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Comment by croissants | Hacker News Reader

How should people buy mattresses, or mattress-like products, to avoid this 2000% markup?

You'd have to bulk order from China most likely or build your own mattress... or just order something cheap on Amazon where it is a race to the bottom. IKEA is also ok. I prefer Costco b/c of the return policy itself. Maybe you might find a hotel liquidator.

The fact that we all sleep in hotels though shows you that the mattress resale laws are kind of weird or antiquated .. e.g. maybe last century. It seems like there should be a rehab process that allows a mattress to be resold "used" but clean. I am guessing the reason is health and safety but given craigslist where mattress change hands ad infinitum I am not sure how big the risk is. The fire risk is obviously a bigger deal.

The reason is surely bedbug infestations. It is just too risky to buy a mattress second hand, even from legitimate sources.

That can be handled, either store the mattress for a year or so, or heat it up enough to kill them.

That's enough for many of us to avoid it, it hardly needs regulation. GP's point is that we gladly share hotel mattresses. Bed bugs are consequently occasionally an inconvenience.

The hotels check for bedbugs often and are aggressive in their cleaning habits. They know their reputation is shot once they have even one infestation. Now buy a used mattress from a source you don’t know whose hygiene is also unknown, you just don’t take that risk.

That sounds like a business opportunity for “certified mattress cleaners”....

When you get an infestation, it’s best to just burn everything in the room and then fumigate.

There’s no way to get rid of an infestation? I’ve never had one so I seriously don’t know.

They're tiny. Even the adults are quite small. The babies are specks. The younger ones are clear unless they've recently fed, so nearly invisible when they aren't bright red from ingesting blood.

They have a real talent for going unnoticed, even when there are dozens or hundreds of them. People often discover an infestation due to bites or poop smears, not from seeing a live bug at any time.

They mostly come out at night and I think they can hibernate for long periods, like weeks or months. They are quite hard to get rid of once they get into something like a mattress.

I can confirm all of the above, having lived through an infestation myself. Had to ditch my dirt cheap apartment and basically throw away all of my belongings at the time out of fear of bringing any of them with me to the next place ("luckily" I didn't have much at the time as I was a poor student). And then ended up spending $2000+ anyways on a full room heat treatment for my new place because I could swear I was still getting new bite marks and it was driving me insane (though in hindsight they might have been what's referred to as "phantom bites" but I wasn't going to take the chance to find out after going through that whole ordeal).

Up to that point I've lived in shady places with ants, roaches and rats and other shitty stuff but none of that bothered me too much, so I thought I could handle any shitty living arrangement as long as the price was right, but the bed bugs thing was by far the most nerve wracking experience of my entire life, and even made me contemplate suicide at one point. I learned to not cheap out on a place to live ever since... And definitely never pick up used furniture lying on the sidewalk, which I used to do a lot...

So yeah... I can see why people might have reservations against used mattresses...

> People often discover an infestation due to bites

Oh man that brings back some memories, I used to have bites all over my hands and I just assumed its because of mosquitoes although I had not seen or heard a mosquito in the room. 2 weeks after first bite was discovered I saw a bed bug running away slowly because it was full with my blood. I followed it under the bed where I saw a huge colony of bed bugs, I was literally speechless, just could not believe, there were so many of them all living on my blood.

Hint: places that reach over 50C inside during the summer don't have bed bugs.

Even Phoenix rarely hits 50C and you'd have to be crazy, or have a broken AC system, to let the inside of your house get that hot. So that leaves, what? Desert countries where AC isn't widely used?

The reports I'm relying on comes from Alice Springs, Australia, which is pretty much smack bang in the middle of a country that is mostly desert. So yeah, desert country describes it pretty well. Ambient temp there was over 47 for days at a time this year.

And yes, "no aircon" also applies. Aircon is a recent thing and most (almost all?) houses outside of the Alice metro don't have it. Hotels that leave the aircon on can still have bed bugs:

https://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2015/11/21/finke-heenan-...

But notice this quote: "As I left they gave me a black plastic bag and advised me to keep my clothes in the bag and leave it in the sun for a few days to kill the bugs. The bags were kept on the counter so it seemed standard procedure to provide departing guests with them."

In reality most houses north of 30 degrees and west of the great dividing in Australia will kill the bugs if you lock them up in the summer letting the temp inside get 10C degrees above ambient. As it happens Australia statuary minimum requirement for workers annual holidays is 4 weeks, and it's traditional to take it over Xmas - which is our summer.

In reality most of the country lives east of the great divide, however even where I live on the coast at 27 degrees south it hits 40C ambient for few days. It doubt it would be hard to nudge it another 10, and a bed bug biting me on the arse would be more than enough incentive for me to find out.

And no, I would not be in staying in the house at the time. As you say, that would be crazy.

Food grade diatomaceous earth is a natural non-toxic method to kill bed bugs and prevent them from invading your home

Sure, that can kill a few of them, but entirely inadequate for actually getting rid of any real infestation. They breed much more quickly than the diatomaceous earth can kill, and can survive on the order of months without any feeding so you can never be sure to have killed them all with a passive approach that just waits for them to come out and kill themselves.

Have you ever worked with diatomaceous earth? I have.

1. It's fine and goes everywhere. Breathing it is especially ill-advised.

2. The first light breeze, mammal to walk by or light misting of rain will wipe it away.

Giving yourself silicosis in the process of not actually killing them.

One of my former roommates got bed bugs that were living in the wall from either the neighbor or a previous tenant. Only insecticides are going to solve that problem, not some holistic, "negative ions" (radioactive thorium) panacea snake oil.

We also gladly steal hotel mattresses too!

https://www.wellness-heaven.de/wellness/study-theft-in-hotel...

Mattresses could be frozen for 72 hours and kept in a very hot environment for a while too, that’s kill both fungus and bedbugs. If laws allowed it there would be such a business. I wonder if the mattress business lobbies to keep these laws in place. Or whether they’re at the source of some bedbugs infestations. I wouldnt be surprised, in the mattress business it’s a cut throat in all directions type of world

There are many places that refurb mattresses. My dad used to run housing projects, and people would dumpster dive to sell mattresses when they cleaned out apartments.

IKEA for example sells a lot of mattresses under 150$. Under that you can just by foam pads, but the biggest savings is simply avoiding mattress stores or companies.

If you like pillow tops or those egg shell foam pads you can also just buy them separately.

... and you can still return it if you’re not satisfied! Plus you get to grab a few $.50 hot dogs while you’re there.

One interesting diy hack I read about is to put insulation or sound proofing around your dishwasher. Basically $20 in insulation can turn an old dishwasher or a $200 dishwasher into something super quiet.

I've slept on a 150 dollar Ikea for years and I've slept on a leesa. Maybe these conspiracy theories are true, but the Leesa is much more comfortable than the cheap Ikea. Ikea also has more expensive substantial mattress options, but it looks like they approach the same price range anyway. So what's your real suggestion then? Sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag?

Have you done a blind test, can you figure out which one is Ikea and which one is not just by sleeping on them?

The test should be done when both the mattress are new.

Personal preference does not make any option objectively better. So, my suggestion is to explore your options. I enjoy a 4” foam pad on plywood over several thousand dollar mattresses, but it’s not a question of cost just comfort. Water beds are another cheap option that have largely fallen out of favor.

PS: Body weight is a huge part of this. Gain or lose significant weight and your preference is likely to change.

Check out https://www.themattressunderground.com/. It is a site for people who nerd out on mattress construction going so far as to assemble their own from layers, but their forum has a user curated list of small local manufacturers for almost every metropolitan area. The smaller manufacturers are not necessarily cheap, but the good ones do a better job of using higher quality materials and understanding your specific needs.

Walmart has a decent quality memory foam mattresses for under $200 (Spa Sensations). I've used them for many years and don't see a reason to spend more.

Avoid advertised products?

I'd recommend latex foam. Material is more expensive so there's less wiggle space to apply huge markups.

Sam’s Club or Costco will sell a good mattress for about 60% less than whatever mattress stores charge.

Limited choice, lower margin.

That’s a good question. It’s ridiculously hard to avoid, but there are places that others mentioned here you can find deals.

Short of that you can find knock off versions on Amazon that might not last you as long but for a fraction of the price $100-200 iirc

I've bought my last couple mattresses on Walmart.com. Good price, free shipping, and foam felt like any other foam I've laid on. And because the price is good, I don't mind replacing them more frequently.

buy a $30 camping sleeping pad

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