The last time I bought a mattress for myself was about 11 years ago. I bought a fairly new full-sized one off a coworker. Four moves and a decade later, we’ve decided it’s time to replace it with an adult (and sometimes an extra toddler)-sized bed. When we started looking, I was shocked at the prices. $3000 for a mattress? What the heck are these things made of? Knowing very little, we went shopping for a mattress and other things on a Saturday morning. The first place, we stopped, Sleepy’s, seemed nice enough. We laid on a few and honed in on the one that we both felt most comfortable in. Meanwhile, Audrey discovered the fun of letting herself fall backwards onto mattresses and did it all over the store. She was giggling and the whole store couldn’t help but look and smile at her. Unfortunately, we soon stopped smiling. When we found something we liked, the seemingly helpful salesman started to get more aggressive. He asked how much we were looking at paying and I made up a number on the spot, something way below the listed price on the bed.
The said he would “talk with his manager” and see if he could get us that price. Then he started asking us if we could commit and have it delivered tomorrow. Anne had walked outside to give Audrey a break by that point, so I said I had to go out and talk with her about it. We talked about it for a bit, then decided we didn’t like the high-pressure sales pitch, so we got ready to leave. I had the car started up when the salesman came out and approached the car window. He then said that he had “talked to his manager” and he could give us the price we wanted AND a free “platinum package”. I said we would talk about it and let him know. We again decided this was sketchy, but to make good on my promise, I went in and gave him my phone number and left. Later that day we went to Jordan’s Furniture, generally known to be a reputable place with reasonable places. The salespeople there were nice and NOT high-pressure. Prices were generally lower, but strangely, we couldn’t find the mattress we found at Sleepy’s.
They had Sertas, but not the one we liked. Being indecisive, we left with a couple new names of ones we liked. Later, we went to Mattress Discounters. The woman there was not pushy and told us about the BBB complaints that Sleepy’s (a 700-store chain) had gotten. We decided to think some more and head home. At home, I did some research online and I found something strange – I couldn’t find much of anything on the mattresses we saw that we liked. I found some mattresses, many of the same brand, but not the same models. I later came to find out that this was completely intentional. The mattress industry is one big scam. There is no way to make an objective decision on a mattress using actual facts. Here’s a few things that the mattress industry does to get you: 1. They mark up their prices 100% to 200%!! No wonder the first guy was able to get his “manager” to give me such a steep discount. They were probably still going to make hundreds of dollars of profits on it.
2. They give the same mattresses different names in different stores or they set up exclusivity agreements by mattress line in certain stores. This makes it impossible to comparison shop because… 3. They make it really had to get actual facts about the mattresses. Stuff like coil counts, materials, overall construction are shrouded in secrecy. But that doesn’t really matter because… 4. There’s no objective measure of mattress quality. Consumer Reports won’t rate them because they can’t get the data and there’s no testing that actually says higher coil counts are better or the number of wires in the coils makes a difference in any way. You’re left to deciding how much you believe the marketing. Is a pillow top made of alpaca hair any better than one made of cotton? Your guess is as good as mine. 5. There’s very little online reviews of mattresses, probably because the model names are so fractured. The ones I did find looked more like content-free sites designed to attract referral credits.
With some more research, I found out that it was somewhat possible to compare mattresses models from different places. It turns out that they really only make one hardness variation in each line. So you can assume that a Plush Firm mattress in the “Classic” line, is the same as another Plush Firm in the Classic line, even if they have different names. was very helpful in figuring this out. We were able to understand which mattresses we saw and how they related to each other. For example, the mattress we liked at Jordan’s was a product line better than the one we saw at Mattress Discounters, even though they came out to the same price! Clearly Jordan’s had the better deal, but US-Mattress had an even better deal. So I did something I never thought I could do, buy a mattress over the internet. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one we saw in the store and the free delivery and frame were a good deal. I’m sure that even if I’m getting it at half the price I saw it listed at elsewhere, they’re still making a decent profit on it.
Anne and I agree that buying a mattress is worse than buying a car. While both have sketchy salespeople, when you buy a car, you can compare them on MPG, size, features, etc. Multiple dealers have the same models so you can compare prices and make an informed decision based on their invoice prices. There’s none of that when buying a mattress. Our mattress should arrive in a few weeks. Hopefully we’ll just find it comfortable enough to have to avoid going through buying a mattress again for at least another 11 years. UPDATE: The mattress arrived quickly and in good condition. We’ve been sleeping on it for several nights and while it feels comfy, I’ve had some upper back soreness which seems to be related to the new mattress. Hopefully it will go away. Otherwise, we’ll have to find another one and do a $100 exchange I guess.After I met Jim Boscov for the first time, he wanted me to lie down."Try this bed," he said. We were in the second-floor bedding department next to furniture at the Boscov's at Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem.Boscov's focus that day was the Dream Weaver — a machine that purports to track the pressure points of a customer's back and recommends mattress firmness.
The machine just rolled out in about a third of Boscov's stores. "It will really help customers know if they are buying the right bed," said Boscov, 65, as I looked up at the ceiling. And it did confirm my preference for a firm mattress.The gizmo shows Boscov's approach to customers. He literally has your back. The philosophy was borne from the store's founder nearly a century ago, Solomon Boscov.Under the Boscov's policy, the store won't be undersold, and will match a price on an identical item. "The truth is, we are the low guy almost all the time," Jim Boscov said.A 400-thread-count bedsheet with two pillow cases in queen and king sizes will go for $29.99 at Boscov's this week, compared with $40 to $52 at competitors. An Arctic King window air-conditioner with 10,000 BPUs goes for $199, compared with $233 at competitors."Have you Boscoved today?" is the promotion line for a culture that has helped sustain the nation's largest family-owned, full-service department store.
Jim Boscov became the third-generation Boscov to grab the CEO reins in May, taking over from his uncle and retail legend, Albert, 85, who remains board chairman.The chain's focus is Middle America. It has 43 stores in six states, including at the Lehigh Valley and Palmer Park malls. While slowly growing its store network, it is also increasing eCommerce. It expects to have more than $1.1 billion in sales this year."Everybody is growing with the Internet, but we're growing in both brick-and-mortar and online," Boscov said. "I attribute that mostly to customer service."We don't want to grow too many stores too fast," he said. "It takes caring and feeding. It's not a cookie cutter thing."The chain grows one store a year, on average. On rare years, two stores.All but seven current stores are in enclosed malls. Boscov's will open its 44th store in the Westfield Meriden Mall in Meriden, Conn., in the fall.Stepping into a Boscov's is almost like stepping into a time warp. An optical center is in every store.
A candy department and fudge counter are in most of them, and a travel agency in some. Certified bra fitters are found in every store. Free gift wrap is always offered. And most have an auditorium for community classes or meetings."You want to be contemporary, but continue to provide services that other companies no longer offer," Boscov said. "A lot of department stores got rid of these because they can make bigger margins on clothing."That afternoon, Boscov, walking with store manager Karl Hess, asked customers, such as Kim Turner, 44 what she liked about Boscov's."I love your stores," said Turner, a school bus driver, who was shopping for an exercise outfit for her aunt. "I love they have a bunch of customer service representatives always available to help me."Boscov also makes it a point to visit at least one store a week, giving the sales force a pep talk before opening. He spent a recent Friday traveling three hours to Binghamton, N.Y., and another hour to Scranton with two busloads of buyers, mostly from Reading, where the company is based.
Such trips "are your best source of information."He said the store's relationship with vendors was key."We're not a giant chain that can dictate what we want," he said. "So when a vendor has a large order promotion, we are the first ones to get the call and we can pass [savings] on to customers. It makes us a little more exciting."There was another reason that community plays such a huge role for the chain.Boscov's went bankrupt in 2008. The company emerged from bankruptcy a year later thanks to Albert's cobbling together family money and bank loans. Among those that helped rescue the chain were towns that had Boscov's stores and didn't want to lose them."Even in their darkest days, they had a niche and a tremendous acceptance and loyalty in their markets. People enjoy going there," said Howard Davidowitz, a retail and investment banking consultant in New York."Good will comes back to you," Boscov observes.And now he tries to send it back."Shopping has to be fun," Boscov said. "It's not that you need anything.