The Eye of Kris

We got our memory foam mattress topper last week, and immediately noticed that it did not appear to be quite as big as our bed... The instructions said that you should let it sit for 24 to 72 hours to fully expand, since it was compressed for shipping (it came srinkwrapped tightly and packed in a small box).

After 3 days, though, it was still not quite long enough. We've been using it anyway, and it is very comfortable, but the 4-inch gap at the end of the bed is annoying. So, I contacted Overstock.com customer support once again. Their website says that memory foam mattresses cannot be returned, but I explained the problem to the agent and he was very nice and arranged for a return label to be sent to me and a full refund given so that I can order another one.

Here's where I made my bone-head mistake.

I remember reading somewhere that another person had a similar problem, and recommended that you order a size larger than the bed you have and just cut it to fit your bed. So, what's larger than a king size bed? A California King, of course. So that's what I just ordered.

Right after I placed my order, though, I had a thought - I wasn't exactly sure how big a California King really was. I had always just heard that it was bigger than a standard (or "Eastern") King size. A quick trip to Google showed me that a California King is longer, but not as wide as a standard King (72 inches vs. 76 inches). Aaarrgg! That's not going to work. Now I'll have it long enough, but a large gap on the sides.

In case you forgot, I can't cancel my order with Overstock.com because their warehouse was "immediately notified to pick and pack the order for shipment" when I clicked the order button, and for some reason it takes 4 days to get a message from customer service to the warehouse to stop an order. That means I will likely have to go through this return process again. I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it.

On top of that, there's no way to guarantee that I'll actually get one that fits, since there is no size that is actually larger in both directions than my bed.

Why, why, why is this so hard?

I contacted Overstock.com Customer Support yet again, and actually found someone with no ability to do anything whatsoever. I asked her if I could just refuse the shipment, and she said "If you want to". I asked if I would get a refund if I did that, and she said "That's up to the warehouse, not me". Remembering my previous lesson about poor customer service. I ended the chat session and called the phone number to see if I could have a conversation with someone who actually wanted to help me. I'm typing all this while I'm on hold...