Hi elw428,
Your husband is not much different from the majority of consumers that have great difficulty buying something as important as a mattress online and the large majority of mattress purchases are made locally. This is just part of each person’s personal value equation and there is certainly no “better or worse” in this. This of course means that the “best local value” is the “best” value for you.
There are no reviews of the Bella Sera on the forum although there are a few mentions of them that a forum search on Bella Sera (you can just click this) will bring up. I pay little attention to reviews though because the quality and value of a mattress depends on it’s suitablity for you (not someone else) and on the quality of the specific materials that are inside it (which is rarely mentioned in reviews). While reviews can certainly provide some insights about the knowledge or service of a business, they say little to nothing about the quality, value, or suitability of a mattress and reading reviews is among the worst ways to choose a mattress. You can read more about reviews in post #13 here.
There are many mentions of Savvy Rest on the forum and they tend to have a common theme which is “good quality but not such great value” and Green Sleep would be similar.
If you are shopping for a mattress locally … then the knowledge and experience of the retailer along with your ability to test the mattress objectively and carefully for PPP and knowing the type and quality of the materials is all you need to make an informed decision and find the best possible quality and value that is available locally. What other people may think of the mattress that is "perfect’ for you and that uses high quality materials with no weak links is not particularly meaningful.
You are looking at some good quality options in the Bella Sera, the Green Sleep, and Savvy Rest (and others) that use similar designs and materials (layered Dunlop latex mattresses that can be customized before and/or after a purchase) and the Haiku which uses talalay. The Haiku appears to use 100% natural Talalay which is also very high quality and more costly form of latex than 100% natural Dunlop although I would want to confirm that it is actually 100% natural because many of the Ecosleep mattresses (Ecosleep is the manufacturer) use blended Talalay. Testing for PPP is of course important but there are also some clear value differences between them and I would make careful value comparisons so that you don’t get swept away about a “story” about why one mattress may be so much more than another when the materials they use are similar type or quality and you don’t really feel much difference between them that would justify a much higher price. You have some good local value available if you make some good apples to apples comparisons in terms of PPP, suitability, and value.
The name of the manufacturer on the label doesn’t change the quality of the materials or how well you sleep on them but it may change the prices you pay for very similar mattresses.
Latex in all its forms is a high a quality product … no matter who puts it inside the cover … although of course the quality of the cover and the quilting materials used and how they affect the feel and performance of the mattress are also part of the value of the mattress.
Phoenix