How To Buy A Mattress Online: I Make It Easy For You
How to buy a mattress online…. you’d think it would be a simple as: find great mattress, click buy, enjoy great sleep.
Unfortunately, buying a mattress online can be very difficult and confusing, due to the sheer number of mattresses you can choose from. There are about 200 pages of mattresses on Amazon alone! In this environment, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the choices, leading to a paralysis in your decision-making or buyer’s regret when you think you should have bought one of the alternatives.
I’m here to help! I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to think about researching and reviewing these online mattresses. I’m pouring my collected experiences and knowledge into these 7 crucial tips to help you choose a great mattress online. I’ve also got my top 3 mattress recommendations that meet all the criteria at the bottom of the article if you want to save time and get straight into buying.
1. Look For Established Brands With Happy Customers
It seems that there is a new mattress brand popping up on the web every day. Some of these will turn out to be great mattresses, but you’re not going to know for sure as the company will have no track record.
Companies that have been in business for a while will have ratings from trusted places such as the Better Business Bureau, which can help give you peace of mind with your mattress purchase. After all, it’s a big purchase you need to feel confident with.
The longer a company has been in business the more reviews you’ll be able to find of their mattresses. This means there will have been time for people to leave both good and bad reviews: look for brands with lots of great reviews. Many people will pop on to sites and leave a five star review because they got good shipping (this should be a given with an online purchase). With brands that have been established for a while you’ll be able to find more useful feedback, such as how the mattress is performing after a year of use.
Look for established brands that have been in the game for a while and know what they’re doing. These guys should have loads of happy customers and be constantly updating their mattresses or putting out mattresses with new innovations to stay at the top of their field.
2. Find Independent Review Articles That Include Analysis From Real Users
As well as finding the reviews that companies gather on their websites from customers, you will have noticed that there are many independent websites out there reviewing mattresses and trying to help you choose the right one. I put my hand up, this website that I own and write is one of those very sites!
I think something that helps set my site apart from the others and make it more helpful for you as a customer with a big buying decision in front of you, is that I analyze what customers are already saying. I don’t give you my opinion of a mattress based on my own opinion only, because the opinion of one person is just not enough in this market. You need to find out what everyone is saying.
I spend hours reading what customers think, and summarize the good and the bad in my mattress reviews. This saves you a ton of your own research time and helps you get a better idea of the mattress you’re buying.
Here’s my pro tip if you want to do your own analysis of what people are saying: look at the 3 star reviews first. These “middle of the road” reviews are often more thorough and less emotional than the 1 star or 5 star reviews. They can be a goldmine of information.
3. Seek Out Great Customer Service
There is no better test of whether a company is good to buy from than their customer service. Customer service that is second to none is an essential for any online business, but not all companies have nailed this. If you don’t feel like you can trust a company, you’re not going to buy from them, simple as that.
4 Indicators of good customer service on a mattress company website:
- Free shipping
- Hassle free returns
- Transparency about where the mattress is made and what materials are used (or a willingness to disclose the info when asked)
- A live chat option
For each mattress I review, I test out the customer service for you and report back in my reviews. I might chat with them, I might email them. Sometimes I ask them really annoying and picky questions to see how they respond. I’m looking for those who are quick to reply (I live in a different time zone so I’m always aware of that), friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful.
You can think of this as kind of like online secret shopping, and I highly recommend you do it before you leap in and make a mattress purchase.
4. Check The Length Of The Sleep Trial And Warranty
You need 30 days to truly test a mattress before you’ll know if it’s a good fit for you. It’s therefore critical that you look at how long a sleep trial you are being offered with the mattress. There are many awesome mattresses out there that come with a 100 night sleep trial, and some of my favorites allow you up to a year! That’s right, there are mattresses out there that you can use at home for a whole year before you have to decide if you’re going to keep it.
Be careful if you’re purchasing your mattress on Amazon: many mattresses there only offer Amazon’s 30 day right of return.
A mattress should come with a warranty of at least ten years. Make sure the mattress you’re checking out has this, and that you won’t have to cover any shipping costs to have manufacturing defects corrected. The policy wording for the mattress should be easy to find on the company website, I think it’s a red flag if it’s not.
5. Look For US Made, Either Made To Order Or In Small Batches
Many of the best online mattresses are made in the USA, and this gives you some certainty around the quality of the materials used in the manufacturing process. You’ll also be supporting local economies and helping to keep that carbon footprint a little smaller.
The reason you want to look for mattresses that are either made to order or in small batches is: decompression.
Online mattresses are delivered in boxes that look unnaturally small for a mattress. To squeeze into them, the mattress is put through a beast of a machine called a roll pack machine, which squishes and compresses the mattress to within an inch of its life for shipping.
This is absolutely fine for the mattress, in fact it’s quite good fun unboxing them and watching them woosh to expand. However, if a mattress has been sitting around in its box for too long before it gets opened, it can expand unevenly. If you buy a mattress that is made to order or in small batches, you’ll know your mattress is fresh in its box and will expand exactly the way it should.
6. Check The Returns Process Is Easy
Let’s face it, no matter how confident you feel in making your online mattress purchase, there’s always going to be a small feeling of unease that wouldn’t be there if you’d tried it in the shop. Even though many companies offer amazing sleep trials that allow you to get a much better idea of the mattress than awkwardly perching on it in the shop ever would, you want to make sure it’s easy to return the mattress if it’s not right for you.
You’re never going to get your mattress back in that little box it came in, unless you have an industrial size roll press machine gathering dust in your massive garage. Some companies will ask you to package up the mattress as best you can, which can be a massive pain trying to find packaging big enough. You want to avoid this.
Look for companies that will arrange to collect the mattress without you having to do any packaging. Another great alternative is to buy from a company who donates returned mattresses to charity. You might have a slightly longer wait getting your refund with this return method, but your social conscience will feel great.
7. Look For Deals
The online mattress market is extremely competitive. These guys know it’s a crowded market and many offer deals to get your custom. Don’t think you need to wait until Black Friday or Cyber Monday to nab the best mattress deals, from what I saw of the Black Friday offers in 2019, many were not much better than the discounts you could get nearly any day of the year.
The good news is that if you click to any mattress companies from any of my articles, you will be automatically guaranteed to nab the best price and the best deal. If you visit a mattress website and you don’t see a deal, let me know! I’ll do my best to get you one.
OK, Thanks For The Tips. What Mattress Should I Buy?
I’ve reviewed many mattresses and seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ve tried mattresses in stores, I’ve bought my very own mattress in a box (no, I don’t get any free products, I prefer to analyze the opinions of many). I’ve spent hour after hour reviewing mattresses and writing detailed articles about them.
After all that work to bring honest, balanced, and worthy reviews to you here on my site, there are 3 mattresses that really stood out to me in 2021, that go forth as the best for 2022. They fulfill all the criteria I’ve outlined in the 7 tips for how to buy a mattress online and will have you snoozing comfortably through 2022 and beyond.
