Hi mb321,
[quote]1. I called the Master Craft Sleep Products factory in Jasper, AL. The guy who answered the phone was not friendly and would not answer my questions. He said he makes the mattress himself but did not know what kind of latex is in the mattress and then refused to answer any more questions.
- I called the sales person at Mattress Connection back and asked her if she could find information on the mattress. She said the display tag arrived this week and gave me this information - it has four layers: 2" high density gel foam, 2" latex, 2" memory foam, then 7" furniture grade foam. I asked her if she had any information on the type of latex - no. Did she have any information on the densities of the foams - no. And also “densities are scientific so customers don’t care about that stuff”. She also suggested that I go online and do some research on memory foam mattresses so I could see that they don’t release information about materials typically, and that if the price of the mattress is higher, it implies the mattress has higher quality materials. She said the “Freedom” model is store specific and that there maybe a similar model to review on the Symbol website, but I could not find anything like it on their website.[/quote]
Unfortunately your experience is fairly typical in the industry. Most wholesale manufacturers aren’t set up to deal with consumers (and often don’t do a great job with consumer inquiries) and it’s also very common in the mainstream industry to encounter salespeople with very little knowledge who will tell you that “you don’t need to know that” only because they don’t know themselves. As sad as it may be … most people who spend more than about an hour or so on this site will know more meaningful information about mattresses than the large majority of people who sell them in the mainstream industry.
The Symbol Freedom mattresses aren’t “store specific” (see the bottom of this article) and are a new line of mattresses that Symbol has introduced that is available to any of their retailers.
Furniture grade foam typically refers to 1.8 lb polyfoam or higher (which would be a suitable density for a support layer) and latex is also a high quality and durable material (regardless of the type or blend) relative to other types of foam but I would want to know the density of the memory foam layers to make sure there are no weak links in the mattress and as you and others have discovered this can be difficult to find out with some manufacturers or retailers (see post #4 here for another example).
Just as a “tip” … it can be a good idea to call any store you plan to visit before actually going there to make sure they will provide you with the specs you will need (see this article) because it can be very frustrating to test mattresses at a store for PPP and find a good “match” only to discover that you can’t find out the quality/durability of the materials.
Both of these are more transparent than most other manufacturers and make some high quality mattresses that would be worth considering.
Phoenix