Off to Alpena

I'm taking my neighbor and friend to Alpena today to one of her doctors. After that we'll be going grocery shopping and having lunch at the all you can eat China Buffet. We eat there almost every time we go shopping.

I was also in Alpena yesterday with Hal. Two months ago we bought a mattress set, one of those memory foam sets from Young Appliances, now an Art Van franchise. It was a Serta iComfort and those things are NOT cheap. But our old Sealy Posturpedic pillow top was almost 20 years old and sagging badly. Since we had taken out a first mortgage on the house to make essential repairs, (new roof being one of them) and had some extra cash we figured why not, with both of us having bad lower backs it seemed like a good idea.

So we've been sleeping on it for 8 weeks, about 3 weeks into it Hal determined he didn't care for it, so called our salesperson who said we had to actually sleep on it for a whole month so we did, he got used to it eventually but never really fell in love with it (on the other hand, his sister bought a new King Koil from them downstate and LOVES hers, it was a lot cheaper, too.) During the final 5 weeks I also woke up a few times with aching hips. We had picked the firmest one of the series, the Prodigy. We actually waffled between it and the softer Savant. I preferred the Savant at the time but Hal thought it might be too soft. Well, we obviously picked wrong. So we called Art Van a few times, finally talked to the rep and we went back to Alpena yesterday and made an exchange after trying out the 2 beds once more.

Immediately we both felt we preferred the Savant, which is actually $200 cheaper, but we won't get a refund because their policy is to exchange for the same or higher price set. We didn't realize in the fine print that was the case. We did know we'd have to pay for delivery this time. I'm sure the salesman could have made us a deal for something but we are lousy negotiators and just wanted to get this over and done with. So the new bed will be here Friday. With the original mattress and therefore this one costing close to $3000, including fancy pillows and a mattress protector (required for the possible exchange guarantee), I feel it's only right we LOVE our bed. Hopefully, this will be the case.