Five-hundred-dollar elephants
Yesterday Tim and I went to several furniture stores in search of a new bedroom. We need the whole nine yards-- bed, mattress set, dresser, etc. Why does this kind of thing have to be so damn expensive?
If you've ever walked through a furniture store you know that they sell not only furniture, but also every sort of overpriced decoration you can imagine. Why does every furniture place in town have giant elephant statues?? You can have your very own elephant statue for a mere $550. They are found in every corner of every furniture store we've been in, and for us the five-hundred-dollar elephants have become sort of symbolic of what a scam the entire industry is.
We couldn't find a bedroom suite that we thought was worth the money, so we decided to pick out the mattress first. The mattress business is a big fat racket. They have so much mumbo jumbo and imaginary science that they throw at you it's unreal. Coil counts, spring gauges, memory foam-- all of that stuff is 98% bullshit. And the stuff is over priced beyond belief. There is no way it has ever cost a company anywhere near $1,000 to manufacture any mattress set anywhere, yet there are sets on the floor priced at $6,000 and above. Ridiculous!!!!! I guess if you're one of those people who believes you're sleeping on something NASA created, and you have more money than common sense, you may be sleeping on a $6,000 mattress. Correction-- a mattress that you paid $6,000 for. There is no such thing as a $6,000 mattress.
Anyway, at the first place we looked I found one that I kind of liked, but it cost $1,500, and I thought that was repugnant. REPUGNANT I SAY! Of course I also had in the back of my mind that we are also going to be spending another several thousand on top of this purchase for the bedroom suite, so when the sign says $1,500 I am actually seeing something like $3,500 or $4,500. Make it stop!
Tim started sweating like a whore in church.
We scoffed at the fifteen hundred dollar mattress and moved on to another store: the Serta Mattress Direct store. There were two sales people on duty. One was a 20 something year old redhead who was six months pregnant. She instantly latched onto us and started following us around giving us the thickest line of bull I've ever heard. High pressure. Exactly the sort of thing that makes me not want to buy from a person. When someone latches onto my ankle like a pissed off Pomeranian, my first instinct is to kick them off and grab the nearest stick to keep them off until I can back out of the nearest exit. I suppose the latch on and don't let go sales approach works if you're dealing with shoppers who don't want to be rude or don't know how to say no. I finally had to tell the redheaded Pomeranian that we were going to discuss it and would get back with her. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.
There wasn't a mattress in the place for under $1,500. I did lie on a mattress there that I liked-- no, loved. While I was on it the girl was giving her speech about coils and springs, and I think I dozed off. It was lovely. And it should be, for $1,700. I wanted it bad, but Tim said the price tag was at least partially due to the fact that it had the name "Vera Wang" stitched onto it, and we could probably find the same mattress elsewhere for less money. So we moved on.
At Haverty's we did in fact find what I believe is the same mattress, and this one costs $1,500. So we're back to the magic number of $1,500, and it was suddenly looking pretty good. I think we've settled on which mattress set to buy, but we still haven't found a bedroom suite to put the mattress in.
We were tired of looking yesterday, so we came home. Today we will go back and buy the mattress set we agreed on, and look again at the bedroom furniture at Ashley's and Haverty's. The stuff at Haverty's is more expensive, but appears to be higher quality. Does anyone out there know if this is true? We wouldn't mind paying more if we believed it was really going to last.
I gotta get in the shower so we can go to church. Maybe if we get our souls right God will protect us from the vultures at the furniture store.
If you've ever walked through a furniture store you know that they sell not only furniture, but also every sort of overpriced decoration you can imagine. Why does every furniture place in town have giant elephant statues?? You can have your very own elephant statue for a mere $550. They are found in every corner of every furniture store we've been in, and for us the five-hundred-dollar elephants have become sort of symbolic of what a scam the entire industry is.
We couldn't find a bedroom suite that we thought was worth the money, so we decided to pick out the mattress first. The mattress business is a big fat racket. They have so much mumbo jumbo and imaginary science that they throw at you it's unreal. Coil counts, spring gauges, memory foam-- all of that stuff is 98% bullshit. And the stuff is over priced beyond belief. There is no way it has ever cost a company anywhere near $1,000 to manufacture any mattress set anywhere, yet there are sets on the floor priced at $6,000 and above. Ridiculous!!!!! I guess if you're one of those people who believes you're sleeping on something NASA created, and you have more money than common sense, you may be sleeping on a $6,000 mattress. Correction-- a mattress that you paid $6,000 for. There is no such thing as a $6,000 mattress.
Anyway, at the first place we looked I found one that I kind of liked, but it cost $1,500, and I thought that was repugnant. REPUGNANT I SAY! Of course I also had in the back of my mind that we are also going to be spending another several thousand on top of this purchase for the bedroom suite, so when the sign says $1,500 I am actually seeing something like $3,500 or $4,500. Make it stop!
Tim started sweating like a whore in church.
We scoffed at the fifteen hundred dollar mattress and moved on to another store: the Serta Mattress Direct store. There were two sales people on duty. One was a 20 something year old redhead who was six months pregnant. She instantly latched onto us and started following us around giving us the thickest line of bull I've ever heard. High pressure. Exactly the sort of thing that makes me not want to buy from a person. When someone latches onto my ankle like a pissed off Pomeranian, my first instinct is to kick them off and grab the nearest stick to keep them off until I can back out of the nearest exit. I suppose the latch on and don't let go sales approach works if you're dealing with shoppers who don't want to be rude or don't know how to say no. I finally had to tell the redheaded Pomeranian that we were going to discuss it and would get back with her. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.
There wasn't a mattress in the place for under $1,500. I did lie on a mattress there that I liked-- no, loved. While I was on it the girl was giving her speech about coils and springs, and I think I dozed off. It was lovely. And it should be, for $1,700. I wanted it bad, but Tim said the price tag was at least partially due to the fact that it had the name "Vera Wang" stitched onto it, and we could probably find the same mattress elsewhere for less money. So we moved on.
At Haverty's we did in fact find what I believe is the same mattress, and this one costs $1,500. So we're back to the magic number of $1,500, and it was suddenly looking pretty good. I think we've settled on which mattress set to buy, but we still haven't found a bedroom suite to put the mattress in.
We were tired of looking yesterday, so we came home. Today we will go back and buy the mattress set we agreed on, and look again at the bedroom furniture at Ashley's and Haverty's. The stuff at Haverty's is more expensive, but appears to be higher quality. Does anyone out there know if this is true? We wouldn't mind paying more if we believed it was really going to last.
I gotta get in the shower so we can go to church. Maybe if we get our souls right God will protect us from the vultures at the furniture store.
I bought a 4" memory foam mattress topper from overstock.com to go over my old mattress set, and I love it.
They must make those $6000 mattresses at the same place they made those $600 toilet seats they sold to the federal government.
As high as gas is getting, we may all end up sleeping in our cars anyway. We sure won't be able to afford to DRIVE them anywhere. That's another racket.
Posted by
Anonymous |
7:37 PM