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Saturday, March 15, 2014

Always On A Saturday

We’ve had quite a busy week here at our workamping job at J. Strom Thurmond Lake COE.  We enjoyed every minute of it and probably will miss the work when we leave here in about two weeks.  The experience has been wonderful and we look forward to coming back for another three months in October.  Remember, there are about five million boundary line pins out there and we’ve only found about 300.  ;c)

With all the tasks we’ve been involved with, we’ve had little time to do any work on the Journey.  One item we’ve put off for way too long was replacing our lousy Sleep(less) Number mattress with a good, conventional one.

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The problem we’ve had is the middle of the mattress dips down and you are constantly rolling towards it all night long.  No matter what inflation number we’d set it at, it was just uncomfortable.  Many mornings, I’d wake up with a very sore back, not what you want when you already have a bad back like me, and this mattress touts how good it is for folks with a condition like mine.

Opening up the Sleep(less) Number mattress, you can see the two individual air chambers and the gap in the middle.  Nothing we tried helped and a call to their customer service said to just keep the mattress fully inflated to the highest number.  That defeated the whole purpose of the mattress and if I wanted to sleep on something that firm, I’d just lay on the floor.

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After much research and good recommendations, I decided to order a mattress from Mattress Insider.  I followed the website instructions, carefully measured my mattress and determined it was a full size 60” x 80” queen.

I ordered the mattress online.  Shortly after the order was placed, I received an email asking me to double check my measurements to ensure I wanted a 60” x 80” full size queen.  I did and responded to the email that was correct.

A day later, I received a phone call from a customer service rep following up my measurements, triple checking that it was the right size I wanted.  Yep.  Pretty impressive.

The mattress came in a big box, weighing about 70 lbs..

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Opening the box revealed the rolled up mattress.

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Before I could unroll it, I had to remove the Sleep(less) Number mattress and dig out the air pump mechanism from under a cabinet next to the bed.

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Much better, empty space and about 30 lbs. of useless weight gone.

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Next, we placed the mattress on the bed foundation and started cutting open the packing tape holding it closed.

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Once it was freed from the packaging, we rolled it out and it began to inflate to full size.

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Pretty impressive, until something didn’t look right.  It appeared to be a little short.  My tape measure proved it.

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After all the checking, rechecking and checking again, the company sent me a Short Queen, 60” x 75”!

I called the customer service number, they asked me to email them pictures of the mattress with the tape measure showing the size, which we did.  I was then told that I’d have to wait until Monday when all the managers were back to work to see what they will do.

For one thing, I can’t deflate and re-roll the mattress to send it back, plus I wonder how long it will take to have them ship me the correct one?  This is going to be interesting.  The Sleep(less) Number bed is already in the dumpster so I guess we’ll be sleeping on our pull out couch for a while until the right mattress comes.

Always on a Saturday.  You’d think I’d learn.  We’ve already decided that when we travel, we won’t travel on weekends, not only to avoid traffic, but if we ever need help, say something like a flat repaired, we’ll have a better chance getting fast service on a week day. 

Now I think I’d better do maintenance and upgrades to the Journey on weekdays, too. ;c)

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

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18 comments:

  1. Doesn't that just frost your 'you know whats'. Stuff like that just about makes me want to explode. How the heck do you send the other one back, but that should be their problem not yours.

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  2. Did you get the 5" or 8" mattress? I'll be interested to hear what you think of it when you finally get to sleep on it. I think I'd sleep on the one they delivered just to see what it feels like.

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    1. I ordered the 8" full queen mattress. Measuring the height on the mattress they sent me is the 5". Wrong in every direction. :c(

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  3. We had a sleep number bed, I liked it but Brenda hated the damn thing. Sold the whole motorhome to get rid of it. Well not really but it is gone.

    On another subject you will be glad to know that the anti-freeze you left with us at Dogpound South is now making sure our LQ doesn't freeze up here at Dogpound North. Thanks.

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  4. I've heard your horror stories about the Sleep (less) Number bed. You know we really like ours still :) Hopefully the Mattress Insider will get things cleared up for you!

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  5. At one time Terry wanted a number bed until he started hearing all the complaints about them. You aren't the only ones who ditched it.

    We've discovered the best day to travel through the big cities is Sunday. If folks are going to sleep in and stay off the freeways, that's the day they're going to do it.

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  6. Bummer! Hope they step up to the plate and compensate you for your time and trouble.

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  7. Hard to believe that after 3 checks they still sent the wrong mattress. Hope this gets resolved in a timely fashion, It is time for you to hit the road!!!

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  8. I have to say that one of the very few things I don't like about full timing is having to order most things on line. It seems we have trouble getting what it is we ordered nearly every time we do. But we have never had anyone call and ask 3 times to make sure and then send the wrong thing. I'll be very interested in what they decide to do about it given that it is totally their error it appears in all 3 directions. What a pain!

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  9. I too will be interested in learning how you like the new bed when the correct one arrives. We had a similar experience in ordering a new airbed for our sofa sleeper; they sent a short queen. Frustrating.

    Looking forward to hearing about your future travel plans.

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  10. We just went to Mattress Firm and bought a good old coil firm queen mattress for the TT. Just cannot believe they sent the wrong one after all the checking they did.

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  11. I don't think I would have liked the Sleepless number bed either. I can't believe they screwed the order up with all the checking. I guess they felt they knew better then you did, since most rv beds are the short queens.

    We bought our mattress from bedinabox.com. We bought it sight unseen and took a big leap of faith. It's wonderful. 11 inches thick and very, very comfy....and no gap in the middle. Good luck getting it replaced. I guess you could put a foam wedge on the top by the pillows..... You're right...packing those beds back up is next to impossible, although we did more our mattress from our old MH to the new one. We weren't going to leave it there!

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  12. It is funny we have sleep number beds in our house and loved them in the motorhome. The Breeze came with a memory foam mattress and we hated it. We replaced it with just an air bed and we like that much better. I guess some folks just like sleeping on air and others don't.

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  13. This is just one more example of how good old 'private enterprise' can screw up a simple instruction just as bad as the dreaded government agencies who always get blamed for incompetence. It's funny though, no one ever blames the entire 'private enterprise system' when this happens! So, I'll say it "what a bunch of dummies, if these wretched businesses would only run their operations like the IRS, we'd all be better off"!!

    I guess to use a sleep number bed you have to be able to count to 10. It always sounded like too much work for me when I was tired.

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  14. Pretty sad when they actually called you about the size and still got it wrong. We used the sleep number bed for almost six years and it was fine. There was a slight tendency to roll to the middle. They are suppose to have a center spacer, which I did not see in your picture. As long as we kept the spacer in place the bed worked pretty well for us.

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  15. Wow, sorry to hear about your experiences with the Sleep Number bed. We love the one in our rig.
    I would call that company back every couple of hours and ask if they were sending the correct size this time. Maybe they'll get the message!

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  16. I immediately saw the problem with your sleep number...there was a piece missing! You should have had a strip that covered the center part. That would have eliminated the rolling to the center.

    I never understood why you did not enjoy the S N....as we miss ours terribly and will be getting one. My back is hurting without our S.N.....

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  17. You threw it out ?!?!?! I can't believe nobody of your acquaintance wanted it. We love the one in the RV except for having to constantly change the air pressure from changing elevation. Ron would love to have one in the house too.

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