quick picture (and probably some worthless rambling)

I took this symmetrical picture while mattress shopping with Cindy.

There are four mattress stores within a two-block radius of our apartment, so Cindy and I went to three (the fourth was just a second location of one of the others.) The shopping experience was like car shopping because the mattresses were laid out on a big open sales floor manned by commission salesmen. I'll write about my favorite sales tactic from each store:

...

This was a conversation with the owner of the first store after he extended his Labor Day discount and offered us a mattress for $699 (and we reacted with ambivalence):

Owner -- So how did you find out about us?

Me -- I just typed "mattress" on Google Maps and saw that you were nearby had some positive reviews. And I guess we've walked by here a bunch of times and Cindy always jokes that seeing all of these empty beds must really irritate homeless people.

Owner -- Yelp? Did you say you saw us on Yelp?

Me -- Uh, no, the reviews were on Google, but Cindy might have looked on Yelp, or the Google reviews might come from Yelp. I don't know.

Owner -- Ok, I give a $50 discount if you mention Yelp. So now I can get you that mattress for $649.

...

Stores often list a suggested retail price for their products and then slash that price to show you how much of a discount you're getting. Here's an example of that strategy being poorly executed in a different setting:

I don't think Jewell is going to lure anyone into buying a $110 bottle of wine by offering a $2 discount. If anything, they're probably scaring the buyer away.

This strategy can also be poorly executed in the other direction. At the second mattress store, the mattress we liked was $949.99, but the tag also showed that the "suggested retail price" for the mattress was $2,699.99.

So they were selling the mattress at a $1,750 discount. 65% off the suggested retail price.

We showed mild interest in the $949.99 mattress and discussed it with the salesman for a minute, but couldn't tell the difference between it and the $650 mattress at the first store, so we decided to leave. On our way out, a second salesman jumped out of his chair and came over and told us that $949.99 price was a special Labor Day price (even though it was the weekend after Labor Day.) He said that after today, the price would go back up to it's pre-Labor Day price of $1049.99. But, he told us if we made a $40 deposit on the bed, he could lock in the $949.99 price. With the price locked in, we could think about it and decide later, and if we decided we didn't want the bed, he'd return the deposit.

"Why do you need $40 to lock in the price?" I asked.

He didn't say, but insisted it was the only thing that would allow him to lock in the $949.99 price. Without the deposit, the price would go back up to $1,049.99 and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

"It's no obligation to you" he insisted, "and it's a free $100 if you decide to buy the bed. And who doesn't want $100? Right? I don't know about you, but if someone offered me a hundred dollars, I'd take it."

Cindy was fighting laughter and walking out, but I thought I'd give the salesman a last word, "Yeah, but as long as that $1,650 discount off the suggested retail price is locked in, I think we're ok."

...

The beautifully symmetrical picture at the top of this post is from the third store---which was the most high end. We didn't get much attention from the salespeople there because they were busy hunting bigger game. The couple on the left was testing out $5,000 adjustable beds and had the attention of the young salesman. Another older couple in the front was also testing out $5,000 beds and had the attention of the older saleswoman.

In the middle of the picture you can see a woman testing out a bed by laying on it, and this seemed to be the standard way to test beds. At all three stores, I noticed that everyone was testing the beds by laying on them. 

This was the most surprising aspect of the mattress shopping trip. Everyone was testing the beds by laying on them, but no one was testing them out by simulating sexual moves.

We live in such a puritanical society. I bet Germans get completely naked and have sex on the bed before buying. And even after orgasm, a German man might say, "Eh, it was ok. I think we're gonna shop around some more."


(We ended up buying from the store with the Yelp discount. (Great bed, by the way.))