Just buy another brand for less. They went so far as to Photoshop ‘enhance’ my warranty photos to increase contrast to support their claim, and they admit it.
My very expensive Tempur / Tempurpedic mattress is cracking all over on top after 8 years, and my wife can’t sleep in it. Tempur quickly voided the warranty claim saying it’s water damaged - after they ‘enhanced’ a single image, mostly highlighting shadows.
I think the memory foam bed is actually only good for 4-5 years depending how big you are and you local humidity. The warranty at 10 years is a total scam for anyone but tiny fairies living in a plastic bubbles. If they said “this lasts 5 year’s” sales would crater or cheap alternatives would win out. Instead they say ‘full 10 year warranty’ but Don’t honor it.
There is no water damage on my bed. Some slight soiling on the mattress cover where you lay (8 years, not washable) plus some shadows due to the window, and they say stained and water damage no warranty. ‘Enhanced’ my photo to make it look worse. Wouldn’t even look at additional photos or send someone out.
Since no one has posted this yet so far, the Mattress Underground is the place to go for high-quality information about mattresses.
You’ll learn far more than you’d ever want to know about mattresses. And you’ll probably end up paying more too if you buy from one of the recommended retailers. But if quality is your main concern, then this is how you figure out what’s real and what’s not.
Thanks. Turns out I’m also mattress shopping! Appreciate the alternative option.
Your post has reminded me of this video that calculates how many mattresses you might own if every time a mattress company tried to get you to buy mattress, you did.
It goes rather off the rails once the problem of where to put them becomes a concern. It’s worth a good laugh.
This is another really good reason to be upset with the 10 yr warranty. It implies a longevity well beyond what this product can do.
And the waste. My god the waste. Piles upon piles of unrecyclable petroleum derived foam. Ok, in relative terms to our modern lifestyle it fits right in, but that’s not good.
And if it lasts half as long as they say, and they won’t touch it at the end of its life, what does that say?!
I’ve done some time in waste handling, and about a decade ago I had the opportunity to work with a mattress recycling outfit. They had set up a disassembly line that would separate the various materials within a mattress, it was very interesting to see.
My memory is failing me now, but they were sending about half the material to some other outfit that used in it production of some kind. So at least some recycling was happening through them.
The mattress industry is wild even without managing the product’s end of life. So many of the same mattress get wrapped with slightly different fabric and stitch work and sold under a different name and whatnot. Personally when mine meets its end I’m going to try a tatami instead.
Derek from NapLab is also a great source. I did my own research before finding his website, but his recommendations matched what I had chosen. It also makes me chuckle to tell friends that a man named Derek will personally email you to tell you what mattress to buy.
Not only will he personally email you, but he will keep engaging to help you out. He recommended a mattress that fit the budget but didn’t ship to Alaska. After I told him that, he went out of his way to help me find another company that did. Ended up emailing back and forth with him a few times before landing on one of his recommendations.
I found him via and old AskReddit thread he started and kept going.
A+ effort from him.
The website looks interesting, but mattresses are a regional deal. Yaay!
Meaning people from North America will find the website very helpful I’m sure. But I go there and I see a bunch of mattresses I literally can’t buy.
I think the only mattresses available on both sides of the Atlantic that I can look up reviews on are the IKEA ones. Which don’t get glowing reviews.
I wonder if anyone can point me to a similar site for mattresses available in Europe. I currently have a Sleepwell Red Orthopedic which I’m pretty happy with, but it’s damaged (not warrantyable either - damaged during moving. Only the cover of it, but I can’t find a new one anywhere. TECHNICALLY it might be possible to replace the zipper, but it looks like a pain to do) and I’m wondering if there’s something even better for me out there.
You may want to check bett1 out. If I remember correctly, the founder created the company after being frustrated with the marketing tactics and cartelization of the industry. Their product range is small, no marketing fluff, but they are quite popular and in Germany and very well rated.
Hmm, I like how easy it is to select sizes and things on their website. I dislike one bit so far:
Feels a bit misleading even if they do clarify it.
Lol!
Anti-cartel matress :D
Maximum Derek!
Slightly off-topic: Is there a similar website for sofas?
When I moved out, I was in a hurry and bought one after testing it for comfort for about thirty seconds. Turns out, it is, and most their product are, drop-shipped, low quality garbage.
It started falling apart after a month. Been postponing the purchase for about two years because I am not able to find reliable sources of information to guide my purchase decision.
Great sources for a mattress though. Guess I will cop one soon, as I bought my current one from Wayfair, same shit. Good riddance!
This is a list of notes I put together when shopping for couches. Some of it requires getting hands-on with the couch so it won’t work well for online purchases, but you should be at least sitting on a couch before buying it. My notes were cobbled together from information I found online, so big grain of salt.
Old couches are almost always going to be better than new ones because so many companies have dropped in quality over the years.
Take a black light to look for pee spots or stains. Look for bugs (fleas, bedbugs).
Things to look for:
Good brands:
Ok brands:
Bad brands:
When I bought my couches a few years ago, I got them used off Facebook Marketplace. It took a couple weeks for some decent Ethan Allen couches to pop up, but I got them for ~$400 each.
Thank you!
I might try to get a couch with my next paycheck. This is all really good to know, thank you. I’m saving your comment for reference when shopping.
I own a skoolie (a used school bus converted to a motorhome). I acquired two sections of one of those giant sectional sofas from a woman on Craigslist who was giving them away for free. She paid $4000 for the entire thing and when I deconstructed my sections to build them into the bus I was astonished at what incredibly poor quality the things were. The framing (such as it was) was unbelievably cheap wood that looked like it was cut by a beaver, and the ends were made from OSB scraps - not even cheap plywood. The backs underneath the cushions were entirely made from nylon lawn chair straps haphazardly stapled down.
The cushions and fabric were decent enough, but the thought of paying $4000 for furniture that shitty underneath is pretty hard to imagine.
That sounds awesome! I am curious about your journey of owning a skoolie. I sometimes daydream about building a similar motorhome. Watched too many videos of Steve Wallis these days…
Is it your main residence? If it is, what do you miss the most about owning a regular home? How long did it take you to adjust and finally feel home?
The bus is not my main residence. I live in a place (Philly area) where residence in a motorhome is not really a legal option. I embarked on the skoolie journey without a realistic plan for actually living in it and so far it’s been nothing but a gigantic time and money sink. But it has been fun and I’ve developed a lot of skills (mainly metalworking like welding and riveting) that I didn’t have before. You may enjoy my build thread.
I do hope to someday be able to live in it for a few years at least. We’ll see if that’s possible.
Nice! Plenty to read before bedtime. Thanks for that!
I also build a lot of things, mostly programmable electronics housed by 3D prints. I learned so much on the journey. What I learned, in my case, are mostly transferrable skills but I don’t care very much because I like it. I see it same as collecting vinyl records. It’s fun to build stuff without financial motives or external pressure.
Hello from the other side of the world and thanks for the chat and info on your motorhome. Enjoy it! :)
Would love this for sofas. Last one I got was crap and I find myself regretting not continuing to fix up our old 80s era leather sofa. That thing was built to survive the Cold War.
I can recommend a very good brand but you’ll hate me for it, it’s expensive as fuck and will last your lifetime (I have a 50 year old sofa that is still comfy as fuck, I just need to get it reupholstered because the fabric is wearing a titch after living through two families) but like, we’re cultists about our couches
You forgot to mention the brand I think :^)
us stickley owners can get weird about our couches
My sister-in-law had a victorian-era sofa in their house for a few years. Incredibly well-built piece of furniture and quite beautiful, but truly uncomfortable. Also heavy as fuck – I’d rather move a piano.
Oh yeah, I have no idea how we got ours in the room it’s in. If we have to move it we’re gonna have to knock out a wall. Ours is comfortable tho
https://www.sleeplikethedead.com/ is pretty good, too.
Wow, their website is really shitty on a phone, though (not sure about on a desktop). Half of all the pages are taken up with ads. Much too easy to hit one by mistake.
If only there was some sort of…blocker… of ads… on websites…
I feel like a lot of people don’t know you can use ublock origin on Firefox mobile but hopefully now they will :)
And for folks in the Apple walled garden with Safari, there are options paid and free that work well too!
Sorry. Didn’t notice with pi-hole.