Overwhelmed in New Mexico

[phoenix]

Hi Nii,

The mattress options in Albuquerque are, indeed, dismal. Not a single salesman at any of the retail places you mention on your Albuquerque list, (except Saachi organics and Sequoia, both in Santa Fe, and both of which only sell VERY expensive organic cotton & latex mattresses – no innersprings.) can tell one anything about the way any mattress is constructed. HiLife and Mor Furniture are both shady operations and NOTHING I’ve bought or friends have bought in either store has lasted even a year.

I would consider both HiLife and Mor Furniture to be “possibilities” and it would certainly take a little more research to be able to make a good choice there because any of the members here that have spent more than about 2 hours on this site would probably know more meaningful information than the most of the sales people in most mainstream stores.

At HiLife their Pure Latex Bliss mattresses all use high quality materials so there would be no issues with durability with any of these that were a suitable match for you in terms of PPP. You can see the specs of the PLB mattresses here. In other words you wouldn’t need a salesperson to tell you what was inside it or the durability of the materials because you would already know. Post #32 here also has some online sources for PLB mattresses that you could use for price comparisons.

At Morfurniture I would only focus on their Sherwood mattresses which would be a lower risk than most mainstream manufacturers because they tend to use higher quality materials in each price range than the larger manufacturers but these would still be more risky if you weren’t able to confirm from the salespeople what was inside any specific mattress you were considering (if they weren’t willing to call the factory) unless you were to contact Sherwood directly to find out more information about any of their mattresses you were considering there.

Joe Knows Sleep and Sleep-n-Aire carry essentially the same selection as the big box mattress stores and salesman at both can’t tell one much about the actual material content of their mattresses beyond what’s on the manufacturer websites.

My previous comments would apply to these as well and I would limit any mattresses you considered at both of these to the manufacturers I listed (which you normally wouldn’t find in big box stores). Once again you would need to do more “leg work” if you were considering any of their mattresses to confirm the quality of the materials.

I don’t shop at Furniture Row/Denver Mattress because of their extreme right-wing ownership and its strong stance against things like fair minimum wage legislation, marriage equality, and affordable health care. Looking at whether ownership is local isn’t enough in extremely poor states like NM. Many of the local businesses cut as many corners and have as many questionable practices as large corporate manufacturers.

It’s unfortunate that you aren’t comfortable shopping at Denver Mattress because they would probably be the best quality/value option in the area and they use good quality materials and are transparent about the materials they use in all of their mattresses. I understand though that principle is a priority over expedience.

Other than these (or any other options that I’m not aware of in the area) … If I was in your shoes I would purchase a mattress online from one of the manufacturers or retailers that are included in the lists in the tutorial post.

Phoenix