The Eye of Kris

Have I become obsessed with getting a good night's sleep?

Our bed is working fairly well. The smell of the Odornix is still there, but very faint. I only smell it every now and then - mostly when I sit down or move heavily on the bed (presumably because it causes air to be pushed out of the foam supports, where I suspect most of the remaining smell lives). I did take the bed apart again a couple of weeks ago and wipe some of those parts down with water, and then sprinkled baking soad inside the bed before putting it back together, and I think that helped.

Mary is sleeping much better on this bed. She only wakes up once or twice during the night instead of her usual pregnancy rate of five or six times. I don't really feel like I'm sleeping a ton better, but my back is not hurting, so that is an improvement. We have pretty much settled on our sleep numbers (65 for me and about 40 for her), but we still adjust it every now and then. I've slept with it as high as 90 and as low as 40.

I think the main thing preventing me from sleeping better is that it's not a pillow top. Even when you make it "less firm", it's still not a very soft surface. I contacted Select Comfort about purchasing the pillow-top portion of the bed. Since it comes apart, and the top of the bed zips right off, I thought it should be simple to just order that part and replace the standard top with the pillow top. The price? $540. Ouch. That negates a significant portion of the discount I received by buying it used and dealing with the whole smell issue in the first place.

However, I have seen great deals advertised on those memory foam mattress toppers, and all the reviews I have read say that they make a world of difference on almost any bed. I figured, what could be more perfect than a Sleep Number bed with a memory foam mattress topper? That way, I could make it more or less firm, and also take advantage of the memory foam support and softness.

The ads I had seen were from OverStock.com, so I went and checked it out. They had the premium 4-inch memory foam mattress topper for $169.99 (compared to around $400 at other websites). I ordered it last Friday morning.

Later that day, I noticed on GotApex.com that there was a coupon for $10 off any order over $100 at OverStock.com. So I thought "It's only been a couple of hours, I'll go cancel my order, and re-order with this coupon to save ten bucks." Unfortunately, though, I found that you can't cancel an order from OverStock.com, because, acording to their website, when you place an order "our warehouse is immediately notified to pick and pack the order for shipment". So, I thought, "No big deal, at least it will ship immediately and I'll have it in a few days."

On Tuesday (4 days later), I logged in to OverStock.com to check the status of my order, and it still had not shipped! This puzzled me, since their warehouse was "immediately notified to pick and pack the order for shipment". So, I contacted customer support (via their web-chat support system), and posed the question - "If I can't cancel my order because it's being shipped so quickly, why hasn't it been shipped?". I was told by their customer service person that I can't cancel my order because it takes 1-3 business days to ship my order, but it takes 2-4 days to send an e-mail to the warehouse to stop a shipment...

4 days? To send an e-mail?

I was so befuddled that I didn't even point out the obvious discrepancy between the ability to notify the warehouse "immediately" when an order is placed, but not when an order is canceled. I just told the lady (very nicely) that I would recommend they upgrade their e-mail system because I can send an e-mail to the other end of the earth and it usually arrives within minutes. Maybe they haven't heard of a little thing called the "in-ter-net"...

At that point, I figured it wasn't worth ten bucks to deal with this any more, so I just resolved to let it go and wait for my mattress topper to arrive. After all, I still got a great deal.

This morning, though, I happened to check GotApex.com again, and it said that OverStock.com has reduced the price on this mattress topper to $139.99 without any coupon. I checked my order status, and it still has not shipped (according to their logic, this is the third business day, even though I placed my order before 8 AM last Friday), so I decided to try another run with customer service.

I used the web-chat system again, and happened to connect with a very nice lady who actually had a sense of humor. I explained that I had ordered a product on Friday, and today that product was $30 cheaper, and asked if I could either cancel my order and re-purchase at the new price (I didn't mention that I had been through this before) or get the discount refunded to me. It took her a few minutes to find the discounted price (apparently it's a deal that only shows up if you go through GotApex.com), but once we straightened that out she asked me to hold on while she worked on it.

A few minutes later, she told me that $30 had been credited to my card and thanks for shopping with OverStock.com! Wow - that was easy.

I guess the moral of this story is that if you have a bad customer service experience, don't keep fighting with the person until you are completely frustrated - just get back in line and try again. You might get someone much more helpful the next time around. I had a similar experience with Comcast last year - the first guy was totally rude and un-helpful, so I called back and talked to a woman who fixed my problem in about 2 minutes.

Anyway, I'm hoping we are well on our way to having a wonderful night's sleep on a regular basis. Of course, I'll let you know how that goes.