Mattress Shopping

[canyonwalker]

Hawk and I have bought a new bed mattress. Our old one, really not even that old at just over 8 years now, developed a sag in one side and needed to be replaced.

First store: Good mattress, but it's $3,000

We began our mattress shopping on a whim. The weekend before last we were out getting lunch on Sunday (this is after coming home Saturday night from our aborted Bassi Falls trip) and said, "Hey, there's a mattress store across the street, let's stop there and look around." We stopped in, and with the help of a reasonably knowledge store manager immediately picked a short-list of mattresses to try. All were at least close to what we wanted. One, a particular Stearns & Foster model, was on the money. Speaking of money, there was good news and bad news. Good news: it wasn't the most expensive mattress in the store. Bad news: it was still $3,000 for queen size.

Checking online: Seemingly credible options from $600

During the week I spent a bit of time shopping online. On Amazon I found seemingly credible options from $600. That's obviously way cheaper than $3000. The thing is we can afford $3k if that's what it takes for the right mattress, but the $2,400 difference is real money to us. We're not that well off! Moreover, when there's a 5-to-1 price range even after crossing off the cheapest and priciest products it demands careful shopping to understand what differences lie beneath such disparate prices.

I scoured through product listings on Amazon and cross-referenced them with manufacturers' sites and third-party reviews sites. The first difference I found was, basically, foam mattresses vs. coil or coil-and-foam hybrid mattresses. We knew from trying a foam mattress at the first store that we both hate their feel. Alas, they are less expensive. But knowing they're also the wrong thing for us made it easier to cross off the cheapest products.

The next thing I checked was the price of name-brand mattresses online. Are brick-and-mortar stores like the one we visited gouging with huge markups? Actually they're not. The big name manufacturers regulate the pricing so you see the same price online as in stores.

That still left a bunch of lesser-known brands of coil based mattresses priced well below $3,000, like half or less. The challenge there is that we're both sensitive enough to what we need in a mattress that we're unwilling to buy without testing it first. So back to other brick-and-mortar shops we went.

Second store: Similar mattresses, snotty salesguy

This past Saturday we tried another local store after lunch. There are basically 2 chains that run basically all the standalone mattress stores nowadays. We went to the one that's not the one we checked the previous weekend. For being a different brand store, the selection was pretty similar. That kind of makes sense as most of their selection is the same handful of big-name brands. Pricing was the same.

We were more serious about buying a mattress on Saturday than the weekend before— we decided we would "Buy It Now" for the right product at a fair price— so we asked more questions of the salesguy who helped us. At first he was helpful, then he seemed to be avoiding us, then he started negging us. Negging, as in giving snide or critical answers to reasonable questions we asked, clearly implying with his words and intonation that we were foolish for asking.

Fuck. That. Shit.

We left.

Third Store's a Charm!

Having effectively visited dozens of area mattress stores by sampling one each of the two chains I next looked for independent stores. I found one 5 miles away, so we went there next. It had lesser-known brand name mattresses at lower prices. But they were on display so we could test them. We found one that provided all the firm support we need in a mattress, at a price less than half the $3k mattress we liked at the first store. And, the store owner who helped us was knowledgeable and patient with answering all of our questions. We not only bought a mattress from him but started eyeing a replacement bed frame and a new dining room set, too!