Hi Ginger,
In the description for Virginia Furniture mart I mentioned that they were “as open about their mattresses as their supplier allowed them to be”. In these cases … the information they can provide you is limited to the information they are given by the manufacturer of the specific mattress you are interested in. The Paramount website is not nearly detailed enough about their specific models to provide you with the information you need. This means that you would need to do a little more research on the retailer before considering any of the Paramount mattresses they carry.
While I don’t know of any retailer who would have the time to “list” all the more detailed specs of many of the mattresses that they carry unless they already have this information readily available … they would certainly be able to tell you if the information you would need is available to them and if it is … that they were willing to find it out as part of their customer service (and not just direct you to the manufacturers website which doesn’t have it anyway). So in these cases the questions to ask on the phone and which need a specific answer would be something along the lines of …
“If I come in and test any of your Paramount mattresses and like one of them … can you confirm that you would be able to get all the specs of the mattress including layering and the density of any polyfoam or memory foam in the mattress that isn’t listed on either their website or yours?”
If they say YES … then I would then repeat the question in a different way to confirm this because many retailers aren’t used to being asked these types of questions or dealing with a more educated consumer and will tend to answer yes when in fact all they have access to is layering information or spec sheets which don’t include foam density. So if their answer to the first question is yes but you sense that they are more focused on getting you into the store than on making sure they have access to the information you would need … then I would ask again along the lines of …
"So just to confirm what you said … you will call Paramount and you already know and have confirmed that they will provide you with this specific information including foam density?
If they can do this and confirm that they know for sure that they can get the specific information you need and give you a clear sense they understand the importance of this information for a more educated consumer, then this would put them in the group of “better retailers”. If this information is also easily available to them through their channels with Paramount, it would also put Paramount in the group of " more transparent manufacturers" and I would then pay them a visit to look at the Paramount mattresses that they carry. In some cases the availability of this information depends on who the retailer normally deals with at the manufacturer level. If they are dealing with a typical sales rep … then this information may not be easily available to them. If they are dealing with someone in the company that is more knowledgeable or part of the ownership of the factory … then this information may be easier for them to find out or even part of what they normally do anyway.
If either Paramount doesn’t supply this information about the mattresses you are looking at or if they do but the retailer is hesitant to go the extra mile to find out … then you would be in a position that if you did like the mattress you would have to buy it on “faith” that the materials were good quality or that the value of the mattress was better than others that had a similar style or materials.
While I don’t recommend this type of “blind” purchase because you have no way of knowing what the quality of the materials in your mattress really are or any way to make meaningful comparisons … if I was forced to make a choice between a “blind” purchase from Paramount and a “blind” purchase from a major manufacturer, I would tend go with Paramount although with all the choices available … I would not want to be facing this type of “blind” choice in the first place. The reason I would choose them is that they fit the “profile” of a manufacturer where the odds are higher that their mattresses are better than average quality and value but higher odds doesn’t always translate into actual experience or to specific mattresses that they make.
So this is the type of research I would be doing with the “possibilities” that I often list in various areas to find out which of them are willing to go the extra mile and understand the importance of finding out the type of information you are looking for (or at least confirming that they can) before paying them a visit.
There are enough of these who will that I would not tend to look at mattresses or visit retailers where the staff wasn’t willing to the extra mile and find out this information unless there were no other options available in the area and even here my next “least risky” choice would likely be to deal with an online manufacturer or travel further to visit a retailer or manufacturer who made this type of information easily accessible. This is exactly why I normally suggest first doing some research on the phone to find out which are the better outlets or the specific mattresses where this information is readily available from a particular retailer before deciding where to visit. If you go there first without knowing this … the odds are good that you may be wasting your time unless you are comfortable with a “blind” purchase" where you don’t know and can’t find out the quality and value of what you are buying.
Phoenix