I’m buying a mattress set for my soon-to-be-wife and me and I’m trying to apply what I’ve learned so far from this site. We checked out a local manufacturer here in Houston (Houston Mattress Factory - http://www.houstonmattress.com/). We found a mattress we like and believe it’ll be much more durable that a name brand at the same price. My concern though is with the warranty. It seems like a great warranty and all, but I’m worried about what would happen if we moved to another part of the country. Since it’s a locally owned business, we’d somehow have to get the mattress all the way back to Houston if there was ever an issue. I can imagine that would cost quite a bit of money.
Is this a concern others have had? Is there a solution?
Thanks!
Bruce
Hi chiefwigie,
The most important “warranty” or assurance you can have when you are buying a mattress is knowing the materials that are in it. This is the only real way to know how long a mattress will last and maintain it’s comfort and support. Because warranties don’t cover the most common reasons that people need to buy a new mattress which is loss of comfort and support from components wearing out or foam softening … they have little to nothing to do with how long a mattress will last. If a mattress softens too much for you to sleep on in the first 90 days for example (when foam goes through a more rapid initial softening) … no matter how long the mattress warranty may be it won’t be covered. In other words, in most cases (at least with the larger manufacturers and mass market stores) … warranties are mostly a marketing tool and customers are somewhat intentionally led to believe that a warranty is connected to how long a mattress will last. Even if the materials in a mattress do develop deep enough body impressions when there is no weight on the mattress which is far less common, the warranty exclusions such as minimum impression depth (usually 1.5" or more but occasionally less) or a tiny stain or watermark on a mattress will void the warranty.
Having said that … local manufacturers will normally take warranty claims far more seriously because they build their business on reputation rather than volume or marketing so if a customer is unhappy … they will usually lean towards the customer much more than the major brands … even when the issues with the mattress doesn’t meet the actual criteria of a warranty claim. In the case of the Houston Mattress warranty (which you can see here), they take this one step further which is that the customer themselves decides if they are still happy with their mattress during the warranty period and if they aren’t … they will fix it. No exclusions and no hoops to jump through. Quite frankly … its perhaps the best warranty I’ve seen in the industry. They can do this and still have such a low return rate because like most better local or independent manufacturers, they use high quality materials which is the secret for both durability, maintaining comfort and support in a mattress, and for low manufacturer return rates.
On the off chance though that you are one of the few that are unhappy with an issue that develops during the warranty period … and they can’t fix it over the phone or by email … then you would generally be responsible for the cost of round trip shipping to have the mattress fixed. While this may still be better than the high odds of having a claim denied completely with a larger manufacturer, if you are in another city then there would be costs involved. I would expect though that they would likely help you to find the best possible shipping method if you were one of the very few that needed to return the mattress for repair. They could also give you more specific information about what they would normally do in this case.
Overall though … a mattress warranty is of far less importance (in the case of warranties with typical exclusions or from larger manufacturers) than knowing the materials in the mattress and for those few instances where actual manufacturing defects lead to a warranty claim … they will tend to show up early in the life of the mattress.
Phoenix