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Learning to Love my Comforpedic (with a Little Latex Help)

When our new mattress (the Comforpedic Mystic) was delivered from the factory, I was really excited. We’d been talking about a new bed for the past couple of months, so I was really eager for that first night on the mattress.

The first couple weeks of sleep on the Comforpedic were fine. I wasn’t sleeping any better than on the old Sleep Number bed, but I wasn’t sleeping any worse, either. After the first couple of weeks, though, I noticed a pain like I hadn’t experienced from sleeping on a mattress before.

My legs, feet & even hips hurt so much that I hobbled around like an old man in the weeks after getting the new mattress. The problem for me was that I’d sink into the mattress, but it wasn’t really all that soft. I’d contort throughout the night, trying to get comfortable & wake up feeling like I’d rolled down a hill. At the same time, I had a lot invested in the new mattress and really wanted it to work. I was hoping that I would get used to it & the pain would go away. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of returning the mattress with no guarantee that something else would work better.

I was reading the “Whats the Best Mattress” forums quite a bit at this time, and latex was brought up again and again as the ideal topper for a hard mattress. I started thinking about what bothered me with the Comforpedic – both that I sank too deep into it, and also that it was too firm. Each of those things could possibly be fixed by adding a latex topper, which would hopefully keep me from sinking down too far (dissipating the heat), while adding a little cushion to the bed at the same time.

I looked at a few different places for a latex topper, but the cost was either too much (after spending a lot of money on a new mattress, I didn’t want to pay more than I needed to for a solution that I wasn’t sure would work), or else the foam would take too long to ship. I finally found a 2″ latex topper on Amazon that I decided to buy. It wasn’t what I’d call cheap, but not as pricey as some of the toppers out there. I felt better buying from Amazon, because of their return policy.

When I got the topper, I rolled it out & put it on top of the mattress. The mattress was a ridiculous 13.5″ already, so an extra 2″, plus the “low profile” foundation, made the bed seem like something out of a fairly tale involving a princess and a pea. It also had a faintly weird smell that has dissipated over the course of the last 6 months.

I’m not complaining, though, because the topper worked. What had been a very uncomfortable bed was transformed into the most comfortable one that I’ve ever slept on. I initially felt like a little bit of a failure because I’d picked “the wrong” mattress. But the truth is that it’s really hard to figure out what you are going to like during 15 minutes in a store. With a little bit of help, I was able to get the Comforpedic to work well for both me and my partner. Hopefully, this is an investment that we’ll be able to live with for many years to come. If we get 10+ years out of the combo, it’ll be money well spent.

If I had to do it all again, I probably would make some different decisions based on what I learned through this experience. I’d probably buy a well made, firm, spring mattress without any pillowtop, that could be flipped. Then I’d buy a 3-inch latex topper. Or maybe go 100% latex in the first place. Regardless, I’m still happy with the way things worked out.

Written on 02 January 2012 by Joseph Geierman under Daily Life, mattress buying with No Comments

My Mattress Buying Experience

Prior to this purchase, I did not have much mattress shopping experience. When we purchased our old soft-side waterbed in 2001, it was a pretty cut and dry episode. My partner and I went in to a store & picked it out. It only cost a few hundred dollars, and the sales guy barely talked to us. When buying our next bed, about 5 years later, we already had our minds set on a sleep number bed. We went into the sleep number store at the mall, lay on a few beds, and ended up picking out one of the lower-end models. It was an OK experience. There was not a lot of negotiating involved that time either, from what I can remember.

I really liked the waterbed, but its downsides were that it was too hot for me & very heavy to move. The sleep number bed is easier to move (it’s filled with air), but I never thought it was as comfortable. It also developed sag between the two sleep chambers, which I inevitably seem to roll into. The sleep number bed was made more acceptable when we traded out the egg crate foam inside with some memory foam purchased from the internet. We had slept on a memory foam topper at my dad’s house, which I thought was one of the most comfortable sleep experiences I have had, and that was our starting place in purchasing a new mattress.

I started off trying to do a little research on highly rated foam mattresses. There are not really a lot of mattress reviews out there, so I kept coming back to the Apartment Therapy “A Year in Bed” series that reviews a different mattress each month. The reviewer there mentioned a couple of latex beds that were at the top of his list, and we figured that was a good starting point for us to check out. We went on the websites for the companies that make those beds, and identified some stores that sell the brand.

We went to those stores on a Saturday morning. When we walked in, I asked the sales guy who came up to us if he had the Danny Seo latex bed – he didn’t know what I was talking about, but showed us his latex mattress collection. He kept up a constant stream of sales banter while we lay on the 2 latex mattresses there. Both were kind of springy and didn’t have a lot of edge support. I asked him about memory foam, and he showed us the TempurPedic and ComforPedic beds.

Of course we had heard and read about TempurPedic before. To some extent, they are synonymous with memory foam in general. I had heard that they are pretty warm to sleep on, though, and the way we just sank into the bed and stayed there was kind of weird. We tried the ComforPedic next, and there was a lot more “bounce” and responsiveness to them. It was pretty obvious that we were interested in the ComforPedic. The model we liked (the “Navina” – also known as the “Mystic” or “Respiro”) ran about $3500 list price. Immediately, the sales guy told us that Simmons would only let them take 20% off the bed’s list price – which I took as a way to tell us that the starting price was $2800.

I was not ready to really start negotiating for a mattress after having tried just a couple in one store, so we went to a different store a few blocks away, where I thought they would have some different latex mattresses. Once we got there, it appeared to have all the same mattresses at the place we’d just been at. When I told the sales guy, he said, “Oh yeah – we are owned by the same guy as that other place. We are just here to help steer customers away from pre-owned mattresses, which is what most of the other stores around here sell.”

While we were there, we spent some more time lying on the latex ComforPedic and TempurPedic mattresses. We both still liked the feel of the ComforPedics the best. Since both stores were owned by the same company, we got the same “I can only take 20% off” line. I liked the sales guy a little better, but we weren’t ready to commit to purchasing, and called it a day after that.

The following day, we went to Macy’s to check out their selection. Of course they had TempurPedic. The sales man steered us to a set of mattresses called Sealy Memoryworks. We weren’t too impressed, but saw one foam bed sitting by itself. We hopped on top of it & really liked it – we said, “wow – this is as good as the ComforPedic beds from yesterday.” When we looked at the name, it turned out it was a ComforPedic Loft Gel Touch – essentially a special mattress that Macy’s had made for its stores. It had a different mix of latex and memory foam, along with a layer of “cool gel.” I asked the sales guy how much we could get it discounted for, and he said 10% – so they were selling it for about $3200. We got the salesman’s business card and headed out.

After visiting 3 different stores and discovering that we liked the ComforPedic line in each one, we started really focusing in on that brand. It turns out that Simmons has a factory store in Atlanta. They sell discontinued and overstock mattresses that were never slept on. What I read online sounded like you could get half price or more off the mattresses. We went one weekend morning, and while they did have a few ComforPedics, the woman who was there said that they rarely get king size mattresses of any type. Kings are made to order, so it is rare for one to be made but not be delivered to the end-user. We crossed that idea off our list.

When I was younger, I would have probably considered a mattress that had been used slightly and then returned. These days, though, I am not really that adventurous. There are too many stories about people getting bed bugs from used mattresses or hidden dirt and mold. I’m not willing to risk it.

When I was researching ComforPedics, the sites I kept coming to were Craig’s Beds and Grateful Beds – sister sites run by a guy who runs a mattress store in NYC. I sent them an e-mail asking for an “online coupon” and got a call from Craig (the owner) the following day. We talked about the mattresses for about 10 minutes. It was an easy conversation. He told me that he liked selling mattresses over the Internet, because people he dealt with typically knew what they wanted. He had a lot fewer returns that way.

We talked price – I ended up getting a good one; paying significantly less than “list,” and also less than the discount the guys in the brick & mortar stores offered. I was able to think it over & call back to let him know my answer – which was “I’ll take it!” I paid & then received a notice a few days later about when the mattress would be shipped to me. It was being manufactured to my specifications (King Size, etc), so it wasn’t sitting in a warehouse somewhere. It took a few weeks, but I felt good knowing that the mattress hadn’t been sitting on a shelf in a warehouse somewhere or possibly even returned.

Written on 01 January 2012 by Joseph Geierman under Daily Life, mattress buying with No Comments

Mattress Shopping Resources

While shopping for a mattress recently, I found that my usual methods of researching a big purchase were stymied. Objective websites and message boards with informed commenters were few and far between. I eventually did find some resources that helped me investigate mattresses and the whole buying process, but they were hard to come by. Those sites I thought were helpful are listed below – hopefully they will make life a little easier for others who are contemplating a mattress purchase.

Very early in this process, I learned that mattress shopping (like to car shopping) involves lots of marketing tricks, haggling & other high pressure sales techniques. Here are some of the best articles I found that described the mattress-buying process:

What the articles above lack is any kind of objective review of mattresses themselves. When it comes to things like electronics or cars, there are lots of enthusiasts out there who are discussing the pros and cons of various features. Mattresses don’t seem to inspire the same enthusiasm. That said, there are a few online forums and other sites that are worth checking out when trying to figure out how to rate the various makes and models out there:

  • Consumer Reports Mattress Forum – Consumer Reports has a fairly active mattress discussion forum.
  • What is the Best Mattress User Forum – the people who post here probably are the most educated about mattress types and brands. They also seem to tend towards having more specialized problems like fibromyalgia or lower back pain which forced them to become experts. Not always your “typical” consumer.
  • Sleep like the Dead – Features in-depth ratings for a variety of mattresses. Definitely more comprehensive than anything else I’ve found They do not disclose where those ratings come from, however, which makes the site a little suspicious. Even so, I used it as a resource during my search and purchase process.
  • Mattress Reviews Ratings Prices – one of the only review sites with information comparing prices. Unfortunately, they also don’t give their methodology, so I have to take everything on it with a huge grain of salt. Then again, I did look at it for comparison information.
  • Apartment Therapy: A Year in Bed Posts – a series where the author reviews a different mattress each month. I haven’t seen mattress reviews this comprehensive anywhere else.
  • NY Times Graphic from 2009 – Comparison of mattresses based on “organic” content vs claims
  • Fat Wallet Forum Deal Discussion: How to Buy a Mattress – one of the more recent discussions on the topic that I have found.

If I missed any important resources, let me know in the comments. I will write about the experience I had when actually making my mattress purchase in a future post.

Written on 30 May 2011 by Joseph Geierman under Daily Life, mattress buying with 1 Comment
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2009 – An Unexpectedly Good Year!

Too much has happened in 2009 for me not write a short note about it. When the year started, I didn’t think I’d be remembering it fondly at all – I’d just been laid off from a job I was very comfortable in, and was forced to join millions of other unemployed people in the toughest job market of the last 50 years. Few positions that I was qualified for were being posted; and of those, I did not get a lot of interest from their HR departments. Over the course of 6 months, I applied to 106 jobs. Only 5 or 6 of those applications resulted in interviews. Of those, only 3 were in-person. It was a frustrating time, to say the least.

For the most part, I think I kept an upbeat demeanor: I channeled my energies into networking and other job-search activities, and generally managed to keep busy. Ironically, on the day I felt most hopeless about my situation, I received a call from the law firm that I would end up accepting a position with. They wanted me to come downtown for an in-person interview – the rest is history. It’s funny the way things work out.

In fact, when I look back on 2009, it has been a surprisingly good year for me – especially professionally. Here are some of my ’09 accomplishments:

I appreciate all my friends and loved ones who stood by me in the bad times and the good this year, and look forward to more exciting changes in years to come!

Happy New Year, everyone – see you in 2010!


Written on 31 December 2009 by Joseph Geierman under Daily Life with 3 Comments