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What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it
- madengr 7y agoMattress shopping is almost as bad as car shopping. I'll buy a used car to get around the sleazy car sales people, but the wife absolutely won't go for a used matresss. I'm sure the mattress markup is astronomical, and I'm sure most brands come from the same factories.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- war1025 7y agoSort of interesting to think about the fact that used mattresses are a no-go for people, but they'll gladly sleep on hotel beds used by orders of magnitude more people. Don't think I'd buy a used mattress either though...
- seiferteric 7y agoI think bedding is actually the thing that makes me most uneasy at hotels, you just don't have a choice. You can expect they wash the sheets with each new guest, but I don't think they do so with the comforter which grosses me out. Then there is the whole bed-bug situation...
- leetcrew 7y agoultimately people prefer not to stop and think about the fact that hotel beds are kinda gross, since there's really no alternative if you want to travel to a place where you don't know anyone. but even if you do acknowledge this, it's not nearly as bad to sleep in a "dirty" bed for a few nights as it would be to own one and use it every night.
- ska 7y agoI once met someone who always traveled with something a bit like a thin cotton (silk?) full body sleeping bag (like a mummy bag). Idea was you never physically touched the hotel bed. It was apparently expensive. The funny thing to me was the she stayed in high end hotels pretty exclusively who I think you can at least be taking a fairly aggressive kill-it-with-bleach approach to laundry. I wondered if there was a wallmart version aimed at people who stay in seedy motels where it would seem to be more practical.
- ghaff 7y agoSleep sacks can actually be required for hostels. (http://www.reidsguides.com/hostels/sleepsacks.html http://www.reidsguides.com/hostels/sleepsacks.html) I imagine a silk one could be expensive but they're pretty inexpensive for the most part. That said, as someone who travels a lot, when I look at travelers' catalogs like Magellan at a lot of the safety, germ protection, etc. items, part of me thinks that people who buy all that stuff are probably better off just not traveling.
- ska 7y agoMakes sense I guess although I've never run into that requirement. By description the thing she had was much smaller & more form fitting than above link. One of the "selling points" was how small it packed into carry-on, for example.
- ghaff 7y agoProbably something more like this: https://www.rei.com/product/850427/cocoon-silk-mummy-liner https://www.rei.com/product/850427/cocoon-silk-mummy-liner The thing with silk is it's pretty fragile but it's probably the thinnest/lightest material that you'd actually want next to your skin.
- ApolloFortyNine 7y agoThey're definitely abusing the word 'most' there. I've stayed in easily 20 hostels at this point, and not once has a 'sleep sack' been required. And in all my hostel research, I have never stumbled across someone mentioning they needed one.
- tenpies 7y agoI'm also somewhat suspicious that foam mattresses are quite bad for your health, not necessarily from a sleep mechanics perspective, but from an air quality one. I mean you are literally sleeping on a piece of plastic that is optimized for surface area. You then squish it constantly while using it and inhale those aerosolized plastic particles for about 8 hours per day.
- telchar 7y agoI paid a little extra (~$600) for a foam mattress manufactured in California. I figured there is a lower chance of harmful offgassing than the cheaper Chinese mattresses like Zinus. I don't have any way to test that though.
- jamespetercook 7y agoWow I never thought about this
- timw4mail 7y agoKind of makes a used one seem like a better idea...
- allovernow 7y agoOfgassing in the first few weeks or so may expose you to harmful chemicals, but I don't see any reason for foam the to degrade into fine particulate if it isn't exposed to UV, assuming it isn't made of total garbage.
- dubcanada 7y agoEverything we touch/eat is plastic/comes in contact with plastic to some degree, your shoes, clothes, bread sits in plastic for days, vegetables for months, etc. I really doubt a bed wrapped in some form of cloth is any worse. Unless you live on mars you are most likely getting ten times more pollution/plastic from other areas then your foam mattress.
- wahern 7y agoThere are latex foam mattresses. I've purchased two from Sleep on Latex (sleeponlatex.com, or Pure Green on Amazon). That said, whether latex, polyurethane, or whatever, with foam mattresses you're supposed to use a mattress protector to prevent sweat and accidents from soiling the foam. Alternatively or in addition to that, Sleep on Latex uses a wool topper, as I'm sure many other brands do. And then on top of that most people use sheets. I would think all of that covering would trap any particles so they can conveniently be washed out to sea with all the other microplastics from the laundry.
- jrockway 7y agoI was happy with the two IKEA mattresses I bought. I have one super-cheap foam one that I used for many years and keep around for guests; guests say they like it more than their mattress at home, and I think it only cost $30 and has lasted going on 15 years at this point. I also had one of their more expensive latex foam mattresses, and that kind of developed a sunken in spot in the middle where I slept on it after ~5 years. I replaced it with a more botique latex mattress and the same thing happened; so I think that's more of an intrinsic weakness in the material rather than a manufacturing defect. And, you have to expect that something used every day for 8 continuous hours is going to need replacement after a few years anyway. What I like about IKEA is that you just walk in and self-serve yourself a mattress. No sales. No marketing. If you don't like it, at least it was cheap. So I'm giving them a recommend.
- leetcrew 7y ago> If you don't like it, at least it was cheap it's actually better than that. you can return it any time in the first year of ownership, provided you kept the receipt.
- dole 7y agoOne caveat about IKEA mattresses: being a multi-national company, verify the mattresses and linens you're buying complies to the same sizing in your region of the world; they can differ and there's always stories about how IKEA sheets don't fit standard sizes or fit them well, at least.
- mthoms 7y agoThe sleaze of the mattress industry is a major reason the mattress in a box business has done so well. I just love when these kinds of markets get disrupted because the disdain these companies have for their own customers is infuriating (see also taxi industry). There's a great "Adam Ruins Everything" episode about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tZOKfCial4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tZOKfCial4 FWIW, I absolutely love my mattress in a box and the buying process was painless.
- corporateslave5 7y agoYeah I bought one for 175 bucks, just as a temporary thing. I love it. I’ll never pay 1000 dollars for a mattress again
- throwaway_tech 7y ago>The sleaze of the mattress industry is a major reason the mattress in a box business has done so well. Don't be fooled if you thought the traditional mattress buying experience was sleazy (similar to a car buying experience), the mattress in a box online dark patterns take sleaze to a whole other level.
- mthoms 7y agoI'm sure you're right. I have to say my experience was very good in that regard, possibly because I went with the most respected brand in my country (Canada) and the industry is much less crowded/competitive here. Having said that, I bought the mattress over 2 years ago now so maybe things have changed. I hate dark patterns with a fiery passion.
- exhilaration 7y agoJust buy your mattresses from Costco, no sleaze in sight.
- chihuahua 7y agoCostco and Ikea (mentioned many times in earlier comments) seem to share a business model based on avoiding dark patterns
- sergers 7y agoI bought a foam mattress off amazon canada. Decided to return it. Surprisingly amazon.ca doesnt offer large item pickup like USA, and expected to return a king size expanded 10" thick foam mattress to the local post office. I called them asking wtf, how am I supposed to return it. They gave a me refund, and told me donate destroy it myself or even just keep it. I decided to keep it
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y agoI love this. I've always thought their guarantee was meaningless because almost nobody is going to actually mail back a mattress.
- ska 7y agoSome of the guarantees, at least when I looked a few years ago, include pickup for return. Presumably (cf article) not to original location; but still, hard to image something more zero risk than this. With something like a 120 day no-questions asked, no risk return I think they are more relying on you getting used to it in that amount of time. And huge markup means they can eat quite a few too, I suppose.
- rjkennedy98 7y agoAt the returns department of the company I work for they use the returned mattresses to clean the floor. The put the forklift prongs inside the mattress and drive around to clean up the warehouse.
- circa 7y agoI know this is about mail-order mattress companies. I have always thought that one of these Mattress store chains are going to be busted for being involved in a drug ring or something like that. There are way more locations than there needs to be. Especially with all of these online mattress brands popping up. There always seems to be 1 guy working and no one in the stores, ever. At any of these locations. I don't understand how a business model like that can last. But they're still kickin'
- freedomben 7y agoAt least around the salt lake Utah area those stores go out of business all the time.
- derefr 7y agoWhy are they started in the first place? Where do people get the capital to start a type of business that's observably likely to fail?
- jakeinspace 7y agoDo you live near a university? Or somewhere with a lot of job/population growth? People who move buy new mattresses.
- whalesalad 7y agoFWIW I had a Leesa and ended up returning it. That went fine and dandy, everything worked as they promised with no frills. What I actually want to share with you all here is to go to a mom-n-pop mattress store in your local area. Find your local mattress NERD and buy a bed from them. They're going to have all kinds of wild stuff you can try and will do a great job of selling you the right bed for you (and your partner). My wife and I ended up finding this guy - https://www.youtube.com/user/MattressToGo https://www.youtube.com/user/MattressToGo - and watching some of his (surprisingly popular) videos you will see he is legitimately a mattress nerd. Coincidentally we lived about an hour from his brick and mortar location so we drove out to check out the showroom and ended up buying a mattress on the spot. It took a few days to arrive but it's without a doubt my favorite mattress. I love the convenience afforded by these modern startup companies but there is really something to be said for going to someone who has made one thing their entire life's misson and letting them help you out.
- joegahona 7y agoI have a Leesa and don't love it, but I've had it over a year now, so can't return it. I didn't realize "mom-n-pop mattress stores" existed -- how would one find one? I ended up with an online-mattress purchase because of a poor experience with both a Mattress Firm store (pushy salespeople) and most obnoxiously with a specific manufacturer, Simmons. I stayed at an AirBnB in SF years ago and the bed was noticeably the most comfortable bed I've ever slept on. I messaged the host _years_ later and asked him what type of bed it was, and to my surprise and delight, he messaged me back with text and images of the tags on the mattress. When I tried contacting Simmons by phone, email, and even Facebook Message, telling them I would BUY that mattress, no matter the cost, if they could point me in the right direction, I got nowhere and was made to feel like I was a bother. So while it's easy for me to believe that these online mattress companies are marketing companies glueing foam together, maybe this is what we needed to make an outdated industry improve.
- troydavis 7y ago> how would one find one? Mattress Underground's explanation of local manufacturers is a good start: https://www.themattressunderground.com/the-industry/manufacturers/local.html https://www.themattressunderground.com/the-industry/manufact.... Their forum also has Q&A about specific cities. The rest of their tutorials are as good as any online: https://www.themattressunderground.com/the-industry/industry.html https://www.themattressunderground.com/the-industry/industry..., https://www.themattressunderground.com/mattresses/mattress.html https://www.themattressunderground.com/mattresses/mattress.h...
- spartas 7y agoAbuse of these mattress return policies is also incentivized when new online mattress companies are popping up every month. https://www.wsj.com/articles/unintended-perk-of-the-online-mattress-boom-never-ending-free-trials-11575474415 https://www.wsj.com/articles/unintended-perk-of-the-online-m...
- jacob019 7y agoForgive me if this is off-topic. I am currently in the market for a queen size mattress in a box. The last one that I bought on Amazon was perfect, it cost about $300. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F8NNL8X https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F8NNL8X It is no longer available. Now it seems that you can get a decent one for under $250. Here are some that I found: Ashley: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0777K9RGX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0777K9RGX Vibe: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074NDQ143 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074NDQ143 PrimaSleep: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075T6BNC2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075T6BNC2 Anyone here have any suggestions?
- dang_dumb 7y agoZinus sleep - I have a king hybrid mattress from them and it's fantastic. https://www.zinus.com https://www.zinus.com
- dublinben 7y agoThe Green Tea mattress from Zinus is a popular choice, and well-regarded. It's right at your price point. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q7EPSHI/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q7EPSHI/
- werber 7y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Zinus-Memory-Green-Mattress-Queen/dp/B00Q7EPSHI https://www.amazon.com/Zinus-Memory-Green-Mattress-Queen/dp/... I've had several friends go out and buy it after a night on mine. I've had it for ~3 years and haven't noticed any degradation. After trying much more expensive (and heavily advertised) ones other people own, I can't really tell the difference.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoI have the same mattress. Almost never give it a second thought, which is what I really want in a mattress. Some reviews complain of a fishy smell but I didn't encounter it with mine but there are enough reviews with that complain that I wonder if there are multiple manufacturing pipelines, one of which leads to a fishy smelling mattress.
- 0xff00ffee 7y agoI gotta admit, there's one tiny bit of this that I think is kinda cool: the secondary "Sharetown" ecosystem does sound like an "afterburner" of sorts for unused product, and I much rather see products be up-or-re-cycled than tossed in landfill. I think there is a much larger market for this, especially as TFA says about the huge increase in returns.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- droithomme 7y agoIt's amazing anyone buys used mattresses. The likelihood of getting bedbugs and pounds of a stranger's skin flakes is very high. Gross!
- jldugger 7y agoA hotel is basically a gigantic used mattress store with massive churn.
- Fnoord 7y agoHehe, true, but supposedly the room is somewhat sanitized. There's an old Dutch saying "in de aap gelogeerd zijn". It means you got got scammed / got tricked / are in trouble. Literally, it means you "stayed at the ape". As the story goes, the original meaning is that there was a hotel in Amsterdam (at Zeedijk 1) which was called "'t Aepjen" (old Dutch for "the ape"), where you stayed. Because Dutch East India Company (VOC) seamen couldn't pay their bills they paid with an ape. So if someone who was scratching themselves, the question was raised: "did you stay in 't Aepjen" (or in Dutch "ben je in de aap gelogeerd?"). Another version is that it was a pub (the oldest one in Amsterdam) where drunks met, and recruiters took advantage of this to get people to sign contracts (to subscribe for VOC). [1] https://historiek.net/in-de-aap-gelogeerd-zijn/60549/ https://historiek.net/in-de-aap-gelogeerd-zijn/60549/
- Yhippa 7y agoI bought one of these over a decade ago from Costco. It had a defect in it but I never really pursued returning it. I had no clue how I'd get it out of my house by myself. Use a chainsaw or machete to cut it into blocks and then toss it out the window and then take it to the dump? It was really heavy. Much heavier than normal mattresses. At least it seemed much more flexible to bend around corners.
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI once had a loveseat that I couldn't get out of a studio apartment without moving almost everything. Since I was a bit bored at the time, I slowly carved up the entire thing with a Swiss Army knife w/ the saw & scissors extensions. Was actually kind of fun.
- jethro_tell 7y agoI had a friend who moved into an old oddly shaped rental. When we went to move the heavy stuff in, the big front picture window was out for repair and the guys said we could move anything through it while they went to lunch. In the end, we spent an afternoon chopping couches and dressers and such into pieces and hauling it to the dump. Didn't really think that through.
- zabzonk 7y agoIn Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1970s, a friend of mine inherited a flat and contents but no money. It was an extremely cold winter and he ended up chopping half the furniture to pieces (it was the typical hideous stuff you got in flats in Edinburgh back then) and burning it in the fire-place to keep warm.
- dredmorbius 7y agoProbably mostly natural materials. That'd be risky now.
- dan-robertson 7y ago
- Reedx 7y ago“In California, a lot of charities can’t accept a used mattress,” So those in need of mattresses don't get them and more likely to go to landfill... regardless of condition. Are used mattresses really that risky? Are charities themselves not able to make a reasonable judgement call on what they accept?
- fwip 7y agoIt's risky for the charity. For instance, if the mattress has bedbugs, it stands a good chance of contaminating everything they've got in storage, requiring them to purge their entire inventory, sanitize, and build up from scratch again.
- morelisp 7y agoWouldn't this apply to any bedding, or even clothing?
- minikites 7y agoDavid Sedaris has told a story about catching crabs from thrift store pants.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoBuddy of mine tried telling his wife the same story, but she didn't buy it.
- floatrock 7y agoDepends. Clothing you can wash. In my state, outdoor outfitters aren't allowed to sell used sleeping bags because of hygiene concerns.
- sauwan 7y agoCan't they set up an offsite hotbox to get rid of the bedbugs before it gets onsite? Surely someone could set up a mobile truck that can come, park, and heat up 15 mattresses for the few hours it takes to kill or drive off the bedbugs, no?
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoI like companies like Sharetown, they help prevent things from just ending up in a landfill and they make money doing it. There's a computer recycling company near me that does pretty well reselling equipment sent to them for recycling. They destroy drives when instructed to, but will wipe the rest and resell intact running servers and workstations. It's nice working with them because I know the equipment will most likely find a home.
- bsanr 7y agoI'd thought I'd get around the madness of mattress shopping by using just the technique mentioned in the article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22377160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22377160 At least, until I found something I liked. I purchased a Purple 3, thinking that if I loved it, I'd just stick with it. I did love it, but I couldn't justify spending $2k on a twin(!). I returned it, and purchased from another company for ~$700. I didn't like it as much as the Purple, but when I went to begin the return, I was told that there was no return process, and that I could "move the mattress to a different room, or donate it." Two days later, I received a refund for the full purchase amount. That ended my journey; no awesome mattress at any price beats "decent and free." As much as I appreciate getting a new mattress for zilch, the experience made me extremely wary. Was my mattress so cheaply-made that the manufacturer could afford to give them away? What was up? 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. And then it's also impossible to comparison shop because "models" differ based on retailer by one or two small features; that means no price-matching, if you can even tell what you're buying. These are the kinds of things that make people suspicious of the way the economy is set up. It should be easy to find out what you're purchasing, and then to pay a fair price for it. Instead you have entire manufacturing-retail chains built on obfuscation and able to eat untold amounts in lost product.
- blackearl 7y agoIt's also impossible to comparison shop because most people buy them once a decade, you don't really break them in for weeks, and sleeping is so subjective it's impossible to take anyone's word for it. I bought a queen for around $600. It's fine. Improving sleep has been more about exercising more often, decreasing screen time, and reading/meditating before bed.
- ghaff 7y agoI was doing some research because I'm going to have to buy one for a vacation house later this year. On the one hand, I don't want to just randomly choose an expensive purchase. On the other hand, truth be told, I spend a quarter to a third of nights in various hotel rooms and they're mostly "fine." And I've personally had everything from a waterbed to a (high-end) futon in my own house. So I know I don't want something really crappy but so long as I don't go off in some weird direction or really cheap out, I'm sure I'll be just fine.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deftnerd 7y agoIt feels like there might be other possibly uses of old or unwanted foam mattresses. Perhaps they can be cut down to standard sizes for home insulation batting? As insulation between raised garden bed containers and the ground? Insulation between the ground and a fish tank in an aquaponics setup? While there might be better solutions for all of those things, if these materials are going to end up in the landfill and can be provided for almost no cost, it seems like a waste to not utilize the resource.
- anonAndOn 7y agoAlthough it's a bit of work to cut the foam layers into hundreds of little blocks, you can turn an unwanted foam mattress into a decent bean bag.
- ItsDeathball 7y agoI wonder if you could get the same result by throwing it in a woodchipper and bagging the mattress-mulch.
- wh1t3n01s3 7y agoThe best re-solution is to cut and use them as soil for indoor growing. I’m sure you can find tutorials around...
- mech1234 7y agoGet a firm or very firm innerspring mattress from IKEA. You can do this for less than $300 and it will fit in the back of a sedan in it's roll-up-package. Sleep on it for a bit. If you don't like the feel, which you probably won't, add a memory foam mattress topper for ~$50. Use a thicker or thinner topper to suit your needs. Congrats! Because your mattress is firm, its foam will not break down for a long, long time. Sleep easy knowing you didn't waste stupid amounts of money and that your mattress will last essentially forever.
- pathartl 7y agoNot sure this is good advice. I like a firm mattress, but IKEA mattresses are absolutely terrible. I also cannot sleep with a foam topper on any bed. They're hot and screw up my back beyond belief.
- mstade 7y agoAs a counterpoint I have done exactly this and am perfectly happy with my IKEA mattresses; your mileage may vary I guess.
- mathewsanders 7y agoI also got a firm IKEA foam mattress (MATRAND) a couple months ago and I was sleeping better from the first night, and a couple more nights and the knots in my shoulders were gone. Also, at least in NYC it’s flat rate $50 for home delivery. I ordered on a Wednesday night and was delivered to me that Friday afternoon :) very happy with my cheap ikea mattress.
- rahimnathwani 7y agoIkea sells different types of mattress (spring, foam, latex), each with different thicknesses and price points. I've bought ~10 Ikea mattresses, avoided the cheapest ones of each type, and been pretty happy. I can understand why a foam topper would feel hot. It's main purpose is to provide a sleeping surface that's the same shape as your body, so of course this means it maximises the amount of contact between you and itself. So no space for air to circulate But I don't understand how a foam topper can screw up your back, unless your mattress is too soft to begin with. A bad/cheap foam topper will compress pretty easily, and provide no additional support, but I don't see what harm it would do.
- reaperducer 7y agoThis isn't exclusive to mail order mattresses. I went to a big-name department store just last week and bought a mattress. For the first time, I chose a "memory foam" mattress because I liked how it felt in the store. (Thought the traditional spring mattress felt more familiar and "right," there's something about the foam that was nice.) When the giant delivery truck arrived three days later, there was the usual box spring, which I guess is what necessitated the truck, but then the delivery guys brought in a small box the size of a chair and that's what contained the shrunken mattress. I asked what happens to the mattress if I decide that memory foam isn't for me after all, and they said it depends on the brand. Some go to charity, some go to an exporter for resale overseas, and some get shredded and made into new mattresses.
- giarc 7y agoBe careful with brick and mortar mattress stores (although you said department store). Many will have "restocking" type fees for returning a mattress.
- reaperducer 7y agoI asked about that. The only thing I would have to pay is the same delivery fee again for the truck to pick up the old mattress set (reasonable, IMO), and the price difference if I chose to replace it with a more expensive set.
- dbg31415 7y agoReturns on bulky items are a mess. I ordered a fridge and dishwasher from Costco. They were scuffed up during delivery. Costco asked me to bear with them... send pictures... write up a report... Once Costco was able to stick the delivery company for the bill, they sent me a new set. They didn't care about the original set. At one point a guy showed up in a pickup. No uniform. Not in a delivery van, or truck. Just a guy with a dolly and a beat-up F150. He said, "I'm here for the old fridge." When he saw they were new appliances, he was like, "Yeah, {the original delivery company} told me to take them to the dump... let me sell them, I'll come back with a U-Haul." And he kept texting and setting times and not showing. I had a Fridge and Dishwasher in my living room for over a month. I asked Costco what was up... I asked them to get it take care of ASAP... they were like, "Uh... I mean, I guess we can... or you can just sell them..." In the end I sold them to a neighbor, for half what I paid... he called the brand repair place and ordered a new door. Which is all I was expecting anyone to do in the first place.
- acd 7y agoOnline shopping is not that sustainable. Current concerns are returns. First you have the carbon emissions of the first package delivery then the return package carbon emissions plus the waste. The waste comes that is more expensive to handle return products than to simply throw them. What I mean it’s more eco friendly to have big batch shipments to stores than individual small packages sent by post. A normal physical store is usually more environmentally friendly than online shopping.
- Animats 7y agoNo, driving the SUV to the store usually uses more fuel than the entire supply chain to get to the store.
- ljm 7y agoI bought a firm mattress from IKEA and it’s been great. These companies doing trials and returns sound like a scam to rope in people who like ‘free’ stuff. The mattress market is a pure scam.
- throw7 7y agoI never liked the space a bed takes up so I decided to look into alternatives some years ago when it started to offer less support. I always had a futon so I immediately switched to that. I also bought a cheap hammock and built some hammock stands to use it indoors. I didn't have any problems adjusting to the futon; that's what I sleep on most of the time today. I'm also pretty sure I'd have no problems with a japanese style roll up beds either (it's basically like a futon anyway). Hammocking, though, took a bit longer. I really wanted to make it work too. To make a long story short, my initial hammock was too short and now I do have a hammock I can sleep soundly in (which I do every now and then). I was also initially interested on trying to train myself to sleep on a flat floor... but, ummm, that did not go well and I've never returned to trying. Maybe...
- RuleOfBirds 7y agoI slept on a hammock for years indoors slung between two huge hooks I screwed into my walls. It took a couple weeks before I fully adjusted. One nice thing is that when I went camping or on a three month bike trip, I had my every-night bed with me! It felt so luxurious! I loved it, and if I was single, I'd still be sleeping in a hammock every night.
- dghughes 7y agoI've watched videos about how to get in one and how to orient yourself in one it's not as simple as I thought. I'm not sure if I could sleep in a position that's anything but flat. I have acid reflux so I stack up pillows but sometime I roll over flat on my stomach and barf (yeah nice right!). But in the morning my hands are asleep probably due to my neck at a bad angle. I'd like to try a hammock but the attachments for the ends is the biggest problem.
- hispanic 7y ago> I was also initially interested on trying to train myself to sleep on a flat floor... I've been sleeping on the floor for over two years now. At this point, I prefer it to sleeping in a bed. I started out by creating a "mattress" made of several layers of blankets. Now, though, I just put a sheet on my low-pile carpet and that's all I sleep on. I also use a relatively flat/thin pillow.
- paxys 7y ago"Cheap" spring mattress + foam pad + down/pillow-top layer is the best mattress purchase decision you can make. My queen set is under $300 and more comfortable than ~20 other fancy mattresses I tried, some as high as $2500. And it's "upgradable" and adjustable without needed to toss the whole thing.
- pengaru 7y agoPresumably the return policies will change once there are no more brick and mortar local mattress stores to buy from. At that point, you'll only be able to buy online, and they won't need to offer returns. You have no choice but to have something delivered, or go without a mattress (my personal preference).
- sunsetMurk 7y agowhat's your sleeping situation like w/o a mattress? (I'm waiting for someone to invent & sell some sort of sleeping pod that provides a perfect environment, and keeps me in ideal position for the maximum sleep benefit)
- pengaru 7y agoI mostly just sleep on an area rug with a head pillow and blankets, sleeping on anything significantly more compliant just bothers my neck and back. You can achieve very similar results with a more elaborate arrangement by going traditional Japanese style, check out tatami mats if curious.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoThis will never happen because a decent chunk of people will never buy online. I like using computers as much as the rest of you but I would much rather just go in to a store and try a couple of them and pick one I like the first time rather than get random ones shipped to me and binning the ones I don't like.
- skookum 7y agoI bought a Purple mattress a few years ago. It was debilitatingly uncomfortable. After three nights I gave up and called them for a return. Their customer service spent quite a long time trying to convince me to keep trying: their pitch/theory was that their mattress is so extremely comfortable and all other mattresses are so extremely uncomfortable that the body gets used to that discomfort and it will take a few weeks or more to switch over to accepting the comfort of Purple. After repeatedly saying no thank you and eventually having to explain to them quite bluntly that their theory was complete horseshit, they processed the return... the "return" was a Salvation Army truck, which, when it arrived, already had two brand new Casper mattresses in it. I asked the guys in the truck if this was normal and they said "yeah, we get at least 1-2 of these every day". FWIW, I bought an IKEA foam mattress + memory foam topper for about 1/3rd of what the Purple cost and it's been very comfortable for a few years now.
- nfoz 7y agoA mail-order mattress company advertises via fivethirtyeight so I wonder if this out-of-place piece is partly fuelled by that advertising effort.
- beagle3 7y agoIn some countries, you get the mattress inside an airtight/watertight packaging, and you only get a refund if you return it (yourself or for some shipping cost) while still in that packaging. This means you can only get a feel for the softness/hardness but not breathability (due to the packaging). On the other hand, it means prices are sane. Personally, I prefer this system to the US one, where the ethical purchasers subsidize the unethical purchasers and unethical, greedy sellers. YMMV.
- andyjohnson0 7y agoThe Guardian recently had a long-ish article [1] on the state of mattress recycling and the economics of buying online. Its a fairly depressing read: these things are super-hard to recycle effectively and just get dumped like toxic waste: "The mattresses these criminals can’t resell, they fly-tip – Circom has had mattresses dumped outside its warehouse – or dump in landfill. In some cases, fraudsters have been known to rent a shed from an unsuspecting landlord, fill it to the brim with mattresses – and scarper. “There are loads of fake companies out there filling up sheds,” agrees Ray Bagnall, of Matt UK, another mattress recycler. “Dumping them on farms in Sussex or Essex.” He was recently called to clear out a shed full of thousands of mattresses in Snowdonia." It would be nice to think that a vendor making low environmental impact mattresses would effectively disrupt the market, but it just doesn't seem likely. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/mattress-landfill-crisis-recycling-nightmare https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/mattress...
- WorldPeas 7y agoNow I can finally feel like a smug eco-warrior by sleeping on the same queen mattress I used as a teenager. In all seriousness though, these companies should make it easier to put their mattresses back in their box, especially if it means they could avoid something like this. I seem to recall my old air mattress could easily be deflated by running the pump in reverse, fitting in a tiny bag. Would it be too hard to have a re-compression pump that could be shipped back for a rebate with shipping included if you decide to keep the mattress? Re-compressing the mattresses would probably also make it easier to cram a bunch of them into some sort of extreme-temperature vault so any bedbugs or other pests could be exterminated before re-use.
- gbronner 7y agoIt appears to take a fairly substantial press/vacuum sealer to squash these down, get them into their plastic bag so they don't explode, and roll them into a tight cylinder. https://sleepdelivered.com/bed-in-a-box-mattresses-packing/ https://sleepdelivered.com/bed-in-a-box-mattresses-packing/ This machine looks pretty elaborate -- not sure that you are going to get a consumer version.
- fmladineo 7y agoIf you ever need one of these mattresses, lemme know. I contract to pick them up.
- fmladineo 7y agoIf you ever want one of these open box returns, lemme know. I can hook you up.
- jessetutt 7y agoBeing thoughtful about the environment is important. It’s important to mention that some bed in a box realtors aren’t doing the best they can. Gotta Sleep uses bio foam which is made with soy based oils and donates all returned mattresses. https://gottasleep.com/products/omg-mattress https://gottasleep.com/products/omg-mattress