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The war to sell you a mattress

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61–70 of 235 posts

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#61
post #17

The whole mattress industry is a scam. Actual manufacturing cost is $75-$300. Mattresses are even cheaper on Alibaba. Vacuum-packing memory foam shrinks mattresses for shipping, and now they can be imported easily. If you really want to annoy the US mattress industry, set up a review site and review sub-$100 mattresses off Alibaba. (Personally, I have an air bed which cost about $200.)

It is. I bought mine for 200-300$ on Amazon a while ago (lots of good reviews) and it was the best bed I’ve slept on. I laugh at people who spend thousands of dollars in their mattress and repeat out loud the marketing speech “you spend a third of your life on it”

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#62
post #59
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each new mattress has to be actually produced. It requires work funnily enough. A web page only needs to be coded once.

> Each new mattress has to be actually produced. It requires work funnily enough. But that is work in the sense of energy, if robots are being used for production. EDIT: Changed phrasing, to not distract from the actual argument.

If there is a comparison that is unfair, it's the one you just made between physical and mental work.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#63

Amazing to see people stumbling upon millions. Most techies are trying to come up with clever technical solutions to try and build an online business. Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses. Or whatever the next accidental hot market will be.

A friend of mine made a fair bit of money off of a website that listed "free stuff" promotions around the web. But it was manually-maintained and so quickly died.

... BUT...

He really only started making ad revenue on the site once he stopped maintaining it! People would find his site, then would realize the content was old, but would click on an up-to-date ad instead.

Accidental genius. :)

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#65
post #22
post #17

The whole mattress industry is a scam. Actual manufacturing cost is $75-$300. Mattresses are even cheaper on Alibaba. Vacuum-packing memory foam shrinks mattresses for shipping, and now they can be imported easily. If you really want to annoy the US mattress industry, set up a review site and review sub-$100 mattresses off Alibaba. (Personally, I have an air bed which cost about $200.)

Yeah, and the whole web app industry is a scam, actual bandwidth cost is like a penny. And servers are even cheaper in Russia. (Personally, I run my website on a shared php host for about $1) -- Snarkiness aside, it's surprising to see comments like this here.

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.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#66
post #21
post #17

The whole mattress industry is a scam. Actual manufacturing cost is $75-$300. Mattresses are even cheaper on Alibaba. Vacuum-packing memory foam shrinks mattresses for shipping, and now they can be imported easily. If you really want to annoy the US mattress industry, set up a review site and review sub-$100 mattresses off Alibaba. (Personally, I have an air bed which cost about $200.)

There is a brand on Amazon (Zinus) that sells reasonable quality foam mattresses with low markups. I bought their Queen [0] for $289, and have been happy with it. I'm assuming that Amazon will also eventually introduce an Amazon Basics version and suck up all the profit... [0] - https://www.amazon.com/Zinus-Memory-Green-Mattress-Queen/dp/...

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.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#67
post #40
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is like the pot calling the kettle black.

I believe it is also like someone being snarky.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#68
post #62
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Each new mattress has to be actually produced. It requires work funnily enough. But that is work in the sense of energy, if robots are being used for production. EDIT: Changed phrasing, to not distract from the actual argument.

If there is a comparison that is unfair, it's the one you just made between physical and mental work.

The people benefiting from this scam are not the ones doing the actual physical work.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#69
There is similar situation in the diamond engagement ring market, of all places! NiceIce, Beyond4Cs, Yourdiamondteacher, ProsumerDiamonds -- all affiliate marketing blogs that drive a lot of sales. No lawsuit yet to reveal the inner workings, but undoubtedly there is the same shadiness.

Re: The war to sell you a mattress

#70

There is similar situation in the diamond engagement ring market, of all places! NiceIce, Beyond4Cs, Yourdiamondteacher, ProsumerDiamonds -- all affiliate marketing blogs that drive a lot of sales. No lawsuit yet to reveal the inner workings, but undoubtedly there is the same shadiness.

The whole jewelry diamond market is shady and should be boycotted. It is a shame that many still fall for the marketing and think diamonds are rare
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