So a saga that's been ongoing since June (June!) has now come to a close.
This aforementioned saga involves a mattress purchase from a company called Pure-Rest Organics (
http://www.purerest.com ), a manufacturer and seller of organic mattresses.
Why an organic mattress in the first place, you might ask. My son is almost eight years old now, and has been sleeping on an el cheap-o Wal-Mart mattress since he was born. I had no idea how toxic these things were with all the fire retardants and other chemicals they are sprayed down with. As I read more and more about these products (conventional mattresses), the more I feel guilty of not ever having known about organic mattresses sooner. Not that anything's wrong with him, but guilty, guilty, guilty.
So I set out to buy him an organic mattress. And one for me, too.
In June I called Pure-Rest for price quotes. Their mattresses are hella expensive. Hella. Way hella. Some are like $5000 and I am not kidding. As I started looking around, I would see other companies with cheaper organic mattresses but in my research I would find discrepancies like certain chemicals they contained that in my mind disqualified them from the "organic" name altogether. I wanted the purest organic mattresses that money could buy. I wanted Pure-Rest.
Ultimately, I found another company called Simply Organic Sleep (
http://www.simplyorganicsleep.com ) that offered very similar products for much cheaper. Same latex rubber manufacturer in Sri Lanka (Latex Green), similar mattress descriptions, etc. In further research, I found that this particular company had previously done business under other names and also that they had numerous complaints with the Better Business Bureau. This scared me a little. I would flip back and forth between their website and that of Pure-Rest.
And then I saw a little link: "We do price matching" or somesuch.
Yes! So I called Pure-Rest and after a couple of weeks waiting for call-backs was eventually put in touch with a woman named Dottie, who is the owner's mother. Dottie didn't seem too keen on price-matching though. It was like pulling teeth to get her to match the price of what Simply Organic Sleep was offering, but finally she did and the discounts were significant. I also talked her into e-mailing me the quote.
We agreed that I would purchase my son's mattress first and then if I was satisfied with the process and the quality, I would call back and order my mattress at the price quoted.
My son's mattress took forever to come, weeks and weeks and weeks. I kept calling to check on status and kept getting the runaround that Pure-Rest was moving their warehouse from Nebraska or some shit to California, and that was causing an "unexpected" delay. Finally his arrived, and it was fine. Probably the most expensive mattress for a child his age ever, but fine. Fine. Not wonderful, but fine. Fine.
Against my better judgement, I decided to call back and order my mattress now. I was three weeks before I finally got hold of Dottie again. She gave me a runaround about how rubber prices have gone up "70%" since the original quote. She wanted to go through the whole price matching process again, and I was getting pissed. She told me she would have to call me back and didn't. I would call back and ask for her, and they would say Dottie was busy. Some new girl there wanted to help me and wanted to take my order, but she couldn't answer any of my technical questions about the mattress and was getting frustrated and finally indicated that she would have Ginny, the owner, to give me a call.
Ginny called me to discuss. She was nice. This was in contrast with Dottie, who reminded me of a car salesman. I didn't fully trust Ginny though either after she proceeded to give me a price quote that was $1000 more than Dottie had given me. I brought this up and she lowered the price by another $500 and told me it was their best deal ever. I again pointed out that this was $500 more than I was quoted and sent her a copy of the e-mails from Dottie. I'm not sure why I had to do this, because the previous customer service person had my price quote right on her screen.
While she waited for my e-mails, Ginny and I chatted a bit. She discussed a divorce she was going through, and the move of their warehouse, and the rising costs of rubber, and the fly-by-night companies in the organic mattress industry that are buying up inventory on credit and then going out of business and leaving the manufacturers with the bill.
When she got my e-mails, I could tell she didn't know what to say about the price. I had a feeling she was going to stop cold on the price quote she had already given, so I asked her would she just split the difference with me between what she had quoted and what her mom had quoted. This meant I would pay $250 more than I had originally planned, but I wanted the mattress and it was a good discount they were giving me, and probably a part of me felt sorry for her and didn't want to be a dick about it.
She agreed, and said they would have my mattress to me that next week.
Next week came, and no mattress. Then another. Then another. I called back several times to get status and was given all kinds of excuses why they hadn't sent it yet. Finally it did arrive about a week ago. Today is the middle of November.
It was supposed to be assembled when it arrived, but it wasn't. I had specifically talked with Ginny about this. This mattress, too, is just fine. Not amazingly wonderful as I had always pictured in my mind. Not amazingly comfortable. Just fine.
Today I look at Pure-Rest's website and there is the following information message (below) on their front page, so now I wonder if what we got was even organic at all or instead one of these ones that were sprayed down with fire retardants. My advice is to just stay away from this company altogether.
-Ox.
From http://www.purerest.com November 15, 2008:
NOTE FRAUD WATCH: There are a couple of fraudulent companies out there. There are a few that are a bit less pure but 2 that we have found that are absolutely lying about the purity of their mattresses.
The first is THE NATURAL BED STORE. We had carried their mattresses and we have emails where they admitted (after a customer complained) that they had mistakenly sent one with chemically treated FR fabric in it. Then when they were to replace it, they did so with another one with chemicals. They sent emails admitting this to me so I have proof. They sent 4 to us with chemicals, and 5 to my customers. So we now have all these chemical mattresses (we did take returns ourselves as we always protect the consumer) and THE NATURAL BED STORE refused to pay us for them and take them back. We will not sell any mattress with chemicals, and it is so wrong to deceive people trying to get healthy by being a dishonest manufacturer.
The other is Live for Tomorrow. I do believe they have filed bankruptcy yet again and may pop up under another name. They were Pure Slumber and have stolen from each major organic mattress manufacturer out there. Just be careful. Make sure you get test results on materials from the mattress company if you want total purity. If you are concerned about whether the company is legitimate, just make sure they themselves and the manufacturer of the mattresses have been in business for at least 5 years.
There are quite a few natural mattress manufacturers that are honest, look for them. We have proven ourselves with our extensive testing of ALL our raw materials. This guarantees purity. Any questions, just call us.
