I’ve been reading a bit here on the forum and this place seems like it rocks! I’ve been mattress hunting for about a week now only only today learned that latex mattresses existed. I’ve layed on one today a sleep country and really think latex is for me!
Many of the posts here talk about getting the best deal and quality from smaller local manufactures and I was wondering if there is anywhere good out my way. I live outside Vancouver BC Canada in a town called Surrey.
Thanks for any help with this… and I’ll keep reading the forum about latex.
I am having a little hard time using the forum as a newbie. I think I have it figured out a little now. I am looking to purchase 2 queen mattresses, one for my 92 year old Mother, a side sleeper, 150 pounds. One for my husband and myself, I am thinking a straight latex mattress and boxspring. I saw the Ironman the other day but didn’t like the price. Our son just purchased a 6 to 8 inch latex mattress in Surry 3 months ago for a steal price as the place was closing I think he said. I need to get more information from him on that.
I have been looking at the Brick, Sears and a couple of smaller furniture stores for mattresses in our small city of Powell River. If your brother lives in Surrey than perhaps you know where Powell River is? I feel better that you have an idea of where we live as my other thought was Sleep Country in Courtenay on Vancouver Island. The problem of going out of town is that it isn’t that easy to get my Mom to travel out of town now, meaning she wouldn’t be able to lie down on an out of town mattress. We have a choice in our city of Sealy, Simmons, Kingsdown, Stearns & Foster, Springwall - apparently not the quality they used to make, Sears-o-pedic to name a few.
I still need to finish reading some of your other posts I found for the Vancouver area, sorry I hadn’t found them before e-mailing you. Of course shopping out of town creates another problem for us and that is shipping and getting rid of our current mattresses. If you live on the Island Sleep Country does all that for you. Any thoughts on all of this would be great.
I do know where Powell River yes although I’ve never been there. I also have another brother in Courtenay.
Post #1 here and the information it links to is always the best place to start. It will help you sort through all the information on the site and has the guidelines and a step by step approach that can greatly improve your odds of making the best possible choices.
In looking at the options available in Powell River itself … there doesn’t seem to be any that I would seriously consider. As you probably know from the guidelines linked in the previous post … I generally suggest to avoid major brands, chain stores or mass market outlets where the level of knowledge and experience about mattresses tends to be very low, and any mattress where you are not able to find out the detailed information about what is in it. This may well exclude every mattress available in Powell River.
The local retailers that seem to be available there and my comments about them include …
http://www.homefurniture.ca/en/index/mattresses.htm Carry Sealy, Stearns & Foster, Serta, Springwall, King Koil, and Simmons all of which are unlikely to provide all the details you would need about their mattresses to make any meaningful assessments. This may be possible on a “mattress by mattress” basis and the odds of getting this information are probably best with Springwall … and possibly some of the King Koil mattresses.
http://www.westcoastfurniture.ca/en/mattresses.html they carry Serta, and 3 brands made by Restwell in Vancouver which are Spring Air, Ironman, and Novo. I would certainly ignore the Serta and only consider the other 3 if they are able to give you the specific details of all the layers in the matresses (and they don’t have this information handy and its not on their spec sheets so they would need to call Restwell to find this out and it’s quite likely that they will not be able to get it)
http://www.sears.ca/ Carry major brands except they have one latex hybrid on the floor made by Zedbed (also made under license in Vancouver). They told me they don’t have a spec sheet so it’s probable that you may not be able to find out the details of this mattress either (they first tried to tell me it’s all latex which it isn’t) although it may be better value than a major brand.
If you did choose to shop in Powell River the odds are very high that you would be forced to make a blind purchase where there would be no way for you to know the real quality or value of the mattresses you were looking at and would be completely dependent on the marketing information provided by sales people who didn’t know either.
The list of better options in the Vancouver area are earlier in this thread although that’s quite a drive from Powell River. Post #2 here includes a good option in Courtenay and if you do decide to travel anyway a ferry trip to the Island may be the best direction to go.
If you shop locally for either you or your mom then you would need to decide whether making a “blind” purchase where you can’t really know the quality or value of what you are buying would be worth the tradeoff vs traveling. If you do decide to go to Courtenay it may be worth buying a mattress for you and then letting your mom test it to see is something similar would be suitable for her as well (and this would also give you a reference point if another mattress at the same place was a better option.
You would probably need to talk to each retailer you deal with (and you could do this on the phone ahead of time so you can know before you go there) about whether or how they would ship to Powell River and whether they offer the ability to remove your old mattress and the costs involved in either service. If they deliver but don’t remove your old mattress then of course you would be dependent on local businesses to do this for you if you were not able to take it to a landfill on your own.
I will continue working with the information you have supplied. Our suppliers in Powell River try to be as helpful as they can be, they all offer pretty good customer service, small city helpfulness. It is really hard to shop out of our city as in this lower economy time everyone depends upon each other for support. I did investigate the foam ZBed at Sears as I was interested in it but also found it not to be pure latex. Home Furniture is a very long time business with great owner who would do anything for you to get information. West Coast Furniture is also pretty good at trying to sell a great product. Repeat sales in a small city are very important to small business owners. We need a factory direct manufacturer to come in.
I think your option of buying a bed for ourselves first and letting my Mom try it would be a great idea, will probably proceed down that lane.
Part of the difficulty here is that the manufacturers themselves will often refuse to give their retailers this information which puts them in a very difficult position and caught in between wanting to provide it to their customers but not having access to the information themselves because of the brands they have on the floor. This can be just as frustrating to some retailers as it is to a consumer and sometimes the only option is to make some changes to the brands they carry.
I hope you have a chance to let us know how successful you (or they) are in finding out the information you need.
