Mattress Buying Guide

Case Study - Shopping Experience

After 8 moves (3 of them state to state), our old Sealy mattress was shot! It had been folded like a taco, dragged through the dirt, used as cushioning for the dining room hutch, etc. Basically, it had served it's time and it was time for it to retire.

We set aside $1000. (the old bed had cost $450. 12 years ago - $1000 seemed about right) and went out shopping. WOW! Had things changed! There were pillow tops and no flips and memory foam and and and... We were so confused! So we went home, turned on the computer and started searching. Epinions, consumer guides, on line mattress stores. Now we were even more confused... until we came across whatsthebest-mattress.com and it's ever so helpful FORUM! We read post after post, learning how to compare mattresses from store to store. We absorbed every piece of information we could and we went out shopping again.

We still couldn't decide what would work best for us!!!

Every mattress and furniture store in town soon knew us by name. I think they sometimes hid when they saw us coming! But we still couldn't decide!!

One evening, while 60 miles away from home, we popped into a chain mattress store (we had visited our local shop many times.) As we walked through the door, something glorious happened! The salesman started asking us questions. Not our names or how much we had to spend or even how firm a bed we thought we needed....he asked about sleep habits, body aches and pains, tossing and turning...he had us lay down on one bed after another (they carry all the "S" brands plus some others), listening to every comment we made, narrowing down the field/manufacturer until there were only two remaining. He gave us privacy so we could lie down on those last two for as long as we needed. He answered our questions honestly. He quoted his best price on the those two mattresses and let us think. He told us about their 14 night comfort guarantee. He explained the delivery process. He got us to do what dozens of other salespeople could not - we bought a Stearns & Foster mattress that night!

We spent $150 more than we had budgeted and it was the best $150 we ever spent!! We've had the mattress for just over 6 months and absolutely love it!! If it wasn't for that particular salesman, we would probably still be looking! Or we may have bought a different bed that we wouldn't have been happy with. A well educated (in mattressology) salesperson is a mattress buyers best friend!

S. Smith