Never buy a Simmons mattress, ever. Seriously.

So a few months ago the husband and I decided to replace our aging mattress which was giving up the ghost. We read Consumer reports on where to buy a mattress, and we went to the highest rated seller.  We tried many mattresses - some as much as $4,000!

Seriously.

And while we are trying this mattress, the salesman (mattress salesmen are just an inch or two higher than discount carpet salesmen in my version of the food chain of life) says "this model comes with a twenty year warranty."

For $4,000 it should also come with magic fingers, says I.

After bouncing around from one end of the store to another, we settled on a Simmon's Beautyrest that was very firm, but had a thick tufted almost pillow top.  It came in almost two grand.

So we buy the mattress, it arrives five days later via deliver.  They took away the old, looked at the bed frame (wood, two steel cross members, each with two legs), set up the mattress and the new box spring and they leave.

The bed was heaven for about a month, and then we both started waking up with sore backs, which were caused by the divots formed by our torsos in the middle of the bed.  We also discovered a nice ridge developing straight down the middle.

So I go back to the mattress store and have a talk with the salesman and the manager.

They send the bed warranty specialist who comes out, measures, photographs and dismantles the bed, and tell me that I will get a letter in a week with what to do.

The letter arrives and says that there is nothing wrong with the bed, but that we have voided the warranty by not providing the proper support of said bed.  The writer, Miss Smith enclosed a warranty card with teeny, tiny type, that said our two steel supports are not allowed.  A wooden bed requires five wooden slats.  So I call the manager and ask, why weren't we advised of this at drop off?

"Because," says he, "Our delivery people aren't mattress professionals.  They just offer a convenience of bringing the bed to your home."

Then why didn't the salesman point it out when he sold the bed?

"Oh, because it never comes up."

So we put in the five slats, photographed that, sent it in and we get another letter that says "That's nice, but three of those slats need feet on them."  And how do I do that, asks me.

In a return email she says "You'll have to either build them OR buy a new bed."

Now I ask you, when was the last time that bought a new mattress and box spring and found out AFTER the fact that you either had to re-engineer the bed or have replace the whole thing to be in compliance with the warranty?

So today, we get the feet built - and we really outdid ourselves by adding in adjustable felt padded feet to the legs - and photographed them and sent them in to the warranty people.

And we get ANOTHER email saying that the new feet are OK, but that the bed slats really aren't perfectly spaced and that "we can't do anything until the slats are precisely spaced..."

Thankfully, the husband was home, and he is a whiz bang at algebra, and he actually gonkulated the precise measurement down to the centimeter so our slats were perfected for the Fuck Ups at Simmons.

And now we wait.  And will they next tell us that they don't like which direction the bed faces? What about just telling us to move?  I beginning to feel like I am dealing with the Dragon Lady who keeps taunting me with "snatch this pebble from my hand," while laughing diabolically.

So my advice to you is to never buy a product that ends up costing you your sanity.  And frankly, if simmons were building these correctly, they wouldn't need to have their customers upend their lives to retrofit a perfectly good bed to work with their inferior engineering and second rate product.

Simmons bedding stinks. Simmons warranty claims also suck.  If it were built right, this wouldn't have happened.  Go buy a Sealey, a Stearns and Foster, and if you have money to spare, then buy a Tempur-Pedic.  But steer clear of Simmons.   Or you can go buy a Simmons, see what I care.

I will tell you that if they come back and turn down this claim, that Cookie will be having a bonfire in the front yard.