from Hacker News

What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

by japaget on 2/20/20, 4:34 PM with 307 comments

• by bsanr on 2/20/20, 7:10 PM

  I'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

  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.

• by mech1234 on 2/20/20, 7:59 PM

  Get 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.

• by whalesalad on 2/20/20, 8:36 PM

  FWIW 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 - 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.

• by dbg31415 on 2/20/20, 9:03 PM

  Returns 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.

• by throw7 on 2/20/20, 11:52 PM

  I 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...

• by reaperducer on 2/20/20, 8:04 PM

  This 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.

• by Reedx on 2/20/20, 6:52 PM

  “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?

• by skookum on 2/21/20, 2:49 AM

  I 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.

• by sergers on 2/20/20, 8:15 PM

  I 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

• by acd on 2/20/20, 10:17 PM

  Online 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.

• by ropiwqefjnpoa on 2/20/20, 7:00 PM

  I 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.

• by Yhippa on 2/20/20, 6:49 PM

  I 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.

• by spartas on 2/20/20, 6:13 PM

  Abuse 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-m...

• by jacob019 on 2/20/20, 6:31 PM

  Forgive 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 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

  Vibe: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074NDQ143

  PrimaSleep: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075T6BNC2

  Anyone here have any suggestions?

• by circa on 2/20/20, 8:33 PM

  I 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'

• by deftnerd on 2/20/20, 7:41 PM

  It 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.

• by andyjohnson0 on 2/21/20, 10:22 AM

  The 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...

• by beagle3 on 2/21/20, 7:41 AM

  In 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.

• by jessetutt on 2/22/20, 10:08 PM

  Being 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

• by clSTophEjUdRanu on 2/20/20, 8:23 PM

  I love this. I've always thought their guarantee was meaningless because almost nobody is going to actually mail back a mattress.

• by paxys on 2/21/20, 1:16 AM

  "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.

• by pengaru on 2/21/20, 2:00 AM

  Presumably 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).

• by WorldPeas on 2/21/20, 5:40 PM

  Now 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.

• by ljm on 2/20/20, 11:50 PM

  I 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.

• by fmladineo on 2/22/20, 5:23 AM

  If you ever need one of these mattresses, lemme know. I contract to pick them up.

• by fmladineo on 2/22/20, 5:23 AM

  If you ever want one of these open box returns, lemme know. I can hook you up.

• by nfoz on 2/21/20, 3:48 AM

  A mail-order mattress company advertises via fivethirtyeight so I wonder if this out-of-place piece is partly fuelled by that advertising effort.

• by rjkennedy98 on 2/20/20, 8:31 PM

  At 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.

• by madengr on 2/20/20, 5:53 PM

  Mattress 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.

• by 0xff00ffee on 2/20/20, 6:35 PM

  I 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.

• by droithomme on 2/20/20, 6:36 PM

  It's amazing anyone buys used mattresses. The likelihood of getting bedbugs and pounds of a stranger's skin flakes is very high. Gross!