All of the below stores I visited are in the suburb of Henrietta and I was only looking at latex mattresses.
Armed with my new information from this website I set out to find out what mattresses fit me the best, and more importantly what company would work with me and ultimately give me the best service.
The Good…City Mattress and Jamestown Mattress
- JM…clear winner here, more to follow below
- CM…very professional store and salesman. Answered all my questions and if he didn’t know the answer, was willing to look it up for me, even though some of his answers were incorrect. Such as, companies don’t make flipable mattresses anymore because the “foundations are different these days and the mattress are constructed of higher grade materials”. Hmmmmm…. I let him slide because he was professional and treated me with the same respect.
All their latex is a 55/45 natural/synthetic Talalay blend. Their top of line latex (Prana) is extremely plushy and comes in various thicknesses (they all have a 6" latex support layer and their comfort layers get thicker as you move up the price scale). In addition they all have 3" of poly on top and it’s advertised as “high density”. I inquired to the pound rating of this poly and he didn’t know, but was willing to look it up if I really wanted to know. Unfortunately these mattresses are extremely expensive and way out of my limits of spending…$6000 to $12000!!!
The Bad…Sleep City
I couldn’t even intelligently describe their latex mattress because no one came over to me, which lead me to believe that perhaps this is how their customer service would be after the sale. I was there for 15 minutes and read some of their literature, sat on their beds, laid down (seemed ok), read some more and no one acknowledged I was there. I saw their prices (way to high) and just got up and left. Not good in my opinion.
The Ugly…very ugly…Metro Mattress
Words can’t even begin to describe the level of unprofessionalism I experienced while in there. These “salesmen”, and I use this term very loosely, were sophomoric, rude, ill-informed and uninformed about the product they were selling. They asked personal questions unrelated to mattresses and were obsessed about my wife (who wasn’t there). They berated me with questions about her (that I ignored) and at one point asked me “does your wife like it hard or soft”, and he knew what he was implying because the other 2 morons giggled like 10-year-old boys. They spouted information about their latex that was told to them from their sales rep and NOT based on their own experiences or hands on knowledge. They used strong arm tactics whenever I questioned what they threw around as perceived truth to intimidate me and had no documentation to validate their claims, such as their Talalay mattress is the “best in the industry because they wash it more than any other Talalay manufactured product” (oh really???) and “we source all of our latex from the best place in the world…Italy” I don’t know if this is true, but I thought Sri Lanka was the epicenter of sourcing rubber. This all sounds too crazy I know, and I still can’t believe it happened, but it is all true. I talked with a customer service agent on their website and informed them of what happened. I’m sure Metro Mattress is a fine company, but this one location has completely turned me off on any of their products. STAY AWAY FROM THIS PARTICULAR LOCATION!
Through the years, I have determined that I am the exception to the rule when it comes to comparison shopping. Sales people in any industry and any store know instantly what kind of customer they are dealing with based on how you ask and answer questions. They have a PHD in human behavior just from dealing with the general public. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the majority of the general public is uninformed, does not comparison shop and they just want to slap money on the counter and walk out the door with a product, and I believe this is how this one particular Metro Mattress operates. Based on the fact that you are on this website I’m guessing you are the exception to the rule as well and you can arm yourself with invaluable mattress knowledge from here and flip the script on the mattress companies and find out which sales people and companies are worth YOUR time just by how they answer YOUR questions.
Now, back to the good…the very good…Jamestown Mattress.
Jamestown Mattress is the polar opposite of Metro Mattress. The salesman was polite, courteous, professional and answered all of my questions to the best of his ability. Although some of his answers were suspect too, such as when I inquired about their fire-retardant layer, he replied “I’m not sure what it is, it’s something they put in the mattresses”, but I let him slide because of his professionalism and how transparent they are with their materials on their website. All of their latex products are 100% natural latex with varying degrees of firmness and price. Their top of the line, Nature’s Cloud Euro Top, felt good, relieved pressure, gave support and was generally comfortable for the 5/10 minutes I laid on it, which is hardly enough time I know, but overall I was impressed with everything I had seen and witnessed about the company thus far and plus they are “local”. They are very forthright about their materials and are more than willing to show you and talk about those layers. I wanted to explore JM in more depth.
So, I decided to email their factory directly to see if I could open up a line of communication with them and work on the price and go over the basics of the mattress. Based on my local experiences I had determined that I was either going to purchase factory direct locally or on line, with a heavy lean toward local. Jim Pullan (owner) emailed me back and was very accommodating with the price and the specs, he was professional, courteous and truly wanted to work with me and win our business. He succeeded.
We hope to make a trip down to Jamestown and talk face to face with Jim in the near future to put a face with a name, talk over the specifics of our mattress and hopefully he can give some recommendations on firmness of the layers etc.
More to follow in the future…