Dear Phoenix,
I just stumbled upon your site a couple days ago and have not been able to keep from reading posts or articles on your site every time I am on the computer. I am blown away by your industry knowledge and commitment to thoroughly responding to your members’ posts. I wish I had found The Mattress Underground a couple years ago before my wife and I purchased our first Cal king mattress together! Needless to say, we have had nothing but problems with our big-brand innerspring mattresses purchased from a major chain mattress retailer here in the Los Angeles area.
Our first mattress was a Aireloom “Periwinkle” hybrid mattress with bamboo ticking, a medium-firm pillow top mattress from Sit n Sleep. After some negotiating, we paid about $1600 for the set, even though the store price was $2400. So, I felt we got a great deal and we were very happy with the feel of our mattress…for a few months. We soon noticed the typical king bed wear pattern - we could feel a very large hump developing down the middle of our bed (we both had only slept on queen-size beds before this). We then started noticing some significant sagging in the hip area of the mattress after about a year and called Sit n Sleep for an inspection. The depression was only 1-1/4". I knew at the rate we were going, it would not be long before we hit the 1-1/2" mark, and called for a second inspection a few months later. We had to pay $60 for the inspection, but I was willing to do anything to get rid of this mattress, so an extra $60 did not seem like a big deal. This time it did hit the mark, and a couple weeks later we received our letter in the mail from Sit n Sleep to come in and pick out another mattress, and they credited us for the value of our decrepit Periwinkle.
After doing some of my own (obviously poor) research at some other Sit n Sleep locations, pouring through some other mattress advice websites, and even visiting a different mattress store while on a business trip to Denver, I was CONVINCED we needed a Simmons Beautyrest Black mattress, especially because the “Transflection” technology would make sure our mattress was already broken-in when we got it. Their salespeople universally hailed this as one of their best mattresses. Boy, was I a sucker.
I shelled out an additional $1,200 for a Beautyrest Black “Verona” set (also known as the “Mariella” on the old beautyrestblack.com site), and thought we got an even better deal after some even tougher negotiating this time at about $2600 for a mattress set that sold in their store for $3700 (and at some on-line mattress discount sites as well). Fewer than 10 months later, “Transflection” is BS, the mattress is as bad as or worse than our Aireloom was, I sleep really hot on it, we have another hump running down the middle of our bed, as well as deep, visible depressions in the hip area, and we now have scheduled another mattress inspection to rid ourselves of this disappointment, as well.
Having been through the process already, I am confident our mattress will fail the next inspection and we will soon be replacing it. Unfortunately, we will be at the mercy of the selection of mattresses at Sit n Sleep, as they are in to us for $2600.
My wife and I will go back to Sit n Sleep armed with our new knowledge from The Mattress Underground and try some different beds…If I could get them to write me a check for $2600, I would race over to Flexus, SelectaBed, LatexPedic, or Foam Sweet Foam. Seeing as getting a refund is highly unlikely, we will try to find a few suitable options at Sit n Sleep, and hopefully you will have a recommendation for us when we post them (along with our personal stats and sleep preferences) for you!
Thank you for such a great resource!
I’d come to him with my different concerns, and he took me step by step through each mattress’ pros/cons. All in all, I was there for about two hours. I was REALLY tempted to go with their Urban Organics line (100% organic natural sheeps wool, latex, and organic cotton), as that particular talalay felt very supportive and cool. But, I do prefer a fairly plush comfort layer, and while I could always add a topper, I’d preferred something that came in one “package” so to speak. It was definitely close, but in the end, the Sherwood line edged out the Organics line. Throughout the process though, every question I could think of was answered. WONDERFUL experience. With the Sherwood (which, consequently, used to be the Dr. Breus line…until they recently dropped him and redesigned a bunch of product, priced it lower, and used some new technologies, according to the sales rep), I found that perfect blend of comfort layer plushness that I enjoy, and enough support underneath. He was even nice enough to go through and look at my side sleeping position for each mattress, giving me (to the best of his abilities) his view of which ones kept me in the most “aligned” position, like you’d mentioned in some of your tutorials. When it was all said and done, the bed I’d found the most comfortable was the one that he said was engineered for the “bigger than average” (yes, I’m a bit of a fatty haha) person, even though it cost less than the plush version of the same line. It’s funny, because when I first walked in, he’d given his endorsement of the bed, and after all of the different trials, it was the one I’d picked.