I wish there was a good way to try mattresses properly before buying them. Not just lie down on it for a few minutes in a shop, but sleep the whole night on it. Like a bed shop teaming up with a hotel chain to let you choose which bed and/or mattress you want to try for a night. The ones in the article start at US$1995 - I wouldn't want to spend that much money on something so important without trying it, and would consider spending 5-10% of that to try it in a hotel room for a night. I know they say they'll have a "100-night guarantee with a full refund, as Casper does", but it is a huge hassle getting that sort of thing delivered and then returning it.
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Tinder could add mattress model and age as an optional field in user profiles.
A lot of hotel chains actually do this. 4 seasons sells Simmons brand mattresses on their website.
https://m.fourseasons.com/magazine/thrive/hotel-beds/
Ritz Carlton, Westin, and other Marriot properties do the same. I believe some are just bedding but several sell the mattresses.
Yup, my wife and I sleep on a Westin Heavenly mattress. I'm sure I paid a premium for it, but we both were comfortable sleeping on it. Purchased in 2004 so probably due for replacement at this point.
All the popular mattress sellers (including this new Afloat, apparently) have a very flexible refund policy. You don't need to lift a finger (except figuratively) to receive or return it.
You don't need to lift a finger, but you do need to recognize that any "returned" mattress is likely going straight to a landfill.
Sometimes, used mattresses can be handy. Such as when you accidentally punch a hole in the bottom of a river, and need a way to plug it.
Wow, thanks for linking that. Super fascinating. I just watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-qD6h6wlU0 to learn more about the Chicago flood. Hard to believe!
I'd love to know if this is actually true. Can't these companies clean the mattresses and resell them, or at least donate them? Is destruction the only safe way?
A little more about the return process: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/your-money/buying-a-mattr...
And some anecdata: When I wanted to return an online mattress, I had the option of showing a receipt for giving it to a charity, or having the mattress company pick it up. None of the local charities I looked into took even slightly used mattresses. So the mattress company "pick up" was from a junk disposal company, and they just took the mattress to the waste transfer station on its way to the landfill.
My girlfriend used to work for a reasonably well known mattress company. Apparently returned mattresses there were given to charity for use in homeless shelters and such.
unfortunately its hard to be like "ok i hate this mattress so much I will sleep on the floor until I find something I like better. take it back!"
Simple: Keep your old mattress until you're sure that you want to keep your new one.
Or, buy a new mattress before returning the one you didn't like. This way you only need to store a superfluous mattress for a short period of time.
I feel like these are solveable problems.
I have a not-small apartment and there still isn’t room for an entire extra mattress.
Keep it under the new one
I skate through on laziness. I offloaded my last mattress a couple of years ago, mostly intending to thence get a new one, but never quite got round to it. If we all just embrace our inner slackers, we can put an end to the problems of mattress disposal!
Here in the Czech Republic, and I believe it's similar in most of Europe, several months of no-questions-asked guarantees for mattresses are very common. This is different from warranty (common to be 25 years).
25 year warranties?! In the US, mattress companies run ad campaigns to convince people that mattresses are consumables that last eight to ten years. Funny how that works.
what price though ? here they say it's pricey because it's a 20 year investment.
The US consumers prefer spring mattress while European consumers prefer mattresses made from latex foam. Over time springs degrade faster than foam and so US mattresses have a shorter lifespan.
My $2k latex matress has a giant sink hole in the middle of it.
I'm non-too happy, and a bit disillusioned about the idea that latex matresses last longer.
Do you have data to support that assertion? As a European, I grew up with nothing but box-spring mattresses. IKEA has more box-spring products than foam ones.
I think you might mean spring or pocket-spring. A box spring is something you put a mattress on.
Of course, oops -- pocket spring!
My experience in Italy strongly suggests spring mattresses are the norm.
You can't return a mattress - instead, they're donated to Goodwill and other organizations, and Casper et. al will help arrange the pickup.
Tempur [1] gives 100 days to change your mind and get another mattress. You can do it one time though.