Are you wondering whether or not it’s possible to negotiate the price of a new mattress? Many people are shy about negotiating when purchasing a mattress. After all, mattress stores list fixed prices for each set and it seems as if they’re always promoting special sales that promise huge markdowns. Surely these “sales” represent the lowest possible price available, don’t they?
The answer is an unequivocal no. It’s actually perfectly acceptable to negotiate on the price of a new mattress, and sadly many bashful customers have probably paid far more than they had to because of an apprehension about asking for a discount. This article will provide you with a series of tips and suggestions that will help you obtain a better deal the next time that you go shopping for a new mattress set.
Step 1: Scope out the competition
This suggestion is fairly obvious, but it’s important enough that it warrants mentioning. There’s fairly stiff competition in the mattress industry. While there are a few national operations, the industry is flooded with regional outfits that have around five to twenty stores within a fairly narrow geographic area. Given how intense the competition between companies can be, you should never buy a mattress at the first store you visit, no matter how much pressure you receive from the sales associate.
Locate the top three stores in your area and browse each of them just to get a “lay of the land.” If you want a lower pressure experience, try doing it close to closing time. Salesmen get annoyed at the customer who lingers past closing and they will be less likely to pressure you to make a deal.
Step 2: Get a copy of all the print ads
Mattress companies like to advertise through traditional media like Sunday newspaper ads. Even if you’re not a subscriber to a major newspaper, go buy a Sunday edition, comb through the advertising inserts, and pull out any ads relating to mattresses. Why do this? For a couple of reasons. First, most mattress firms will engage in price matching (they’ll beat a competitor’s advertised price on an identical or close equivalent), but often only if that price is listed in print. You will want to bring these ads with you when you go mattress shopping and potentially use them as a bargaining tool.
Second, these ads are helpful because they help define a baseline of what constitutes a “good deal” on a mattress. You should be aiming to pay less for your new mattress than these alleged sales prices. Anything at or above advertised pricing is probably paying too much.
Step 3:Force the salesperson to deal in absolute totals
Mattress shopping can be eerily similar to car shopping. With all those hidden charges and itemizations, it’s extremely easy for a sneaky salesman to have you end up paying more for your new bed than you expected. When I’m purchasing a new mattress (or a car for that matter), I try to circumvent this potential pitfall by only negotiating based on a grand total. For example, I bought a preowned Honda Civic in 2000 by saying “I’m prepared to write you a check for $10,000 for this car, and you can use any accounting techniques you want to get to that number, but $10,000 is the limit–for everything.” After a lot of manipulation of the trade in value and a few other factors, eventually that deal got done.
In the context of mattress shopping, you can do something similar. The itemization of the purchase might include the mattress itself, the box spring or bed stand, the metal bed frame, taxes, delivery fees, and disposal fees for your old mattress. Don’t let the clerk give you a great price on just the mattress and box spring only to make up for it by upping delivery charges and other fees. Mentally gather up every component of the sale that you need, then tell the clerk that you’re prepared to pay whatever amount for the entire purchase. In essence, you want to articulate the language of the transaction in a way that benefits the consumer, not the seller.
Step 4: When asking for a lower price, speak to the clerk courteously, quietly, and privately
A lot of people think that you have to adopt an adversarial demeanor to be a successful negotiator. In my limited experience, that’s a myth. People who work in commission oriented fields are, for the most part, competitive and slightly ego driven–they have to be in order to be successful in the industry. So if you get confrontational in your negotiating style, they are likely to respond in kind. Don’t give a long, sad, inauthentic story about how you need a new mattress because your ailing mother is coming to live with you. I prefer to say something along the lines of “We feel like we’re partial to this particular mattress, but before we started shopping we decided that our upper limit was $500. I hope we can find a way to make this deal work.”
When the actual negotiation begins, make sure that you speak in a low tone of voice, and try to do it privately. If the sales person is willing to drop the price below advertised rates, the last thing they want is for everyone else in the store to know about it. If the sales clerk is attending to another customer, establish through eye contact and body language that you’re interested in talking to them. They’ll get the hint.
Step 5: Expect to meet in the middle
The sales clerk doesn’t want to walk away from the deal, but they may take a pass if they feel the customer is being too inflexible. If you request a price that’s $100 below the advertised sale price, expect to arrive at a number somewhere between your opening bid and the list price. And don’t request a price that is so exceedingly low that the sales person fails to take you seriously.
Step 6: Consider shopping at the end of the month
A friend of mine who worked at an auto dealership once told me that the best time to purchase a car is in the last three days of the month. Why? Because dealers have monthly quotas to meet, and they might feel the most pressure to complete a deal right before the deadline. To be honest, I’m not sure how much truth there is to that advice, or whether the same holds true for the mattress industry. But one thing I do know is that there’s no downside to this approach, so if you don’t need a new mattress immediately, you might want to consider waiting until the end of the month if you’re aiming to get the absolute best price possible.
Step 7: The more expensive the mattress, the greater the discount
Elaborate sales pitches aside, mattresses are not cars, and the technology differences between mattresses are fairly minimal. Coil density matters, as does individual coil quality, and the quality of any foam material used on a pillow top. Beyond that, the question of what makes a $3,000 matter better than a $1,000 mattress is a curious one. But if you have your heart set on a high end model, you should also ask for a greater percentage discount. For entry level models, the profit margins probably aren’t high enough to allow for a lot of wiggle room in the price. The seller won’t do a deal unless there’s a substantive commission in it. But for premium mattresses, the margins are much higher, and thus there should be more flexibility in the price.
To provide a little illustration, here is how my last mattress purchase unfolded. The model that my wife and I selected was on “sale” for $700 (regular price $1,100). That included the mattress and a box spring, and nothing else. The final price was a grand total of $650, which included the mattress, box spring, an iron bed frame that the sales person claimed sold for $70 as a stand alone item, delivery, disposal of the old mattress, and all taxes.
Delivery and disposal are always “free” at the store that I purchased from, so if you add up the $50 discount, the bed frame, and the taxes (around 8% locally), then the negotiated price was $176 less than the advertised sales price.
Armed with these tips and suggestions, I hope that you’re able to find significant savings on your next mattress purchase as well.
