Buying a Mattress on the Internet: Not Always Smooth Sailing

My God, it's magnificent. I've always wanted a Flying Wallendas Bed, and here it is!

I'm not the kind of guy who over indulges himself, unless you count $100 bottles of bourbon, $500 cowboy boots and $12 per-pair casual socks (love those Bombas). Okay, so maybe I indulge myself a little. But, the newest piece of furniture in my house is a $450 expandable dining table and four wooden folding chairs to match. I bought it six or seven years ago. It has been used exactly once. Virtually every other stick of furniture in my house is at least 20 years old.

Yep, it's 2014, and the solitary time this expandable dining table has been used.

I have purchased one suit in 20 years – a black one I bought on sale online at Joseph A Bank a year or so ago. I bought it to wear on the very rare occasions that my funeral-home-owning friends need an extra old man to stand around solemnly and nod at mourners. It was a business expense, really. I only need work another 35 hours at the funeral home to pay for it, the white shirts, conservative ties and black London Fog raincoat that comprises the total ensembles. My friends, of course, could just dress me in it when I die. In any event, it is pretty much reserved for funeral-home use.

So, recently pulling the trigger on a $700 mattress was a big deal. My old mattress was at least 25 years old. The girl I was dating at the time and I went on a mattress-buying outing one Saturday. We decided we would each buy the same mattress/box-spring set for our apartments. That way, it didn't matter whose bed we wound up in, it would be familiar. Ah, to be young and silly again. I'm sure she's been through at least two or three mattresses since our pact, but, being a guy, I had the same mattress through six residences, a half-dozen relationships and a quarter of a century. Time to buy a mattress.

In fact, I pulled the mattress-buying trigger twice. The first time was the Thursday or Friday of Memorial Day weekend. As every red-blooded American should, I marked Memorial Day by buying a mattress because I couldn't wait until the President's Day sales next year. I found a 14-inch Novaform mattress at Costco regularly priced at $899; I bought it for $699. The shipping was free with a promise of 5 to 10 days delivery. The date of purchase was either May 23^rd or May 24^th. I wasn't leaving home again on a trip until June 7^th. That was at least 13 days from purchase. Plenty of time for a parcel promised in 5 to 10 days to arrive. The odds were with me that it would actually be less than 10 days, I reasoned.

My strategy seemed to be validated with a Costco e-mail the following Wednesday (5/29) that my mattress had shipped and delivery was scheduled for Friday (5/31) before 7:30 p.m. Well, 7:30 p.m. Friday came and went. No mattress. I logged onto Costco's Website to check its tracking update for my mattress only to discover that it shipped from Tupelo, Mississippi on Wednesday, making landfall 185 miles southwest in Jackson, Miss around midnight. And, it was still sitting there.

I thought, okay, I'll probably see it the following Monday (6/3). Nope. I rechecked the tracker: still in Jackson. I live chatted UPS to ask why the hell my mattress was still in Jackson. “We don't work on the weekends,” I was told. Well, we all know that's not true. UPS trucks are zipping around all the time. But, maybe the warehouse crews don't work weekends. The next day (Tuesday 6/4), or day 11 of this fiasco, my mattress is still sitting in, wait for it.....Jackson. I could have loaded the damn thing in a wheelbarrow and pushed it from Tupelo to Jackson in 11 days. Point of fact, I wouldn't have pushed it to Jackson because it's the wrong direction. It's southwest for crying out loud. I would have pushed it north east 185 miles, give or take, to Birmingham, Alabama.

On Tuesday morning, I live chatted customer service at Costco. I was told that if I factored in Memorial day and weekends, that my mattress wasn't really due at my house before Friday (6/7). I'm like, “Okay, can you tell me exactly what date to expect it?”

“No, we can't guarantee delivery dates.”

“Well,” I responded, “Costco had no problem promising delivery when it shipped.”

“That's why we don't guarantee delivery dates.”

“So, what you're telling me is, if it's not here by Friday evening, I should get back in touch, right? That's your answer?”

“Yes,” she replied.

I explained why that wasn't going to work. I was leaving town on Friday morning and that mattress wouldn't last in my carport over the weekend. The only things I can put in my carport overnight with any reasonable expectation they will still be there the next morning are a car and an anvil. I can't take a chance on it arriving while I was gone, I told her. Then she said the magic words: “Do you want to cancel?” Why, yes, I do.

That conversation took place the morning of June 4^th. Today is June 16^th and I'm still waiting for my $700 refund to appear in my bank account. Let's see, carry the one...that's 12 days. I checked the tracker on Wednesday (6/5) and it informed me the order was cancelled and the mattress was on its never-ending journey back to Tupelo.

The moral of the story is, I'll never again buy anything from Costco that I can't load in a cart and push out the door of a Costco store. It's easy to be spoiled by Amazon Prime, but I think even the U.S. Post Office can move a package farther than 200 miles in 11 days. Oh, and so can some other Internet retailers.

Well, I got it this far. (Notice the unexpanded version of my dinning table to the left.).

Right after I ordered the mattress from Costco, I went to the Website of Wholesale Beddings and ordered sheets. They were having a sale, too. I screwed up and ordered a set of regular fitted sheets and hit Purchase. Once I had done that, I couldn't find a way to cancel that order. I went ahead and ordered a set of special fitted sheets to accommodate a 14-inch mattress. They arrived at my door four days later. Of course, now I didn't have a mattress to put them on. Well, the regular set I could have kept and used on my bed, but I didn't need them.

Now, I had two sets of sheets to return. That seemed like a lot of extra effort, which is verboten in the slacker code. I got back online searching for foam-mattress deals. I found a 14-inch Simmons Beauty Rest foam mattress at Overstock.com. Supposedly it was a $2,000 mattress on sale for $700. I seriously doubt it's regularly priced at two grand, but I'm sure it was a deal nonetheless. 

Oh, crap. How do I get this 98-lb thing up the stairs?

I pulled the trigger again. This time I was able to pay through PayPal. What do you know, it showed up at my house three days later. Three days, Costco!

Rolled up in a box, the parcel tipped the scale at 98 pounds, according to the UPS label. It was up to me to somehow wrestle this nearly 100-pound load into the house, up the stairs and onto my box springs, which I decided to keep when I hauled the old mattress to the dump.

Opening the back door, I laid the box down with the top against the top step going into the house, lifted up the back end and shoved. I set it back on its end in the dining area. Handles were cut into two sides of the box, I grabbed one and dragged the box to the steps going to the third level. Now what?

It's all down hill from here.

Laying the box down against the second step I flipped it end over end up the stairs until it rested on hallway floor. Then it was just a matter of dragging it into the master bedroom.

I cut open the top end of the box, revealing the plastic-wrapped mattress. Flipping the box one last time, I shook out the rolled-up mattress, which I then leaned on the bed rail and pushed up onto the box springs. I had to cut away the plastic wrapping.

Springing open, the mattress itself was still encased in a plastic wrapper, but it flattened out.

Sizing it up, I convinced myself that it was the wrong mattress. It sure didn't look to be 14 inches high. I grabbed a tape measure, calculating it was a mere 7-inches high. I could hear it taking in air, but had serious doubts it would suck in enough air to bring its height to 14 inches. 

It continued to grow. Within 10 minutes, it was indeed 14 inches high. I cut away the plastic casing, and behold, the Bed Magnifico! I was able to stretch the old mattress pad over it. After washing the new sheets, I made up the bed. My God, it's magnificent!

I've always wanted a Flying Wallendas bed. You know, one you need to take a running leap and spring up into. Or, find an assistant to bend down, make a cradle with their hands and alley-oop you up into the bed. Now, I finally have one. This time of year I typically sleep in the guest room on the lowest level of the house. It's cooler. I'd need to turn the air conditioner down another 5 to 8 degrees to get the temp cool enough on the third level to sleep. But, the night temps this week were mild enough that the air conditioner wasn't going to kick in. I opened the windows in the master bedroom and put in my fourth night on the new mattress last night.

At this stage of my life, I don't sleep all that well and need all the help I can get. I couldn't be happier with this mattress. I dread heading back down to the guest room as the night temps get back up to where they are historically this time of year.

But, now, I have another reason, besides football, to look forward to fall.