Brooklyn Bedding

[phoenix]

Hi sdmark,

The need to have realistic expectations makes some sense. As for me, I slept fairly happily on a single Sealy from 1994 through 2011. It had probably “dented in” after ten or twelve years–I remember sleeping diagonally for a while–but it didn’t become a problem until much later. So that’s where my expectations come from.

I only wish that the major manufacturers made the same quality/value mattresses today that they did a decade or two ago … unfortunately they don’t … especially in the last 15 years or so since the rush to one sided mattress was started by Simmons. You can read more about this in post #3 here and post #404 here.

The warranty process is, I think, where the whole industry, with the big S companies in the lead, has really failed consumers. The 1.5" threshold is an ancient rule of thumb that may have made sense in the “old days” when top layers were thinner and more resilient (hope I’m using the right word there). The problem is that even when new poly and memory foam layers lose resiliency, they still spring back when you get up, making almost every warranty claim pointless. Companies are applying an old standard to new materials, which basically cheats consumers. As one of those cheated, I’m not happy about it.

Things need to be warranted as they are actually used. Imagine if your car warranty was only valid if the symptoms were evident with the car parked and the motor turned off. “What do you mean the brakes are squealing? I don’t hear anything.”

You’re certainly right about this … and in most cases in the mainstream industry today warranties are used as a marketing or closing tool rather than as a meaningful benefit. A big part of the value of a warranty is the culture and policies of the company that honors it and this is where smaller manufacturers that are more dependent on their reputation than on their advertising generally rise above their larger competitors.

To warranty a mattress, its performance while in use must be measured. Ideally one would warranty that the mattress’s total ILD would not decrease more than x% per year. But probably field-testing ILD is too difficult, so how about a standard weight, say a 24" round 50lb. dumbbell weight. Placed anywhere on the mattress, if the bottom sinks in more than x inches below the edge of the mattress, too much resiliency has been lost.

This would also be great … but it would also lead to more costly mattresses that used higher density foams or more durable materials which would then put many mainstream mattresses out of range for many consumers and they would lose market share. The mainstream manufacturers also aren’t likely to ever go in the direction of including loss of ILD in their warranties because it would reduce sales significantly and they are well aware that if a mattress is replaced a few years down the road that most consumers will once again buy based on the current advertising which convinces them that “things are different now than when you bought your last mattress” and they will make new versions of the same mistakes all over again. This is the outcome of the lack of transparency in the mainstream industry and sadly the market share of the “advertising oriented” manufacturers is still increasing because consumers don’t know what to believe any more and marketing information has replaced meaningful quality information as a way to buy a mattress.

Probably preaching to the choir here, but if the materials of an entire industry change, the warranty needs to change to keep up. It would be nice to see some of the smaller vendors take the lead in offering fairer warranties that more accurately reflect how the product should perform in normal use.

This is a much more complex issue than you may imagine because of the many factors involved with durability and the useful life of a mattress and the current state of the market and consumer awareness but the smaller manufacturers are already leading the way in terms of the quality/durability of the materials they use and the “value” they put in their mattresses and also in the more liberal way that many of them will apply their warranties in real life (oriented more to the customer than protecting themselves against claims). Even with the current exclusions … their warranties are much more realistic because of how they’re applied. In today’s market … “realistic warranties” could also cost legitimate smaller manufacturers most of their business because they would “look worse” than longer warranties that aren’t realistic or meaningful and they are already under tremendous pressure. Consumers as a whole tend to believe anything that is repeated many times and don’t often look into the facts behind what they are being told so this is as much a consumer education issue as a warranty issue.

Phoenix