Hello. How may I help you?

We're on the verge of buying a bed, which is long long overdue. I've researched mattresses so much in the past week that I feel like some sort of authority on the subject. Like "a little knowledge is dangerous" kind of authority.

After lying in the beds for 30 minutes at Room & Board near the old Western Images intersection of 7th & Townsend, we were about to pull the trigger on buying a memory foam mattress. Then Lily's friends Kevin and Randy ran into us and convinced us to shop around online for something that would surely be half-price.

We found an online mattress seller which had memory foam mattresses for half the price of Room & Board. Not a lot of info there, and I wanted to ask some questions, so I clicked on the "chat with a customer service representative now" button. I was looking forward to chatting with somebody as helpful as the woman on the picture of the button.

Keep in mind that an average of 5 minutes passed between each response.

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Chat Information You are now chatting with 'ed'
ed: How may I help you today?
lee: hi.
lee: I'm wondering what the ILD rating of your memory foam mattresses is.
ed: our memory foam has a 5.3lb density

[Sidebar from LLMB: ILD does not measure the density of foam. It is a measure of how hard or soft the material is. It's generally measured in the number of pounds needed to compress the material 25% (on average). According to ed's answer it would take 5.3 pounds to compress the material 25%. At that rate, any full grown human would be lying on the ground.]

lee: is the foam made in the U.S.?
ed: our beds are made in the US
lee: is the foam bought elsewhere and the beds assemebled in the U.S.?

[20 minutes passes]

lee: still there Ed?
ed: I'm sorry for the delay
ed: our Memory foam is made in China
ed: and beds are assmbled in our plant
lee: does the foam contain fire-retardants such as PBDE or formaldehyde?
ed: they are fire retardent
lee: does the foam contain PBDE?
ed: no
lee: what fire-retardant chemicals are used in the mattresses?
ed: i dont know
lee: can you find out?
ed: not today
lee: sorry ed, but your lack of answer is not allowing me to make a decision on buying your product.
ed: i'm sorry
lee: does the foam contain formaldehyde?
ed: Call me at 1 800 xxx-xxxx ext xxx
ed: on Monday, I'll find out from my plant
lee: I'm not clear on how you would have the answer to the PBDE question and not the formaldehyde question. Do you have a list of some of the chemicals and not others?
ed: I said I'll get the info on Monday, call me then, OK?


Oh, ok. I'm just some pesky customer that might spend more than a few bucks at your store. Good thing I kept asking questions about where the components of your mattresses are made or you might think China is a state in the US.

I wasn't about to pick up the phone to speak with Ed considering his track record with answers. I went back to Room & Board to ask some questions and got basically zero help there as well. Luckily we ran into a very nice young man named Andrew at a mattress store in Menlo Park. He gave us loads of info and was ready to do anything in his power to lower the price and get us the mattress we wanted. No salesy BS at all. Nighty-night.