Three day weekends are usually good times to go mattress shopping.

So that’s what we did.

Let me tell you a little something about mattress shopping. Comparison shopping is out of the question. Mattress stores may all stock the same models and brands, but every store gives their mattresses a different name. A Simmons “Park Avenue Elite 1000” at one store may be called a “Pillow Top Vista 9000” at another. This makes price matching and comparison shopping a futile endeavor.

We went to three stores. Sit’N Sleep had pushy salespeople and their prices were absolutely outrageous. Custom Comfort was a nice local company with friendly sales people but pretty high prices. We finally wound up at Mattress Gallery in Brea. They had a great selection, reasonable pricing (I thought), and totally helpful non-vulturous salespeople.

The mattress was a gift from a generous family member, so we wanted to get something good but not outrageously expensive either. After hours of laying on beds, jumping on beds, and fake-humping on beds we picked out a nice Cal King to replace the sagging 20-year-old hand-me-down mattress that we’d been using.

Monday morning we awoke with a gutful of buyer’s remorse. Mattresses are expensive no matter how you look at it, and we hadn’t spent that much money at one time in years. And with it being a gift it wasn’t even really our money so we felt extra guilty.

So at my insistence we decided to just cancel the order. The bed wasn’t scheduled to be delivered for a week anyway, so it’s not like we had used it or anything. Last night we drove back to the store fully expecting to just cancel the order and get a refund. It was just too much money.

So the sales guy listened to my story and while he was willing to cancel our order he also offered to see if he could help us out. After a 9pm phone call to his district manager for approval he was able to knock another 20% off of the price. 20%! That’s on top of the already discounted President’s Day sale pricing we had paid the day before.

So we didn’t cancel the order.

We left feeling a bit better. I wasn’t going in there looking for a deal. I really had planned to just cancel the whole thing. But Mattress Gallery came through for us and totally hooked us up. I felt awesome for saving so much money.

Saving money in general feels great. I recommend you try it! Maybe not at the expense of some poor sales guy’s commission, but definitely do what you can.