Mattress Buying Tips -- How to Find the Best Mattress to Buy Without Pain

These mattress buying tips will help you keep your cool under the sales pitches thrown your way, so you can find the best mattress to buy without injury to your body or your wallet.

First make sure you have done your homework, include mattress comparison shopping (without your wallet in hand) so you know the best one to buy for your personal needs and comfort. Your next step is to decide where you want to make your purchase and how to get the best deal.

Mattress Buying Tips: Finding Best Prices

There are really just three ways to find the best price:

1. Comparison shop between retailers, online retailers and discount stores. There can be wild differences, but you won't know that unless you compare mattress prices.
2. Wait for a sale on what you want. Since most stores have sales frequently, you probably won't have long to wait.
3. Negotiate. Most people don't realize that price is negotiable, or else they don't like the haggling process, but it really does pay.

Mattress Buying Tips: Understanding Markups, "Specials" and Real Deals.

First, it may come as no surprise that mattress retailers might decide to jack up a price in order to mark it down as "on sale." This is more easily done in the mattress industry because prices are not standard and can vary widely from store to store.

Of course what makes this possible is the fact that it's very difficult to compare exact mattress models. They all have different names, may look different and you can never really know if two mattresses are exactly alike -- you can't look inside to check.

This is why it is SO important to comparison shop before making your final decision.

Some stores are just more honest than others, some would rather cut the price and sell more, and some just want to squeeze the most they can out of every sale. To be blunt, there is a lot of deception out there. Transparency is not the primary goal of the mattress industry as a whole, although of course there are exceptions.

If you shop enough, you will find some order emerging out of chaos. Some names of mattresses might begin to get repeated, some salespeople might be honest enough to tell you which ones they carry are truly similar to what another store carries. Eventually, if you are patient enough, it happens.

Mattress Buying Tips: Sales and Discounts

Mattress retailers do have sales, and there are also some true discount retailers... and they also have sales. Ideally, you would want to purchase the mattress of your choice at the best possible price.

This is not always possible, though, and sometimes it is worth paying more to get better service, nicer salespeople, superior care and attention, prompt delivery, and so on. Time is worth money and avoiding customer service hassles or neglect is sometimes even more valuable than saving time.

Not all sales are great deals. As mentioned, some less-than-ethical retailers jack up the original price in order to put it on sale. Aggressive comparison shopping is often needed to find the best mattress sales.

Mattress Buying Tips: Navigating Sales Pressure and Techniques

Some mattress salespeople are truly helpful, honest and knowledgeable. These people are golden and certainly worth your loyalty, even if you have to pay a bit more than you would somewhere else.

But if the salesperson's boss thinks it's fine to triple the competitive price of a mattress in order to offer a 20 percent "discount" then it is probably better to go somewhere else. Sad but true.

Some mattress sales people are trained to use misleading tactics and techniques in order to get you to buy NOW... or to buy something you didn't want because they didn't have what you really wanted... or to buy something that's much more than you expected to pay...

These are the pressure tactics you need to resist.

• We only have one in stock/ there is only one left.
• If you buy today you get it at this price, but if you wait until tomorrow the price will go up.
• This model will be replaced by a model that costs twice as much.

Pressure to get something different:

• We don't have A, but we have B, which is identical to A for the same price (but it really isn't identical -- you need the specs on B to find out).
• We don't have A, but we have B, which is better than A (and it also costs more).
• We don't have A in the version you want, but we have A-2 which has a different feature (but you already decided you don't want that feature).
• We don't carry A anymore because it's discontinued, but B has replaced it. (but dozens of online retailers still carry A)

Pressure to change your choice

• A isn't really the right one for you, B would be better (they might be giving you a sincere recommendation worth listening to, but you'll need ask them more questions to find out--don't take their word for it, ask for reasons).
• You don't need the features of A, it's an unnecessary addition (because they don't sell A).
• A is not a good mattress (is this true, or is it because they don't sell A?)

Mattress Buying Tips -- Negotiation:

Mattress buying is not unlike car buying. There is a possibility that you will get this classic closing technique.

• You ask for a mattress price. You get an answer. You say you didn't expect to pay quite that much.
• The salesperson then says, "If I can get you 20 percent off this price, will you buy today?"

It's hard to say no to this question, which is why you need to prepare for it. You need to know exactly what you want before you begin negotiating. Some people begin to haggle too soon, not sure if they really want the mattress, but then they find themselves trapped into buying something they didn't really want because it was "such a great deal." Don't fall for it. Knowing what you want and the price you want to pay beforehand will help you avoid this.