What is worse than shopping for a mattress?
Why do so many of us dislike mattress shopping? The only people that seem to love mattress shopping are kids and young couples that have made the decision to move in together and that it is now time to shop for a mattress. To be fair, they are shopping for a medium to express their physical love for one another. Okay… back to reality. Why do we put mattress shopping right up there with car shopping or going to the dentist?
I had a young couple in the Manhattan mattress store, and the young lady was very frustrated. She could not decide which mattress felt the best. It is a big decision and it’s not just about price. You have several things to consider when shopping for a bed as a couple. Is she going to like the bed? Is she going to love the bed? Is he going to like the bed? Is he going to love the bed I love? Is he going to like the bed I love and will I like the bed he loves? Then there is the cost of the bed. One can never ignore the cost because if one person loves the bed and the other person likes the bed, there is the possibility of resentment. I remember this happened in my life with a sofa purchased from Ethan Allen. I loved sofa A, and she loved sofa B. We settled on Sofa B. Both very nice sofas, but it was a compromise and during arguments, I would sit on the couch and think to myself… “Damn. I didn’t want this sofa” hahaha
It only happened during arguments, but you get my point. Big purchases can be stressful if one person wakes up with back pain, even if the back pain were caused by not following proper form while at Crossfit in yesterday’s WOD. The back pain is going to cause him to say to himself. “Ugh, I wish we would have bought that other mattress.”
Okay… I can see this article isn’t helping matters much, but hopefully, you get my point: mattress shopping can be stressful. Let’s talk about the weirdness of laying down on a bed in front of the strange sales person. As someone that works in a bedding store. I always do my best to sit to the side of customers and leave them alone as much as possible. It is even uncomfortable for me because I know what its like to be on the other end as a customer. I cannot stand going car shopping or furniture shopping. Sometimes those sales people just don’t know when to stop talking. I just had a call with a real estate agent the other day, and he literally wouldn’t shut up… I had to yell just to get him to stop. People are not excellent listeners, and we all know that most salespeople are often not the best listeners either. What sometimes happens to me is the quiet sales person throws me off guard and I start asking questions just so the customer / salesperson relationship isn’t disrupted, and the world doesn’t stop rotating because we allowed too much silence to exist.
Organic mattresses can feel expensive. If you compare a mattress to an innerspring bed bought in 1992, it seems expensive. If you compare it to your iPhone or Galaxy S7 and your monthly Verizon or ATT bill, it should look cheap in comparison. Look around at home and in your car. How much did you spend on chargers, headphones, screen protectors, smartphone cases and let us not forget your tablet or laptop? My phone bill is at minimum $720 per year and my monthly home cable tv and internet bill are $169.00, and that’s just with HBO and Showtime on demand. No other fees. I spend $2,748 per year on voice, data, and television. Yet 33% of the people that come into the store think mattresses are too expensive. Every three years I spend $8244 on voice, data, and television. That does not include the cost of headphones, chargers, or my next phone upgrade.
Mattress shopping is not the same as going to the dentist. Dental visits are a necessity and no matter what gets done we feel like it cost too much. Nobody wants to go to the dentist unless you are a young lady, and you are getting your teeth whitened for your wedding day. Outside of that, we are afraid of the dentist.
How do we change this phenomenon? What can we do to make the mattress shopping experience better?
Brian