Hi Matt,
It’s unfortunate that you don’t appear to have read much of my replies to you or the links that they contain.
The goal of this site is to give people enough information that they can replace hindsight with foresight and better understand all the factors and tradeoffs that can go into buying a mattress and are the most important parts of your personal value equation.
Had you read most of the information you would also have realized that all online purchases have risk involved and that comfort and support can only be assessed on an individual basis based on experience. A mattress that is very similar to another for 9 out of 10 people may also feel different for the 10th because there are many objective, subjective, and intangible factors involved in how a mattress feels and performs for each person.
You would also have been in a better position to assess the risk and your own risk tolerance with any online purchase and could have made a choice where you had options for customizing the mattress after a purchase. These are all dealt with extensively in hundreds and perhaps thousand of posts on the site.
Finally you would also have realized that assessing the materials in a mattress are about value, quality, and durability and have nothing to do with the suitability of a mattress design because you can’t feel the quality of the materials when you lie on a mattress. Like you I believe that assessing the suitability of a mattress purchase based on the materials alone without taking the suitability of a design into account makes absolutely no sense and had you read the information I provided about this very topic (including in the “read first” post I link for everyone) you would have realized that I don’t recommend buying any mattress based on the quality or value of the materials alone.
There are many people who are very happy with their online choice and others that may not be. There are also many people who are happy with their local purchase and others that aren’t as well. Much of this depends on the quality of their local testing on the mattress they purchase or on a mattress that is similar to an online choice they are considering and on the options they have available after a purchase. All of this is dealt with extensively on the site. The showroom feel" of a mattress has very low odds of predicting how a mattress will feel and perform when you actually sleep on it and in most cases testing a mattress based on showroom feel alone has lower odds of success than random chance alone (see this study). This is why I provide guidelines for testing a mattress a little more carefully and objectively so that the odds of success are higher (although they will never be foolproof). There are always exceptions, risk, and tradeoffs with any purchase and helping people to evaluate these ahead of time rather than after the fact is one of the main goals of the site.
Had you read even a small portion of the site you would also realize that I believe that reviews are among the worst ways to choose a mattress (see post #13 here). You would also have realized that the site is not affiliated with any of the manufacturing members that are listed or any of the hundreds of retail stores or local manufacturers that are mentioned or listed in dozens of lists in the forum as better options or possibilities in almost every area of the US and Canada of which Dreamfoam is just one.
Perhaps the real lesson here is to do the research into all the many factors, tradeoffs, and risks involved in any mattress purchase (local or online) before you order a mattress rather than afterwards and to realize that quality, value, and suitability are all equally important parts of any mattress purchase decision and that any of them by themselves makes little sense.
Phoenix