It may sound odd for a consumer advocate to ask a company to provide more fine print, but that is exactly what MrConsumer had hoped Costco would do.
Costco has had Tempur-pedic memory foam mattresses on sale for the past several weeks, and seemingly only making them available on its website. It is hard enough making the right decision about a mattress when you can actually try out several in the store. Imagine trying to buy one online almost blindly. That’s why having detailed specifications can help the prospective buyer make a more informed decision.
On Costco’s website, there are four different models of Tempur-pedic mattresses ranging in price from $1399 to $1899. MrConsumer wondered what the difference was between them. So might any purchaser, right? So he clicked the “compare” button on each to create a handy chart to find out.
*MOUSE PRINT:
That was helpful, wasn’t it? Every column has the identical description. The product page for each does have more information, but is mostly marketing mumbo jumbo like “TEMPUR® support layer: A thick TEMPUR® support layer provides body aligning support,” and “millions of individually adjusting TEMPUR® cells that adapt and conform to your unique shape and body weight.” And descriptions similar if not identical to this appear for all the mattresses.
Memory foam mattress shoppers should be given easy access to details like the firmness, overall thickness, composition of each layer, and how thick and dense each one is. A memory foam mattress is not all memory foam. The bottom six or seven inches is often a high density foam that does not have the conforming qualities of memory foam. It is simply a base. That’s why knowing how thick the actual memory foam layers are is so important.
Costco has buried some of this information or just not provided it.
And wouldn’t it be nice if the product names could be referenced at the manufacturer’s website and at competitors’ stores. Just to try find the Tempur-Contour-Select at Tempurpedic.com, for example.
Incidentally, if you think that clicking the specifications tab will reveal everything you need to know, think again. All four beds just say this:
So, Costco, if you are actually interested in selling mattresses, give us some real data to work with and not useless comparison charts.
The descriptions are different. There are two mattresses: the Contour Select and the Cloud Supreme. The pricing ($1,399.99 and $1,599.99 respectively) suggest the Cloud Supreme is the “better” mattress however Costco and Tempurpedic have defined this. For this I agree we need some fine print here to tell the difference. Since this is memory foam my guess is the Cloud Supreme is thicker.
The other two are the same mattresses, but this time in “sets.” In my experience buying mattresses a set means the mattress also comes with the box spring and looking at the pictures you can see that this appears to be the case. The first two pictures have a single mattress and the second two pictures have a mattress plus something else.
Mattress buying is a pain no matter where you shop.
If they don’t want to provide details then I don’t want to buy. Perhaps this is a way to encourage people to buy from the physical store instead?