I recently ordered a Christeli Madeline (3 months ago). My chiropractor had recommended the brand, but I trusted the Christeli sales person (Mike) to recommend which mattress. He also upsold me on a mattress protector (+$100) and a bed frame/foundation (+$160).
I reviewed this forum extensively before ordering - thanks to Phoenix for doing a great job answering questions and moderating.
Lessons I learned:
The mattress seems to be of good quality. I wish I had ordered the next model higher (Briella or Danieli) as the mattress was a bit too hard and was uncomfortable for the first 3 weeks. When I called to find out my returning options (40 days), they suggested I put the mattress on the floor and walk on it. After that, it was more comfortable, but is still a bit more firm than I’d like.
Pass on the foundation/ bed frame. I was told by my salesperson that the foundation was made for the mattress and that it would work with any standard headboard. And, Mike our salesperson said, if the headboard didn’t fit, just give him a call, and he could have some brackets sent to us. NOT TRUE!!! There is no way to attach any headboard to the bed frame unless you buy an additional $40 bracket. When I called Christeli’s customer service, they refused to make it right in any way and basically called me a liar because their salespeople “are highly trained.” Highly trained at selling me an inferior bed frame that you can get on Amazon for 50% less! The initial customer service person, Pat, was nice, but unable to do anything. When she passed me on to her manager, who didn’t give me his name even though I asked, he was rude and honestly the worst experience of customer service I have ever had. He made me more angry, refused to acknowledge that I had been lied to and lectured me like I was a child.
Do your own research and don’t trust the salespeople. It seems like Christeli has outsourced their sales to an ethically shady group that are more focused on making the sale than service after the sale. Definitely not a wholesome, family-owned company like they claim to be on the web. Perhaps the manufacturing facility is, but not the sales team.
I hope my experience can help you to make an educated buying decision.
If any of you know where to find those brackets that we need to make this foundation work with the headboard, I’d greatly appreciate any recommendations. My husband was looking at some on Amazon for $18. I will go to great lengths to avoid buying these brackets from Christeli on principle, since they misrepresented the situation to me…
Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you ended up deciding and for sharing your experience as well … I appreciate it.
You certainly chose a good quality/value mattress but I’m sorry to hear about the rest of your experience which is certainly unfortunate.
Have you considered exchanging your mattress for a softer one or did you end up keeping the one you have past the trial period. Hopefully you are still in the time window that you can exchange it if you wish to.
Any foam mattress with a polyfoam support core will generally do best with a firm, flat, and evenly supportive support surface underneath it that has minimal to no flex under the mattress and for larger sizes with at least one center support beam that has good support to the floor to prevent any sagging in the middle of the mattress. The components (bedframe and foundation or platform bed) need to be strong and durable enough to support the weight of the mattress and the people sleeping on it without some of the parts bending, sagging, shifting, or breaking with extended use. The support surface under the mattress (which may be slats or a steel or wire grid) should have enough surface area to prevent the mattress from sagging through any gaps or spaces in the support surface over time but still allow some airflow under the mattress. If a foundation has a slatted surface then I would suggest that the gaps between any slats are no more than about 5" (with 1 x 3 slats) although less than 4" would be better yet.
I would also be somewhat cautious with these type of lower cost wire grid platform foundations (see post #10 here). While they may be OK over the short term or even the medium term with a mattress that has a firmer polyfoam support core … the support surface area isn’t as large as support systems that have wooden slats so there would be some additional risk of the mattress sagging into the gaps between the wires over the longer term. There are a fairly large number of critical reviews that talk about the frame or legs bending and that indicate that the quality and strength of the steel and the foundation itself isn’t as high as it could be and there are also a percentage of them that appear to develop squeaking issues over time that may be difficult to locate and solve.
There is more information about support systems (bedframes and foundations or platform beds) that are generally suitable for different types of mattresses and some examples of each of them in post #1 here and some of the information and comments in this topic (which would apply to any foam mattress) may be helpful as well.
While accusations such as “lieing” are somewhat strong and often involve misunderstandings on a phone call or inexperience rather than intentional lies … I’m certainly disappointed to hear about the level of customer service you experienced and I hope that your experience was more of an exception than the rule.
A search on headboard brackets on the Walmart website will bring up several options that should work for you and if for any reason they have a great return policy that allows you to return them for a refund.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your experience.
Phoenix,
Thank you for the detailed and helpful reply. I always learn something from you.
I wanted to provide an update.
Christeli contacted me over the weekend. Vincent was very kind and responsive to our concerns. It sounds like the person I was dealing with there had recently lost a family member. I was not available to speak with the new contact there directly, but my husband did give Vincent’s service and attitude high marks.
They took care of the issue. My headboard now attaches to the foundation I had purchased from Christeli, and I am happy to close this open loop in my life.
From your information, perhaps this foundation is higher quality than others out there. I can’t personally attest to that as I didn’t research other options.
Thank you for providing an objective source of information on mattresses.
Thanks for taking the time to share an update so that the other members that read your original post can see that your previous experience really was an anomaly. Based on my experience and conversations with them (and with Vincent) and feedback from other members here it certainly wasn’t their “normal” level of customer service and at least the reasons behind your experience were understandable.