Fed Up With Mattress Store Fine Print?

“Mattress Sale Mattress Sale Mattress Sale!”

If you watch TV or read a newspaper you’ll find it hard to miss the numerous ads proclaiming unbeatable savings on a mattress and boxspring or free financing for 1 year or even longer.  Some slick-talking pitchman tosses out deal after deal while photo after photo appears and disappears before your very eyes like a New York minute. So have you ever really just taken a moment and tried to read the fine print? Good luck my eyes are nearly perfect and without TIVO or U-verse DVR type recorder you would never know what the ads actually say.

Example 1

“Twin Mattress only $35.00 each piece” is shouted out by the pitchman while the fine print says “WHEN SOLD IN SETS ONLY”

Example 2

“King Mattress set starting at 499.00 each piece” again belted out by the pitchman while in letters you need a magnifying glass to read says again the words “WHEN SOLD IN SETS ONLY”.  In this case, the king is 3 pieces which actually costs 297.00 and I’m telling you there isn’t a mattress salesperson in the world that would sleep on this thing themselves.

Example 3

Here’s my favorite thing stores advertise “free financing for 1 year” sometimes 2 years and then in fine print mention that you have to spend $1800.00 minimum or $2000.00 minimum to qualify for the free financing. Let’s face it most people purchasing a mattress set don’t spend that much so the entice you to spend more by dangling spectacular financing offers.

 

You can buy this mattress for only $47.00 a month!

Personally I’m fed up with stores trying to bait us in with low prices and financing offers with no payments for years that our purchases will not qualify for. It is no wonder salespeople are often thought of as dishonest and untrustworthy. Recently I went up against a neighboring competitor who claimed to have a mattress that is what we call a “scuff”(a new mattress refused by the customer and returned to the factory due to a mark or scuff) the salesperson told the customer that he was giving it to them for half the price with no warranty because of the “damage”. By the way, the discount was supposedly ½ price and included no warranty. After the ½ price discount was applied the cost was nearly $1000.00 dollars. I didn’t buy their claim for a moment and Googled the mattress set online for the customer who was leery of the adversaries deal. We found it on sale now at 2 different places in a matter of a couple of minutes for $1149.00 and $1199.00.

The BS that mattress stores continue to feed to their shoppers has got to stop. Keep it up to competition you know who you are. I’m going to call you and others out each and every time you tarnish our industry with such antics.

Have you had an experience with a mattress store where you seen an ad and got to the store and was less than impressed with their marketing practices? Tell us about it.