He was remarking that a box spring is there to provide certain things and that using another mattress instead of a box spring might not provide those benefits.
> I don't really understand why someone would buy one of their mattresses that you can't test out at a store
As someone who bought a mattress online:
1. You don't have to go to a store, which makes it much more convenient to buy.
2. If you don't like it, you can return it for a full refund, so there's no possibility of wasting money on a mattress you don't like.
>...for me, even the boxspring beats the mattress in terms of "this is so large how the heck am I going to get it from point A to point B".
Eight years ago, I moved into an apartment with a very narrow staircase with a 90 degree bend in it. I purchased a new mattress, and couldn't fit the boxspring in it. The delivery guys took the boxspring back, and got me a boxspring that comes in two pieces, called a "split boxspring". It's basically two twin boxsprings that you put side by side. You can see one here: http://www.raymourflanigan.com/beautyrest-recharge-high-prof...
You don't notice anything different when you're on the bed. I've kept the boxspring through various moves, and I'll never buy a non-split one again. Moving the two pieces is so much easier; they're not unwieldy or heavy at all.
Never new mattresses were such a huge market with so much passion and crazy prices!
I used to suffer from (mild) back pain; I have been sleeping in a hammock for over 2 years now and couldn't be happier. No more back pain; lots of space saved; minuscule cost (under $60 all things considered).
> It's really hard to know what's a good price for a mattress.
I don't understand this at all. You can Google and have all the prices right at hand, so comparison shopping by number isn't hard.
You can go to a mattress store and lay on a handful of mattresses and figure out pretty quickly what you like - is the pillow top or foam too soft? Do the coils poke too hard? Too firm? Too heavy for you to move when you need to do the sheets? - You admitted to doing this yourself.
I could never see myself buying a mattress from a company like Casper personally. Returning something like a mattress because you don't like it has got to be a level of hassle that I can't even begin to imagine being worth it, vs just making sure you bought one that you're comfortable with in the first place.
Sure, I get that. I was just wondering whether the extra space is worth having to deal with a less solid professional finishing, where esthetics are less of a concern than support of your body. Mattresses are pretty important for your sleep and therefore your physical and mental health. I am not trying to have a discussion about how you spend your time though, I am sorry if it came across that way.
> Said another way, none of us need to buy mattresses often enough that we are mattress-buying-experts, so we're chumps easily taken advantage of.
But there are people who do buy them often enough - hotels! I like to find a Marriott/Hilton/Hyatt/IHG standard mattress and it should be good enough. Ask a hotel manager to hook you up, should only be $250 to $500 at most for a King.
> So I did some research. It turns out that the mattress industry is a racket. The markups are ludicrous; almost every mattress on the market costs, at most, a few hundred dollars to make.
Isn't this just a result of economies of scale?
Everything becomes cheap, so if you try to buy something expensive you don't necessarily get higher quality. Most likely you'll get ripped off, OR buy something artisanal which means lower consistency (maybe also quality).
That said: the psychology of it is probably that you sleep better in an expensive bed -- even if the only difference is the cost :)
> Additionally, American furniture companies that make custom beds would not make larger-than-standard mattresses as they only cut down from existing models.
"But buying mattresses shouldn’t be fun. It should be work, something you do once or twice in your life and forget about after you’ve gotten over the frustration of getting the mattress into your bedroom."
But ignores the one of the key features all these new-fangled mattresses have which is 100 nights to try it free. If you're in the market for a mattress right now, there is zero reason not to take one of the offers to test out the bed. Keep shopping around and trying beds locally, but between Casper, T&N, Leesa, Noomi, etc... you can effectively have brand new mattresses for the next year and pick the one you like best or revert back to a traditional mattress if they don't suit you.
We don't know if he bought a mattress or not. I did. Years ago. And the fact that people online don't like Casper is neither here nor there. It's fine. It's a mattress. It's better than a spring mattress.
I merely brought it up because I used Affirm to purchase it because that was the option given to me by Casper for their "pay in X in Y months" option.
> My suspicion is that the large unwieldy-mess of the mattress suppresses ability for the customer to return
I have. I bought a Casper bedframe and I didn't like the height of the bedframe, so I opted to return it. Casper sent some guys from GOT-JUNK to pick it up from my apartment and refunded me. No haggling on the phone either
Yes, it is. The major mattress stores each have their own custom SKUs to defeat comparison.
> You can go to a mattress store and lay on a handful of mattresses and figure out pretty quickly what you like
To some extent, but there's a wear-in period on a new mattress. It takes my body a few days to a few weeks to get used to any new mattress; trying to figure out how that's going to go from a few minutes in a store isn't super effective.
Price is probably a factor. Mattresses are expensive, making it more worth to screw people over with them, and making it worse for the person who got screwed.
> how are you really going to judge a mattress by lying on it for a few minutes?
When we purchased our mattress ( a Vi-Spring ) the store only accepted our order after we had lain on a matching configuration in-store for 20 mins. Or was it 30?
If felt odd lying in the middle of a shop but apparently it was the only way to enable the softness-exchange warranty. We could switch up or down one softness grade but had to find the starting grade like that.
>>a bizarre fascination with mattresses. In my home-country (and I think many other countries) most people grew up sleeping on thin cotton-filled mattresses
Ya think that when 1/3rd of your time is spent (or roughly should be spent) on a mattress the quality should matter??? Not to mention back problems from not sleeping correctly or on the right position.
So, yeah USA is 200% correct in debating mattresses, just as HN crowd would be about debating about chairs, tables and keyboards.
Science moves on, so maybe "cotton-filled mattresses" aren't the best anymore. Personally I can attest that homemade sheep wool mattresses clump together, I can't see cotton do any better. $1000 is NOTHING to get a better nights sleep, Americans spend a lot of money for fancy coffees, just to start
> Was my mattress so cheaply-made that the manufacturer could afford to give them away?
Shipping is expensive, especially for something as heavy and bulky as an uncompressed foam mattress. Among other things, I have a free stroller (sans cup holder) and a life-time supply of Feather razor blades (they accidentally sent the bulk packaging) because Amazon didn't want to pay for return shipping.
Factor in the risks and headaches of trying to resell a used mattress, and I can easily see never wanting to take one back even if it means having to factor into the regular price the costs of finicky buyers. The mattress market is weird: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/
He was remarking that a box spring is there to provide certain things and that using another mattress instead of a box spring might not provide those benefits.
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