Cheers To The Mattress Store, Where Everybody Knows My Name

Vicki Briganti – CW50 Writer / Producer / Editor

It's one thing to be a regular at your local watering hole like Cliff and Norm on the TV show "Cheers." It's quite another to be known by your first name by all the employees of a mattress store. The delivery team from one store came to my house so many times; they stopped using GPS. "We're going to Vicki's house," they'd say.

Since mattresses #1 - #3 had been Eurotop or Pillowtop (Where Do I Sleep From Here?), we decided maybe it was time for a firmer mattress. One online company uses a comfort rating system from 1-10. A rating of "1" is firm like sleeping on the floor and "10" is plush like floating on a cloud. I already have a floor. What I don't have is a mattress.

A new line of beds arrived in stores. The company formerly known as Simmons is now Beautyrest. With a comfort rating of 4, I tried the Beautyrest TruEnergy Adalee Plush Firm. Specs? Air Cool Memory Foam (trademarked) and Smart Response (registered trademark) Pocketed Coil (registered trademark). A sales guy told me this mattress is made of materials used by NASA. Did he mean the U.S. space program formerly known as NASA? Yeah, we see how well that turned out.

Since I had 100 days to exchange my Serta Perfect Sleeper Sapphire Suite Pillowtop, I visited the mattress store numerous times to try out more beds. You wouldn't believe how quickly 100 days goes by.

No Bed Compares To The Bed I Loved

I called a salesman at Serta before I bought the Serta flippable Pillowtop. They don't keep records of specs from their beds. Even though the name was similar to my former bed, the specs might not have been. There's no way to know. All I knew was it didn't feel like sleeping in my old Serta bed.

I decided to exchange the Serta for the Simmons (aka. Beautyrest). I'm sure you can guess what happened, right? It didn't work out. I slept on it for a few weeks and decided I didn't like it. A friend came over to check it out before I sent it back. She said it was soft and comfortable. She thought I should keep it. She offered to give me her old mattress from her guest bedroom. Here's what I learned: A friend listens to you complain about your mattress. A true friend offers to give you her mattress.

In case you lost track, it was mattress #4 that was returned. I still wasn't clear why these beds were bothering my back, and I wasn't sleeping through the night. I kept getting out of the new queen bed and sleeping in the twin bed I'd borrowed from my parents.

Since the "Howell" twin was my bed of choice during this time, I figured I needed to buy the current version of that bed. I called Spring Air, which is located in Grand Rapids. Much like Serta, they didn't have a record of the specs for my twin. "It's all new technology," she said. She recommended I go to a different store that carries the line of Spring Air mattresses. She said she'd help me find the comparable bed at the store where I was getting an exchange.

The comparable bed (mattress #5) was a Spring Air Back Supporter Platinum Amethyst Deluxe Eurotop. My original sales guy and I were wary of a bed being called "comparable." I felt certain this was going to be the right bed for me. He, however, didn't want to sell me the Spring Air because he already knew I wasn't going to like it, but he didn't tell me that until I paid for it, slept in it, and went back to see him for yet another mattress. Will the buying and returning ever end?

Stay tuned for the not-so-shocking conclusion in the continuing saga of the backbreaking bed(s)….

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