My wife & I stayed at a Doubletree Inn (Hilton-owned) and were so impressed with the comfortable sleep we’d had that we tore off the bedding to learn the mattress make & model: a “Suite Dreams” by Serta. When we got home, we found out you can buy them on-line from Hilton to Home, so we ordered one with no hesitation to replace our 10-year-old Stearns & Foster.
We slept fine and flipped and rotated it regularly; but after about a year we noticed it had started to sag, and after a year-and-a-half it had become unbearable. Getting to sleep wasn’t the problem; after settling in, I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to find any spot on the bed that didn’t make my hips and legs ache. We tried placing anti-sag inserts between the mattress and boxspring with limited success, and finally filed a warranty claim.
As expected, Serta gave us a runaround. They sent a mattress inspector who measured sag at upper-back level, not where it was occurring, and on that basis our claim was denied. I protested, and their customer service rep flat-out told me that conformity to a sleeper’s body is to be expected and that the warranty covers defects in workmanship, not comfort issues. (I pointed out that diminished comfort must be related to workmanship, but he failed to see the logic in this.) Undeterred, I took our case to Hilton and they went to bat for us; within hours of sending an email, I received an automated call from Serta advising me that a new mattress was in the works. (Way to go, Hilton!)
The replacement mattress finally arrived, and I have to say it was a letdown. I wish I had some way of retaining the memory of how comfortable that hotel mattress had been – and how comfortable the first one we received must have been when it arrived – but my initial impression was that I could feel several of the mattress’s inner coils pressing against me, producing an uneven sleeping surface. I still woke up in the middle of the night with aching hips, although not to the previous extent that I was unable to find a comfortable position from which to get back to sleep. Perhaps some break-in is required, but I don’t remember that this was the case with the earlier one.
Having spent $1500+ (including shipping) for what we’d assumed would be a top-of-the-line mattress, I’m relieved to have at least gotten a free replacement rather than have to shop for a new one. But given our initial disappointment with the replacement, we bought a memory-foam topper. Despite the somewhat disquieting sensation of trying to get to sleep while lying on a large marshmallow, we found it gave us the comfortable sleep we’d been looking for. (I even slept through for 8 hours one night, something I don’t think I’ve done in years.) After using it for a couple of weeks, I wanted to try sleeping on just the mattress again, thinking surely it must be broken in by now and couldn’t be all that bad; we’d even visited friends recently and found their mattress perfectly comfortable, so it’s not as if we’d been spoiled by the memory foam; but the un-topped Serta was as disappointing as we’d remembered.
A final note to this cautionary tale: When you place your order, you’re told that a mattress is going to be custom-built for you. This is a clever sales gimmick (I for one would have been happy to have had them pull one from some existing inventory), but it does make me wonder whether the mattresses assembled for individuals are perhaps made to slightly different (and inferior?) specifications than the ones built for hotels. Is this an unfair suspicion? Even so, I can’t help but wonder. All I can advise is, if you’re ordering a mattress based on a favorable experience at a Hilton, don’t assume that experience will necessarily be replicated at home.