Charting my Novosbed experience

Discussions General Mattresses Questions
1

Hi Everyone,

I’ve recently been in the market for a new mattress and it has been quite the enlightening experience. I visited several prominent stores, met a variety of quirky salespeople, and was completely overwhelmed by obvious bullshit and swindling taking place, irrespective of which major store I visited. As an example, one store offered me a $700 discount on a mattress almost on a whim, merely because I asked and said the mattress was outside of my price range. Rather than being encouraged to purchase the mattress, I was struck by how egregious the profit margins on mattresses must be if a salesperson can, almost without thinking, discount a mattress so substantially for a customer in the effort of making a sale. Although I was tempted to purchase the mattress, I decided against it.

After that, I started to look online and found the great resource that is The Mattress Underground. I probably know more than I care to know about mattresses from reading this forum almost compulsively for the last several weeks, but it helped me to become more familiar with what components go into a high-quality memory foam mattress and what businesses I should direct my attention toward.

In the end, I decided to go with a NovosBed Classic mattress from (www.novosbed.ca). I’m in Canada and I was impressed with their prices in Canadian dollars, their free shipping, that the mattress order comes with two memory foam pillows, and the generous 120-day trial period. Although NovosBed says that shipping is free ‘both ways’, for potentially dissatisfied customers, a look into the fine print reveals that NovosBed actually arranges for mattresses to be donated to local charities if a customer decides to ‘return’ the mattress within that 120-day period. It says a lot about corporate/community responsibility rather than a blind desire for profit at any cost, and I was more impressed with this donation clause than the prospect of shipping it back for free.

As a graduate student, I’m not in a position to make a donation to The Mattress Underground, but I’d like to ‘give’ to TMU by way of this forum post, since I noticed that there weren’t too many reviews about Novosbed on here and I wanted to add to the general knowledge base of the website.

This post is meant to be the start of my ongoing documentation of my Novosbed experience, from my first encounter with NovosBed onwards. I haven’t even received my NovosBed yet, but I wanted to begin here with this introductory post. Hopefully people will find this style of post more helpful than a straight review, as I’m hoping to take a look at the entire process of ordering a mattress online from NovosBed and tracking my experiences as they happen, rather than through looking back. I’m hoping this will also let my ‘review’ be more nuanced; in my experience people write reviews with the intention of either praising or complaining right from the start, whereas my intention here is only to chart my experiences, and since I only just ordered my mattress, I’ll be looking at this without the preconceptions of a typical review.

Thanks again for all your help & I hope to be similarly helpful in the coming weeks,
Matt Ress

2

Although in my previous post I mentioned that I would be charting these experiences as they happen, I didn’t have the foresight to think of doing this post immediately upon encountering NovosBed, so this first post will be looking back a few weeks, whereas my planned future posts will be fairly immediate.

My first experience with NovosBed was in a forum post on TMU. I don’t recall the specific post as it was several weeks ago now, but I was impressed by the NovosBed website and that they offered a few core products that they seemed to stand behind with a substantial 120-day money-back guarantee. That said, I was a little off-put by their ‘sale’ which, in looking back over the last few weeks, has a timer but seemingly is refreshed before it ends. This reminded me of the perennial sales of the big mattress stores that I had visited prior to finding NovosBed. The sale was 2 free memory foam pillows, that look to be the “contour pillows” under the accessory section. Although the sale doesn’t name these pillows, the value attributed is $218 dollars, and the value of the contour pillows is $109 each.

I was also impressed that NovosBed was transparent about the materials used in their mattresses, including the density, and that they offered meaningful comparisons between mattresses found in stores. One of my hesitations in ordering a mattress online was my inability to try it (although I am also sceptical of whether laying on a mattress for 10-15 minutes in a store actually gives you an accurate representation of sleeping on it, especially when every mattress store seems to have classic soft-rock playing in your ear and conveniently located air-conditioning vents).

In my previous post I highlighted some other reasons why I decided on NovosBed. However, I had yet to decide on which NovosBed was the choice for me. In the process of ordering my mattress I asked via the online chat about these mattress comparisons (e.g. the NovosBed Classic is listed as being comparable in ‘feel’ to the Tempur-Pedic Contour Elite). My question was whether or not the ‘feel’ comparison was specific to the responsiveness of the foam and the ‘sink-in’ as well as the firmness. I questioned this because across the different mattresses that NovosBed offers (Aria, Sonata, and Harmony), the firmness indicated by NovosBed is different than the firmness indicated by the comparable mattress. For example, the NovosBed Classic is listed as “firm” in the top of the product webpage, but the Tempur-Pedic Contour Elite is listed as a “medium-firm” mattress. I wondered whether or not the Classic ‘felt’ like a firmer Contour, or if NovosBed’s ‘firm’ is equivalent to Tempur-Pedic’s “medium-firm”. The representative clarified that different mattress companies describe their firmness differently and if I were to go into the store and try the mattresses listed by NovosBed as comparable, I’d get a sense of what the NovosBed mattresses would feel like. This was a very helpful answer and I did go back to the big stores to try these mattresses (although I couldn’t find a Contour Elite, I tried a different, firmer Contour model that was too firm—but listed as Tempur-Pedic as “firm”—and reasoned that that NovosBed, a Tempur-Pedic “medium-firm”, would be better especially after trying the other ‘comparison beds’). Doing this bit of comparison shopping was crucial in my decision to purchase the NovosBed Classic and I’d highly recommend it.

I should note that there are some discrepancies on the NovosBed website about the Classic model that I noticed, specifically relating to firmness. While NovosBed lists the mattress as “firm” in the initial description, the comparison chart with Tempur-Pedic lists the Classic as “medium to firm”, which actually makes sense, in Tempur-Pedic’s nomenclature and is helpful in making a meaningful comparison. I understand how NovosBed would simultaneously want to highlight the Classic as “firm”, since it is their firmest mattress, but it was confusing to read the two different indications of firmness. Compounding this was the further description of the mattress as “Firmness comparable to a firm spring, foam or memory foam mattress”, whereas that actual comparison depends on which memory foam mattress you’re comparing it to. As I noted above, the firmness of the Classic is comparable to a Medium-Firm Tempur-Pedic, rather than a ‘firm’ Tempur-Pedic. And of course, across all of this, firmness is also relative to the person sleeping on it (e.g. weight, etc), which makes trying out the comparison beds really important.

One thing that I was also confused about and continue to be unsure about is NovosBed’s relation to TMU. The site administrator, Phoenix, seems to have a favourable impression of the company and has spoken with the company. NovosBed is also a forum member of the website, leading me to believe that NovosBed is recommended by TMU. However, NovosBed is not on the list of commercial membership on TMU and there were no options to receive the requisite 5% discount when ordering. Some clarification around this would probably be helpful for other TMU members/users. I chose to believe that NovosBed came recommended by TMU based on their forum participation and Phoenix’s comments about them, but I don’t know if that is accurate. In the very least NovosBed seems to meet a number of the quality requirements when looking for a memory foam mattress as highlighted by this site, so I took comfort in that when ordering, in addition to the generous trial period and reasonable pricing. The 5% discount or a pillow upgrade/other member benefit would have, of course, been welcome.

Until next time,
Matt Ress

3

I ordered my NovosBed mattress this week and I received an immediate email with my confirmation number and thanking me for my purchase. Today I received an email from NovosBed saying that NovosBed is currently awaiting a new shipment of their product and my mattress will not ship until next week.

To be honest, I am a little disappointed in this email, given that I had previously spoken to a customer service representative via online chat and I asked about shipping times to my city. The representative mentioned it would only be a few days wait (1-2) as they had a warehouse nearby, and made no mention of stock issues. This is further compounded by the ongoing pillow sale that is time sensitive, basically encouraging customers to purchase a mattress that isn’t presently in stock. Other websites that I frequent for online purchases usually have some kind of indication when a product is back ordered. Unfortunately there were no such indications on their website at the time of purchasing, although plenty of information touting the expedient shipping times.

I understand that NovosBed only compresses their mattresses for a maximum of 3 months, something I appreciate as I read that mattresses compressed for long periods of time can become problematic. It is also nice to know that I will have a “fresh batch” when the order eventually ships. However, it isn’t the best experience to be caught off-guard by a week+ delay after purchasing the mattress and expecting it in 1-2 days.

Looks like I won’t have any further updates until I receive the mattress sometime next week. Do let me know if anyone has questions/comments in the mean time.

Matt Ress.

4

Hi Matt-Res,

Thanks for sharing such detailed updates and feelback about your Novosbed experiences … I appreciate it :slight_smile:

I especially like your more “dispassionate” and “fact based” approach!

Congratulations on your new mattress … I think you did well :slight_smile:

I’ve spoken with Sam Prochazka one of the owners of Novosbed on many occasions and I think highly of both him and the mattresses they sell and how they have approached their business over time. While they are not a member of TMU so there is no connection between them and TMU … I “point to value” wherever I see it and they are one of many manufacturers or retailers that are included in hundreds of lists or posts around the forum that I think highly of that aren’t members … at least yet. There were about half a dozen members when the site first started about three years ago but I don’t actively seek out or “recruit” members and it’s normally more of an “organic” process that is a side effect of other conversations (see the comments and links at the end of post #2 here).

The members here are “among the best in the country” (membership is vetted and by invitation only) and are the only ones that I officially recommend as a business (I don’t recommend specific mattresses) and are also the only ones that are allowed to show that they are “recommended by The Mattress Underground” on their websites. They are also the only ones that I have any financial connection with (see this page) and who support the time and efforts involved (16 hours a day on average over the course of over 3 years now) in the research and efforts involved in developing and maintaining the site.

Phoenix

5

Hi Phoenix,

Thanks for the kind words and thanks for clarifying the relationship between TMU and NovosBed. I was under the impression that membership in the forum for commercial members was invite-only, which is why I think I was confused when I saw that NovosBed was a member, but I suppose that is separate than ‘recommended’ members?

Best,
Matt Ress.

6

Hi Matt-Ress,

Yes membership in the forum is open to anyone who wishes to register and post here and there are a number of businesses that are forum members that post from time to time but becoming a member of the site is by invitation (and of course agreement) only and is separate from being a forum member.

Phoenix

7

Hi Matt -

I would love to hear more of your experience with your Novosbed mattress.

Have you received it? Was the shipping timely after the initial delay? Was it difficult to unpack? (Do not know what size you ordered.) What model did you order and how do you find sleeping on it so far? Hope you will let us know. :slight_smile: