Online Mattress Ease

[phoenix]

Hi EKLarsen12,

Thanks for the links to other reads as well as links to some dealers around the Minneapolis area. I checked out a few, and it seems like the prices are kinda steep.

I would keep in mind that while the price of a mattress is certainly an important part of the “value” of a mattress purchase … there are many other parts to “value” as well and unfortunately there isn’t a “formula” that can be used to assess or “calculate” value because there are so many different variables and criteria involved that are more or less important to different people that may be very different from someone else. I don’t think that the cost of mattresses in the Minneapolis area are any more or less (at least in general terms) than other areas of the country and there are certainly some good quality/value mattresses available in the area.

As I mentioned earlier I’m interested in trying out a foam mattress, but not having a return policy seems like a risky move for someone who isn’t sure he’ll like how I sleep on a foam mattress. I’ve tried laying on the beds, but laying on them and how I sleep are different things, of course, so I’ll have to cross that bridge when I do.

If you test a mattress very carefully and “objectively” (and hopefully using the testing guidelines in the tutorial) and you are testing for more than the more subjective “comfort” or the “showroom feel” of a mattress then in “most” cases and for “most” people it would end up being “close enough” to your actual sleeping experience that only relatively minor find tuning may be necessary if anything is necessary at all (see post #4 here). Of course nothing is infallible and there will always be a smaller percentage of people that have have some history of having difficulty in finding a mattress that “works” or have more challenging circumstances (such as health or back issues or an unusual body type) where the odds of making a choice that doesn’t turn out as well as you hoped for would be higher and in these cases the return or exchange policy can be a much more important part of the value of a mattress purchase. I would also keep in mind that return/exchange policies are built into the the price of a mattress and increase the cost and the larger percentage of people that don’t return or exchange a mattress are the ones that pay for the smaller percentage of people that do.

Anyways, I was looking at one more online mattress company: BedInABox.com.
They have a great return policy (120 day trial, minimum 60 days trial then free return), and some good options. They have two different “feels,” PacBamboo (has bamboo topper that lends the feel of a more traditional mattress), and Tencel (“feels” more like a firm memory foam mattress, so I’d imagine the topper is softer). Both mattresses have 3" of 3lb gel memory foam on top of 8" of 2.4lb support foam. The support form is very dense indeed, above and beyond the typical 1.8lb, and I think that the gel memory foam sounds typical. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience on this company? Phoenix?

You can see my comments about Bedinabox in post #2 here. I would be very cautious with any mattress that uses more than “about an inch or so” of 3 lb memory foam which is a lower quality and less durable material that don’t meet the minimum foam quality/durability guidelines here and I would consider this to be a weak link in their mattresses which I would avoid.

Phoenix