of four times as much for a unit of similar quality.
Next door to my old employer there was a mattress “refurbishing” business. They would pay scrappers a small amount for mattresses and box springs in any condition. They would cut the cover off, put on a new cover, and sell them to ghetto furniture stores.
Were the bed bugs included for free?
They’re not bugs, they’re features.
Has there been flooding in your area recently? We had a lot of flooding in SE Michigan a few weeks ago, and if anybody tried to sell me a matress for cheap, I’d assume it had been salvaged out of someone’s flooded basement.
Well perhaps they bought one here and don’t like it… they just want to get back what they paid ?
http://www.mattressfirm.com/H_R_8_5_Danbury_Firm_Pillow_Top-P293.aspx
$200 for a pillow top.
All sorts of stuff happens… the building may give everyone a voucher due to bed bug infestation, for example.
I bet the $200 version is only two feet wide too.
For once, I see that something over here is cheaper:) Small Single Mattresses at Mattressman
I got the best mattress I’ve ever owned on Amazon. It was about $300 for a queen size memory foam mattress. Amazon delivered it in 2 days thanks to their Amazon Prime service.
I would never ever buy a mattress from a highway median, but only because you can get great cheap mattresses from Amazon.
What kind did you get? Seems when I read reviews for all of those low-priced memory foam mattresses people say they totally sag after 6 months to a year.
Or they are made of some kind of toxic material from China and they die in their sleep…
In case you were wondering, these same hand written signs for the $200 mattress set are all over the medians in San Diego, CA as well, so it is not unique to your market. Whatever the scam is, presumably it is a nationwide one.
Looks like this is the answer. Here’s a video from somewhere in the UK from only a few months ago talking about the scam.
Bedbugs, highly flammable, urine soaked etc with a new cover.I have seen it as a “bait & switch” scam.
That sucks – I don’t want a mattress that’s going to die after six months. At least they went peacefully.
I see these signs all the time in the northern MD area —now they’re advertising queen sized ones for only $100 vice $200. Saw one yesterday evening.
TV news up in NYC had a bit on mattress reconditoners when the bedbug thing was all in the news there. (Not that bedbugs are any less bad now than then…) They were caught using bedbug infersted mattresses that had been thrown out and ones that were otherwise unsanitary (use your imagination) and sewing new covers on them.
FYI that is about what a mattress and box spring cost the company to make. We used to have a high end mattress manufacturer in town. Those that worked for the town had a good deal with the company. If we came to pick it up we could get the mattresses for manufacturers cost (limit once per year). I got a queen size pillow top and box spring for under $300. It was a sad day when they moved their facility.
If a refurbisher takes the mattress/springs down to bare metal and then uses quality materials and workmanship, they can turn out a quality product.
The trouble is that some don’t even bother to remove the old cover - they just put the crappy old item into a new cover.
How to know the difference without ripping it apart before purchase?
If it is offered by somebody who also carries new (authorized dealer), it is probably a real bargain - only the springs and their connectors are re-used. A guy selling off the back of a truck?
Ummm… yeah, about that mattress…