I'd thought I'd get around the madness of mattress shopping by using just the technique mentioned in the article here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22377160At least, until I found something I liked. I purchased a Purple 3, thinking that if I loved it, I'd just stick with it. I did love it, but I couldn't justify spending $2k on a twin(!). I returned it, and purchased from another company for ~$700. I didn't like it as much as the Purple, but when I went to begin the return, I was told that there was no return process, and that I could "move the mattress to a different room, or donate it." Two days later, I received a refund for the full purchase amount. That ended my journey; no awesome mattress at any price beats "decent and free."
As much as I appreciate getting a new mattress for zilch, the experience made me extremely wary. Was my mattress so cheaply-made that the manufacturer could afford to give them away? What was up? So I did some research. It turns out that the mattress industry is a racket. The markups are ludicrous; almost every mattress on the market costs, at most, a few hundred dollars to make. And then it's also impossible to comparison shop because "models" differ based on retailer by one or two small features; that means no price-matching, if you can even tell what you're buying.
These are the kinds of things that make people suspicious of the way the economy is set up. It should be easy to find out what you're purchasing, and then to pay a fair price for it. Instead you have entire manufacturing-retail chains built on obfuscation and able to eat untold amounts in lost product.