Hi HoustonPerson,
I’m sorry to hear that your mattress choice didn’t work out well for you but I would keep in mind that a mattress that causes you pain or discomfort may be a “perfect” mattress for someone else (and vice versa) so your experience would have very little to do with whether the same mattress would be a good choice for anyone else. Each of us is unique in terms of the mattress that is the best “match” for us in terms of PPP (Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and your Personal preferences).
While other people’s comments about the knowledge and service of a particular business can certainly be very helpful … I would always be very cautious about about using other people’s experiences or reviews on a mattress (either positive or negative) or review sites in general as a reliable source of information or guidance about how you will feel on the same mattress or how suitable or how durable a mattress may be for you and in many if not most cases they can be more misleading than helpful because any mattress that would be a perfect choice for one person or even a larger group of people may be completely unsuitable for someone else to sleep on (even if they are in a similar weight range) and reviews in general certainly 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).
“Support” is also often misunderstood because the goal of a “supportive” mattress is to keep the spine and joints in good alignment and this requires the type of contouring support that allows some parts of the body to sink in more and some parts of the body to sink in less and this will vary on an individual basis. There is more about primary or “deep” support and secondary or “surface” support and their relationship to firmness and pressure relief and the “roles” of different layers in a mattress in post #2 here and in post #4 here that may also be helpful in clarifying the difference between “support/alignment” and “comfort/pressure relief” and “feel” and how they interact together.
There are some comments about Astrabeds and some of their sister companies in post #2 here and in post #3 here and a forum search on Astrabeds (you can just click this) will bring up more information about them as well. They have recently introduced a new latex lineup that uses organic Dunlop latex and you can see some comments about them in posts #6 and #7 here).
While they may not be the best “value” choice compared to some of the other latex options that are available … they certainly do use high quality and durable materials (organic Dunlop latex and an organic cotton cover quilted with natural wool) and there are no lower quality materials or “weak links” in their mattresses.
They also have a good 90 day exchange/return policy so if you made the wrong firmness choice you can either rearrange the layers, exchange a layer for a softer or firmer one, or you can donate your mattress and receive a refund so at least you had the foresight to choose a mattress that has a good exchange/return policy so there was little risk in trying it.
Phoenix