Casper sued a mattress review site, Sleepopolis, for writing negative reviews of their products. Casper then settled the lawsuit by taking over Sleepopolis. The site now posts only positive reviews of Casper's mattresses.
Thanks for pointing that one out! I had no idea. I was literally less than a week from purchasing two Casper mattresses - one for my family one for my parents. I bailed. I also told my sister to return hers since she's still in the refund window. She told me it wasn't nearly as comfortable as she thought but they gave her hard time with refund. They asked her to either pay return fees which are north of $300 or find non profit that would accept. I'm taking matters in my hand. Its sad.
Not to get too meta but undermining reviews is also a tactic used by companies to manipulate sales because if you don’t trust any reviews but still have to make a decision you’re going to go with a “safe” “established” brand which usually means whoever has the most mindshare.
I see how that argument would work for Sealy, Simmons and Serta. I don't see how this would work for Casper or any of the other no-name mattress-in-a-box company.
For younger people who want easy choices I have 100% seen this lead people to default to Casper. I send around the article on their practices regularly due to this, and buy my mattresses off Wayfair mostly based on price and basic sanity checking.
Right now I have an incredible 14 inches of Queen memory foam I got for $400 that's incredible to sleep on. The brand? A no name.
What I've taken away from the mattress craziness is that if you exclude the fancy things like temperature adjustment and sleep number stuff, most basic mattresses come down to basic material and then secondly firmness. As long as you get those two things right they kinda all seem to be the same.
Consumer Reports is non-profit and purchases all of the products it tests. Its revenue comes from subscriptions and grants/donations, not advertising or commissions.
Mattress/politics is really shady. Purple tried to sue this YouTube blogger that was complaining about the mysterious "secret formula" powder that Purple used prevent the plastic sticking. I ended up getting a Leesa since it was the most reputable and haven't done anything shitty.
The backstory here is a bit more complex. The "powder" is entirely safe and the blogger was spreading disinformation while also running an incentive/referral site of their own while being connected to a competitor (GhostBed). Whoops.
Mattresses are so notoriously shady that one popular new brand in Germany is literally marketed as the "anti-cartel mattress". Of course, the top Amazon reviews are full of people calling it a scam. (I have one and it's, well, tolerable.)
https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...
I would take any reviews of Casper's products with a grain of salt.