Hi mike7,
I wonder how much of my replies you are really reading and I suppose it’s possible to distrust or misread anything and believe that there is simply nobody left in the world that has any interest in helping others or that because they earn an income from their efforts that nothing they say or share should be trusted. That’s not a “skin” I would want to live in and I would wonder what it must be like to live with that kind of worldview. Each person of course has the freedom to choose their own belief system and what kind of information makes sense to them but i certainly don’t share your approach or beliefs.
In my view … it would be unethical for anyone to spend 16 hours a day for 3 years without any possibility of a reward that could allow their family to survive. This is not a hobby although it is a labor of love. To suggest or imply that a business plan or ability to make money from legitimate efforts to help people … especially when the information provided here is self evident and doesn’t need any “recommendations” and has no requirement to “trust” anything or anyone at all … somehow implies bias or agenda when all the evidence of over 22,000 pages on the site shows something else is somewhat surprising to me. That’s a fairly “jaded” approach IMO.
If you were to look at just the posts from today alone you will find examples of people who have found and purchased mattress from local retailers based on the information provided here and made great purchases because they learned how to choose. None of this required anything but the ability to decide for themselves based on the facts, their own personal value equation, and on knowing “how” to choose instead of following someone’s else’s advice on “what” to choose.
You would also have read that I don’t recommend any mattresses at all for anyone (see mattress firmness/comfort levels in post #2 here) or make final choices for anyone (see post #2 here) … and that I limit my efforts to pointing the members here in the direction of retailers or manufacturers that may have better quality and value available based on their own personal value equation and on knowing how to make more informed choices.
The “official” recommendation of the members of this site is something they have earned and they are “among” the best in the industry … but you can also read in the hundreds of lists throughout the forum about many other manufacturers or retailers I think highly of who are not members here … yet. The “official” recommendation is a way of recognizing the manufacturers and retailers who are able and willing to compete with the best in the country, who support the efforts and time it takes to put a site like this together and maintain it, and have also agreed to provide benefits to the members here as a result of their membership.
Once again you are not reading the replies or taking “snippets” out of context. Mattresses.net has a 60 day return policy on their standard mattresses and all it costs is shipping. Many other online manufacturers have good return policies as well. The exception to most online companies return policies is a custom built mattress that doesn’t use their standard layering and is built to be unique requirements of a specific customer. I have also never said that any mattress (including PLB) can be “duplicated” based on ILD’s alone … as a matter of fact quite the opposite (including in my replies to you).
Again this isn’t the case and they don’t get different ILD ratings if the latex is the same type and comes from the same manufacturer. I’ve already answered this exact same question in a previous reply to you but for some reason you don’t seem to have read it.
That would depend on the specifics of the manufacturer or retailer, the criteria of my personal value equation, my knowledge level, and on my own informed “best judgement”. I know that if a manufacturer was familiar with both mattresses and had compared them that the odds of success would be much higher but I don’t see things in “black and white” or absolute terms as much as you appear to do and I also realize that there is no certainty with anything. I would see it as a question of the risk I was willing to take compared to the potential “rewards” and this too would be part of my personal value equation.
In the end … you can either see the information here for what it is and read the replies and links more carefully than you are or you can simply ignore some or all of it and purchase a mattress using any criteria or method of evaluating a purchase that you believe in. That part is up to you but it certainly won’t change the information that I make freely available to anyone who wants to use their own discernment and can use the information here as a way to help them make more informed choices
What you do with this information or which parts of it you trust or don’t is entirely up to you and it’s here for you to use in whatever way you see fit.
Phoenix