The war to sell you a mattress

A dozen years ago, I had a house built, and I bought all the appliances myself. I thought I would research the market, find the sweet spot, and get a good deal through a specialty appliance store because I was getting everything at once. Boy, was I wrong.

I subscribed to Consumer Reports online, and came up with what I thought was the right brand: GE "Gold". I bought everything in the line: stove, microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator, washer, and dryer. Within 5 years, the washer and dryer had both been replaced, almost all the plastic accessories on the fridge had broken, the stove's convection fan failed, and one of the rails on the storage pan fell off, several screws fell out of the dishwasher before I ever started noticing, and the silverware tray broke, and I couldn't keep microwave lights working.

What I finally figured out was that ALL of the stuff CR is reviewing is made by a few companies, and it's ALL crap. They make it seem like you can buy something "good" by paying twice as much, but even if CR is truly impartial, there's no material difference. I got more years of service out of the second-hand, refurbished, mismatched washer and dryer that I bought from the ratty converted house/shop on 3rd street than I got out of the "higher" end models, and paid 1/4 of the price.

And I'll tell you something else for free: it was damn refreshing to hear the guy who FIXES UP appliances for a living tell me he wouldn't even take my old units off my hands to refurbish -- for free -- because they really were total junk. Talk about salt on the wound! Find a local guy who does this and ask HIM what you should buy; not Consumer Frickin' Reports.

Before I was born, my parents went to Sears, and bought a "good" Kenmore washer and dryer. They lasted almost 30 years, till they couldn't get some replacement part for the dryer. I've concluded that the only way to get this level of quality is to buy "commercial" kit, and pay TEN times as much.

Have you checked out The Wirecutter/Sweethome? I find their reviews thorough and they always give you several options while explaining why you might choose one over the other. Here is their dishwasher review for example: http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-dishwasher/

> they don't exactly tell you BUY THIS, DONT BUY THAT

> but for what I care about it sucks, its hard to use, and it doesn't dry dishes AT ALL.

I'm confused, it sounds like you wish CR had just told you which dishwasher to buy without going into more detail, but you also wish they had gone into more detail about specific strengths and weaknesses so you could make a decision based on what's most important to you.

Did CR just not talk about the things you hate about your dishwasher, or did they talk about it, but only as part of a complicated, confusing review?

I've generally found CR to be a million times more informative than any of the crappy, sleazy affiliate marketing sites peddling "reviews" that clog up the first few pages of Google search results. That said, I haven't really looked at them for a few years, so maybe they've gone downhill. Their business model does seem harder to sustain in the internet-era.

I think one issue with any consumer product is that it is hard to find their issues when searching by generic terms (e.g. bran X problems) vs specific terms (brand X error Y). So it is only once you have the device installed and run into problems do you know which keywords to search.

Modern dishwashers basically suck except for looks, rack capacity/configurations and quietness. They are now all low water use and you can't get phosphate based dishwasher detergent. God help you if you have hard water or some other issues. I have a kitchenaid top of the line that has multiple cleaning sessions including a fancy auto-detect-dirty dishes pro wash feature that never cleans satisfactorily. I have to run on "tough" mode with extra rinse at high temperature to get anything "clean". And I say "clean" because if the water softener hasn't recharged or it's rained or I don't have cascade platinum, rinse aid, and vinegar then the dishes come out cloudy at best or still dirty. And then you have to run dishwasher cleaner every 2 weeks or so... Wine glasses are basically impossible to clean without streaks or residue. And then like you, drying dishes even on the dry cycle depends on relative humidity.. :) That being said I can't run a dry cycle by itself.. it has to run after a wash no matter what.

I bought a house four years ago. When I got in the only thing left standing was the microwave, and the stove. I needed a clean sweep of all the appliances. I went through the reviews, and went to a number of appliance stores. What I found to be the best tell of a good appliance. Was after market parts. I made sure everything I bought had readily available parts. I spent just about 200, and stocked up on spare parts for all my appliances. I went to the appliance stores again, and said notify me of any scratch and dent, clearance etc. of these models. This worked rather well.

The only appliance I had issues with was the dishwasher. While I had parts for washer, dryer, fridge, stove, and dishwasher. The dishwasher had a gasket just under the pump at the bottom of the unit. Every several months it would rupture due to being cheap plastic. I just grabbed one from my shelf and switched it out.

This model also applied to my family. when recommending a unit with more readily available parts. The repairs were less expensive. Are these the best units, not by a long shot. But I know I can repair it at least.

They weight energy efficiency way too high in their reviews of everything. Appliances, cars, etc. It means if you follow their recommendations you get dishwashers that don't dry your dishes and cars that can't accelerate to the speed limit on a freeway on ramp.

Which dishwasher was it?

It’s a mess...

Quoting from link below:

GrubHub / Seamless owns MenuPages, Allmenus, Restaurants on the Run, DiningIn, and Delivered Dish.

Seamless takes a percentage, not a flat fee, of the total food and beverage amount, even though its involvement is the same whether an order is for $10 or $250. Restaurants can choose from four commission levels (12.5%, 15%, 17.5%, and 20%); the more a restaurant pays, the higher up it will appear in the search results. When you search for restaurants on Seamless, you may have noticed that, in the default view, the results appear to be random, but they’re actually arranged by who paid what.

And unlike with, say, Google search results, there’s no disclaimer.

http://tribecacitizen.com/2016/03/01/why-restaurants-hate-gr...

Yeah basically he is committing extortion and blackmail, pretty sad.

Funnily enough, I'm a guitar player too and I know exactly who/what you are talking about... I guess the pool is smaller than I have always assumed. :)

Given how much malicious behaviour is often involved in SEO and strong marketing, I'd say a lot of techies try to come up with "clever technical solutions" in order to try and avoid unethical business practices.

I couldn't agree more.

Id say it's huge. More like a tens or hundred of thousands at one point. Everyone and there mother was blogging. Now it's just sexy insta pics holding brand name merchandise with hash tags mixed into 20 others as the advertising notice.

Sounds like seo took hold on its own over time. It accumulated links and ranking naturally.

My impression is that, if you find a niche, stick with it, and do at least nominal marketing, you'll make a few bucks. But emphasis on few. For most people, it's more akin to a nice hobby than a real business.

> I just assume there is a cognitive dissonance and their talents are valuable even if I can't see how.

I think that's the right attitude. Even if you look down upon SEO, there's no denying that the guy learned a skill that took time and effort, plus took some risks that it wouldn't work out.

I bought a California king from Zinus, they sent me two of them, and didn’t want the second one back. I paid less than 300, and now my parents have a free mattress too. One gripe was the lack of warnings on the box. I accidentally punctured the plastic trying to drag the package into my bedroom and one puncture was like a deploy mechanism that left me trapped in a door way as the mattress slowly inflated on me. We laughed about it, but I’m a large man, I can only imagine how a small person or child would have dealt with that situation.

Bought one of those recently, most comfortable mattress I've ever had, and the cost was amazing. No idea why one would pay $3000 for a Temper-Pedic. Even if this mattress only lasted a few years I could buy 10 of them and still come out ahead.

Anything good you know on Amazon for traditional spring mattresses? Foam murders my back.

Secondino Zinus. Idk if it'll last 20 years but for that price I only need it to last 5.

I wish I could do the same. Here in Japan I had to settle for a pricey inner spring. Damn islands.

Not surprising at all, because it's the main cause of aggressive and shady sales tactics. Which is exactly what happens when a company has too much money for sales and marketing. If someone created a business of selling X so profitable that 99% of sales is reinvested in sales and marketing you would have people selling X knocking your door 24/7 because sales would be the only way to scale up such business. However such profitable businesses are typically possible only because of false believes planted into the target audience. In this case, the parent comment debunks the false believe that paying $500-1000 for an average China-made mattress is a great deal.

Your comparison is unfair, given that new web apps are being created/updated (but also abandoned) constantly, and this requires work. Mattresses have been invented long ago, and can be mostly produced by robots. Mattresses should be a commodity, and be priced accordingly.

The evidence for the mattress industry being mostly a marketing scam is very old. There are a lot of brands but a very small number of manufacturers of the parts - there was only one for springs when this article was written seventeen years ago. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/shopping/2000/11/going_to...

My brother has a foam mattress in his guest room. He found it on Craigslist (it was someone's unused guest bed), used it himself for several years, then replaced it with a larger spring mattress.

I can't stand sleeping on the foam mattress for more than a night or two. When I wake up it's like I've sunk into the foam and have been immobilized for hours. People are supposed to be able to move when they sleep.

He's since gotten an air bed for the other room, and I choose that one when I go to visit.

I ordered a spring mattress off the internet 7-8 years ago. I want to say overstock, but who knows. It wasn't a very good mattress--too thin. Even so it was giant when it was delivered. It's hard to see how a nice queen spring mattress could be sold online. Any company trying to sell that would have to figure out warehousing and last mile delivery.

I think one of the newer “bed in a box” companies do, either Leesa or Casper. They sell the usual rolled up foam mattress as well as a spring version, though I don’t know how they ship the spring mattress.

Standard bed / boxsprings need specialized delivery. So the local display room & warehouse model works better.

The online mattress companies are all built around compressing and using UPS to ship.

I sleep on firm mattresses and was able to find a "firm" rated cooling gel memory foam mattress. There are levels ~$300 where they have at least one layers of breathable egg crate foam.

There's loads of spring mattresses on Amazon for cheap.

I think OP means Aliexpress where you can order single items.

Not really, just use a real adblocker and move on with your life. Adtech has plenty of problems but this kind of silly abuse is easily caught and filtered out with no effort. You might even cause yourself more annoyance with fraud and spam prevention tools used with common services.

Ironically, at work untrusted extensions are blocked so can't install ad blockers.

Next time ask the IKEA staff which one they buy. I forgot the name, but I bought one after a clerk in that department said, "We all own this one." It's amazing. Sometimes I wake up in the morning marveling at how comfortable I was.

I bought my mattress about 20 years ago (probably new forms of life evolving in it by now), one of those memory foam overlays gave it a new lease on life for about AU$200. Very comfortable. That and a down pillow and I'm hard pressed to leave bed at times.

Essentially just looks like some plastic foam, whether it's worth that price I couldn't say.

Is there a lot of nuance to latex? Or are they pretty similar/competitive with other latex mattresses?

Doesn't Ikea sell the standard mattress sizes? Do you mean a lack double & single tall mattress sizes?

The fact diamonds can't be tracked means they're all, effectively, blood diamonds, given that everyone in the chain has a huge incentive for people to believe they're not and absolutely nobody has any incentive to tell the truth about them if they are.

Lying about whether a diamonds is a blood diamond is the only move which makes sense, so everyone must assume every diamond is a blood diamond, as it is impossible to prove otherwise.

Possibly a good time to plug moissanite again: http://diamondssuck.com

>We could have just as easily chosen arguments to be a dance instead of a war.//

I don't see how that works - partners dancing together are cooperating to improve the outcome. Those competing in business are (unfortunately, in capitalist systems) almost always trying to profit and destroy their competitors. It's perhaps a bit like moshing?

War fits as a better metaphor for companies under capitalism.

If the companies were helping each other and targeting better products with less profit, that would be more like dance partners.

You mean, like a dance battle, oh wait...

I think the idea is backwards. We don't use military metaphors for anything competitive, we use words related to competition for describing war, because war is competitive by nature. It goes back and forth from there.

And they certainly won't tell you "don't buy any of these things". I recently came across BabyGearLab (http://babygearlab.com), which has nice reviews of, say, different car seats or different strollers, and will tell you which one is the best if money is no object, which one is the best if you're on a limited budget, etc. But what I really want is the web site that will tell me "you don't need a smart sock". Yes, that's a thing.

Of course I can just not buy a smart sock. But I pretty much know that at some point I'm going to buy some thing that's almost as useless because it's for the baby.

Erm, the traditional journalism buisness knows ads as well. And there are countless examples of articles being stopped investigating/published, because the main add customer objected and threatened to leave

Or when it so happens, that the boss of the media concern is a golfclub buddy of the senator who is accused of something.

etc. etc.

The Wirecutter/Sweethome states that part of their review filter is that reviewed products must be available for purchase online. This results in the exclusion of a lot of specialty and other retail-only goods.

I will note that for many products, they have recommended items not sold on Amazon, even over competing products that are available for sale on Amazon.

And let's face it: when Amazon sells the majority of goods most people are likely to buy (and that you are likely to review), "affiliate bias" isn't really that big of an issue because it just means you're comparing one Amazon product against another. At that point, the primary bias would be from recommending the most expensive product available on Amazon, thus earning the highest commission. And Wirecutter/Sweethome definitely doesn't do that.

Morality? Wanting better stuff, that is actually designed to work well? Environmentalism? Altruism?

Surely not everyone is only driven by greed?

While I'm sure you're right about the root of the word, this notion of entrepreneur itself comes from the french verb "entreprendre", which means something similar to undertake or enter a task/business.

I did not say it would be easy ... Only that it's easier then producing and selling the products/services/needs yourself. It will take much less work if you figure out a clever way to stand in-between.

Because it is hard .. and in the way they are doing it, unethical.

I've suffered with backpain for almost a decade, a new foam mattress (Ikea) replacing a spring mattress seems to have helped a lot. It's a supportive foam with a memory foam top; firmer than the sprung mattress.

The only downside is, err, it doesn't bounce when you want to bounce, if y' catch my drift.

It feels quite different, definitely warmer (not a problem in UK), took a few days to get used to.

That's not true. You can buy a firm foam mattress if you want it.

What was your sleeping position and what firmness of the mattress?

Mind sharing what the company/bed was?

This guy looks honest. He was even featured on Indie Hackers I think.

https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/

No. Affiliate sales is just a basic "every sale you send my way, you make some money" arrangement, different only from traditional commissioned sales in that the affiliates usually don't work "directly" for the company selling the product.

Multi level marketing (MLM) schemes are situations in which people make money, or are promised money, based on their ability to recruit additional affiliate salespeople. The typical MLM pitch is "if you sell product X, we'll give you a (typically huge) sum of money, and also if you convince someone else to enter into this same agreement, we'll give you a different (usually smaller) sum of money, and what's more you'll get money for every sale that recruit makes, any people they recruit, and any sales they make, recursively on down the tree."

The con is usually in the fact that product X is difficult née impossible to sell, and that entering into such an agreement in the first place requires payment into the scheme. Those factors result in the people towards the "root" of the tree making tons of money simply from the fact that more people are getting recruited and paying in at lower levels. They make money from the tree growing, even though the leaves are not making sales.

This is widely considered unethical (and illegal, in some cases) since its primary profit engine is recruitment under usually-false pretenses. MLM can be practiced ethically between a given two parties, but usually only makes money due to subsequent unethical practices (e.g. one seasoned affiliate marketeer agrees to be a recruit of another such seasoned salesperson in a multilevel scheme, knowing full well the behavior of the scheme; they then both go on to enrich themselves and each other by shilling unsuspecting rubes with the typical "you can work your own hours, get tons of money, and, if you grow your network big enough, rake in the cash while your recruits do all the hard work!" sell concealing the "...for a nominal [signup|monthly|etc] fee" hook).

Edit: removed accidentally repeated repeated words.

It's more like a salesman making a commission for recommending or selling someone else's product.

Even when you can tell the difference, it's hard to ignore the effect of someone you enjoy listening to do the read. With my favorite podcasts, I enjoy the "company" of the hosts, and have an implicit bias towards what they say. So an ad read by them is extremely effective. If it was a canned commercial like on TV, I'd be able to tune it out much more effectively.

That's against the law in Europe, sponsored content and ads have to be clearly identified.

Oh wow thank you, I had no idea.