Hi ocjdl.
Welcome to our Mattress Forum! 
Sorry to hear your Tuft & Needle isn’t working out for you as well as you had hoped… but I am glad that you’ve had the chance to peruse the forum and start your research.
Your sleeping position change may have been dictated by an unsuitable mattress or by a natural change that occurs sometimes with aging, or both. Regardless … it I suggest you keep this under observation in your quest for a new mattress. (Which adds a bit of a layer of complication)
From what you describe, it seems that you may have some overlapping comfort and alignment issues. In general, issues with “pain” or discomfort earlier in the night tend to be surface comfort related, and issues with “pain” in the morning tend to be more alignment (deep support) related, makes more difficult to separate the cause between the injury and the mattress. There are some general guidelines as to what tends to cause back pain in post #2 here that you may find informative.
This could have been the result of your foam layers coming apart and a shift of materials in your mattress, or it could be the result of the foams losing some of their structure over time and not providing you with either the support or comfort that you desire. If you are sinking more than before, this could be the cause of your neck issues (pillow not providing proper alignment anymore with you sinking into the mattress too much, and the prone sleeping position does not help with this either as this is one of the major complains of prone sleepers.)
There is more about the many variables that can affect the sleeping temperature of a mattress or sleeping system in post #2 here. If you decide to choose memory foam product you’d want to make sure that you don’t choose something with so much memory foam on top that you sink in too deeply. While memory foam does a very good job at minimizing motions transfer it will generally be the least breathable and most insulating of the foam comfort materials, so temperature can be an issue.
You are correct to be skeptic of your one night experience with the hotel mattress mostly because when you sleep badly, almost anything else that offers you a good night rest would look like a major improvement and also because hotel mattresses tend to have manipulated comfort as they are usually chosen with a bit firmer feeling (usually medium-firm) and then they are customized with various “top of bed” products such as polyfill toppers and plush mattress pads to add the needed extra-plushness. These are easier to replace and launder, and offer a more cost-effective solution to add a bit of plushness to a mattress. There’s more good information about hotel mattresses in post #3 here.
Join the club! (Sorry…you already did :))… the lack of transparency and the amount of misinformation rampant in the industry is exactly why we started this site. Larger brands and the stores that offer their products commonly rely upon the lack of information and state of confusion that they find in most consumers, and they exploit this with general marketing clichés. I am guessing that that by now you’ve already read through some of the material I use as a reference and learned enough to recognize a product using better quality materials or a retailer that is knowledgeable and honest so that you may trust the information you’re presented.
As for reviews or other people’s experiences … I agree with you that they won’t tell you much if anything about the suitability, quality, durability, or “value” of a mattress for any particular person (see post #13 here ), and generally while they can be useful to gauge the reputation of a business, I recommend to avoid considering them as any sort of a reliable indicator of the quality or appropriateness of an item for any particular person.
In the current market it’s a good idea to avoid the major brands because they are often overpriced and/or use lower quality and less durable materials in their mattresses than many of their smaller competitors although I would also avoid any mattress regardless of the name of the manufacturer where you aren’t able to find out the quality and durability of the materials inside it to make sure there aren’t any lower quality materials or “weak links” in the mattress (see the guidelines here ).
This is one of the most common questions on the forum, and there is no shortcut to identifying the type of mattress and the feel you prefer and testing it against your needs. As far as “breaking the bank” goes, you have many options both of our Trusted Members here and also non-members, provided that you do some local testing to orient yourself towards a product that meets your criteria based on your personal value equation that is most important to you (including the price of course and the options you have available after a purchase if your choice doesn’t turn out as well as you hoped for).
Anyone faced with this dilemma has a several approaches:
The first approach is to become an expert in all the different materials and methods of mattress construction that are part of every mattress. This involves knowing the differences between different materials, the variations in each different material, and how to determine the different quality levels of each material (for example the difference between “cheap” 3 lb memory foam and denser 5 lb memory foam which is more durable and performs very differently). It also involves a process which in most cases is more like pulling teeth (at least for chain stores and major brands) which is finding out the information that you need to determine quality and durability. In most cases … mainstream outlets and brands don’t even know this information and in many cases they refuse to disclose it so that comparison shopping is impossible. An hour on this site reading the overviews in the mattresses section will generally make you more of an “expert” than the vast majority of the people who sell mattresses. I highly recommend avoiding this approach and the guidelines here will help you avoid most of the more common choices that end up leading to the purchase of a poor quality and value mattresses.
The second approach is to first find the better outlets in your area that either make or sell higher quality and value mattresses and that are what I call “mattress people”. these are people who already know what you otherwise would need to learn and who are committed to helping you find the most suitable mattress that fits your needs and preferences in your budget and will educate you about how to make better choices rather than “sell” you a mattress that benefits them more than it provides you wih long term satisfaction. These types of outlets are generally either factory direct outlets that make their own mattresses and sell them directly to the public or smaller local sleep shops that sell smaller independent or locally manufactured brands. This article will help you recognize these types of outlets.
I normally suggest enough research to ask better questions and that will help you know when people are giving you factual information or are just selling you marketing stories that have little to do with real quality and value. A mattress is only as good as the materials inside it and the construction methods that are used to make it.
A third option for those who don’t have good quality/value outlets in their area (and surprisingly there are many areas of the country that are dominated by chain stores and have few if any outlets where I would buy a single mattress that they sell) is an online purchase. This involves doing some local testing to know the materials that you prefer and then working with a knowledgeable mattress manufacturer that is skilled at helping you make good choices over the phone based on your local testing and on the type of information (like height/weight/sleeping positions/preferences) that will affect which of the mattresses they make would be your best choice. Many of these also provide the ability to re-arrange the layers of the mattress or to make layer exchanges at a nominal cost if your choices aren’t what you were hoping for. These types of outlets make the purchase of a high quality and value mattress available to those in areas of the country where there is little to no good quality and value mattresses available locally.
post #2 here post #13 here You’ve probably read through some of this material but two of the most important links in the tutorial that I would especially make sure you’ve read are which has more about the different ways to choose a suitable mattress (either locally or online) that is the best “match” for you in terms of “comfort”, firmness, and PPP that can help you assess and minimize the risks of making a choice that doesn’t turn out as well as you hoped for andwhich has more about the most important parts of the “value” of a mattress purchase which can help you make more meaningful quality/value comparisons between mattresses in terms of suitability (how well he will sleep), durability (how long he will sleep well), and the overall value of a mattress compared to your other finalists based on all the parts of your personal value equation that are most important to you (including the price of course and the options you have available after a purchase if your choice doesn’t turn out as well as you hoped for).
While nothing has a 100% success rate … with a local purchase for the majority of people … careful testing using the guidelines in the tutorial rather than just testing for the more subjective “comfort” of a mattress (which often won’t predict how well you will sleep on a mattress or how it will “feel” when you sleep on it at home) and some good guidance from a knowledgeable and experienced retailer or manufacturer will usually result in a mattress choice that is well inside a suitable comfort/support range and will generally be “close enough” so that if any fine tuning is necessary it would be relatively minor and involve different mattress pads, sheets, mattress protectors, or perhaps even a topper if a mattress is too firm (see post #4 here and post #10 here ).
Some good local testing will also give you a much better sense of the many different types of materials and components that are used in mattresses and some reference points about the types of mattresses (see this article) and general firmness levels you tend to prefer which can help you narrow down your choices regardless of whether you end up purchasing locally or online.
Good luck with your reserch!
Phoenix