Tempurpedic is my Kanye
Vengeance, pettiness and customer service in Trump’s America
My reaction to Taylor Swift’s Kanye diss track “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” prior to Tempurpedic’s decision not to honor my 90-night trial: Oh, honey, you do know there are actual injustices in the world, right?
My reaction to Taylor Swift’s Kanye diss track “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” after Tempurpedic’s decision not to honor my 90-night trial: SING IT, SISTER. SING IT.
Because of Tempurpedic’s decision not to honor my 90-night trial, I have paid $2,309 for a mattress that is useless to me.
Considering the state of justice on a global, national and local scale, I have prepared a short selection of injustices that are definitively worse than this:
- Pretty much all injustices.
In the 90s, my boyfriend was a member of a rogue machine-based performance art group in San Francisco. From the videos, it appears to have mostly consisted of machines fighting each other, loudly and without a great deal of narrative cohesion, in the streets.
He specialized in explosions.
“So here’s the thing,” I tell him. “I am going to need you and your weird friends to go out to the desert and I am going to need you to FUCK THIS MATTRESS UP IN A WAY THAT NO MATTRESS HAS EVER BEEN FUCKED UP BEFORE, and then I am going to need you to post the video of this mattress upfucking to YouTube and I am going to need for it to somehow be the #1 search result on the entire internet under the word ‘Tempurpedic.’”
My boyfriend shrugs. “Why don’t you sell it on Craigslist?”
Taylor would fuck this mattress up for me, I think. She would do it in a fucking heartbeat.
Quick primer on online mattress sales. They offer trials, because no sane person would buy a mattress without trying it if they didn’t. And here’s a secret: if you return it, they don’t re-sell it. Why not? Because no sane person would buy a mattress that has been in an unknown person’s home for five seconds. It could have bedbugs. Someone could have peed in it. The truth about our so-called society is that no one really knows what anyone else is doing out there.
Here’s why this is important: even if it had been clear that the mattress was a close-out model, WHICH IT WAS NOT, you’re not going to resell it anyway so just take the fucking thing back, Tempurpedic, jeez.
My Tempurpedic mattress order confirmation, annotated:
Three different Tempurpedic Customer Care Representatives are so very sorry that I am experiencing back pain.
Evelyn, my favorite, is wonderful. I’m upfront with her that I’ve already been sent to the Escalation Department twice. Evelyn doesn’t judge. I know she has to be careful about what she can and can’t say. After all, this call is being recorded.
But she gets me.
That night, I report happily that Evelyn is going to intercede with the Escalation Department on my behalf.
“You know,” my boyfriend says, “when they execute a prisoner there’s always a person walking along beside them, listening and nodding and making sympathetic noises, to keep them calm right up until the noose goes around their neck.”
“Evelyn’s not like that.”
Remember the name Judith. REMEMBER IT.
I’m going to keep this about the 90-night trial. Lots of the complaints online about Tempurpedic, and THERE ARE MANY YOU SHOULD REALLY GOOGLE IT, are about their return policy but also talk about how the mattress is lumpy, or the mattress smells, or the mattress is carcinogenic, or whatever.
I am going to keep this professional. I am going to keep this dignified. I am going to keep this about the 90-night trial.
WELL GUESS WHAT, TEMPURPEDIC. YOUR MATTRESS FREAKING SUCKS. LOTS OF PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET AGREE WITH ME.
I visit Sit-N-Sleep to find out if it’s possible that I’ve been sent a defective Tempurpedic.
My Sleep Consultant, Josh, maintains his cheerful facade even after I confess that I will not be buying a mattress from him today. He takes me to the closest Tempurpedic to my model that they have in stock.
I lie down on it. “Yep,” I tell him. “This is what mine feels like. Like I’m going to die here.”
I struggle to sit up. Josh looks alarmed.
“Oh no,” he says. “You’re not supposed to sit up in it.” He says this in the same horror-stricken tone that I’d imagine he’d use to say, “You’re not supposed to defecate in it.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s a Tempurpedic. You can’t sit up like a normal bed. You have to tuck your arms in and twist to the side and kind of roll out of it.”
Bless his heart, he climbs onto the Tempurpedic next to mine and demonstrates this.
“And people…they like this mattress?”
Josh beams. “It’s our most popular brand!”
Sometimes I feel like the world is full of people making choices I don’t understand.
I definitely wouldn’t recommend this, but you can click the link below to view my Better Business Bureau complaint (dated 12/28/17).
Spoiler alert: it’s in the “customer did not accept the response” section.
Guess who denies my Better Business Bureau complaint? I’LL GIVE YOU ONE GUESS.
A screenshot of the screenshot Judith sent me, annotated:
Whatever.
Let’s see what it looks like on my laptop screen.
As an intellectual exercise, I’ll acknowledge that Judith has a point. Sure, they could have made it bigger and more obvious, maybe put in some sort of a “you know you can’t return this, right?” warning for an item that costs over $2,000, but Tempurpedic doesn’t know how their website looks on my (totally normal standard Dell) laptop.
But I also have a point, goddamnit. I have an order confirmation and a delivery confirmation that say nothing about a final closeout sale. In fact, both documents advertise the trial. Their online return policy says nothing about sale mattresses.
So why not be cool about it, Tempurpedic?
Here’s the thing.
We’ve traded our economy of employers and employees for an economy of corporations, shareholders and customers. Most of us didn’t consciously choose this deal, but admittedly most of us also didn’t help matters by valuing the acquisition of inexpensive consumer electronics over all other things that could possibly be meaningful to a human being or a society.
Most of us have lost. Most of us have lost so hard it’s not even worth being angry about it.
But to make the pill a little easier to swallow, COULD WE GET SOME FUCKING CUSTOMER SERVICE AROUND HERE?
I dispute the charge with my credit card company. They are sooooo helpful on the phone. I ask them repeatedly where I can send the documentation. “Oh, don’t worry!” they say. “We’ll ask you for it if we need it.”
One month later they deny my claim, based upon the lack of documentation provided.
List of names of my enemies I whisper quietly to myself every night before I go to sleep:
- Tempurpedic
- Judith
- BANK OF AMERICA SIGNATURE VISA
My uncle files so many claims in small claims court that he frequently starts sentences with statements like, “On Tuesday, when I was down at Small Claims…” or “I was talking to Cathy, my friend from Small Claims…”
I’ve always thought that going to small claims is like breaking the seal when drinking. If you can hold off, you’ll probably be fine, but as soon as you file the first claim, well, you might as well spend the rest of your life in the bathroom.
And yet.
“Small claims looks like a no-go,” I tell my boyfriend. “California doesn’t let you file small claims cases out of state. I’d have to file it in Kentucky.”
“Then you should fly to Kentucky and file it,” he says, as if the logic of this is unassailable.
“Hmmm.”
“And while you’re in Kentucky, you should picket their offices.”
“You’re insane,” I tell him. “No one does that.”
The next day, I see this gentleman outside the offices of Korean Air.
GODSPEED, COMRADE.
“No problem,” my millennial coworker says. “Just trash ’em on social media.”
“I don’t really do social media,” I tell her.
“You’re on Twitter.”
“I have one follower.”
She nods, solemnly. “It’s me, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s too bad. Because I’ve already heard a LOT about this,” she says. “I don’t really need to hear any more, quite frankly.”
The very anomalous nature of my treatment by Tempurpedic, as it pertains to the totality of my life, should be comforting to me. People are generally mostly decent to me pretty much all of the time.
There are plenty of people in the world who are treated like shit by everyone, every single day.
I remind myself of this frequently to make me less pissed off.
But instead I can’t stop thinking, there are plenty of people in the world who are treated like shit by everyone, every single day.
I live in Trump’s America.
I do the things a responsible citizen should do. I donate. I protest. I vote. I am aware of the utter insignificance of Tempurpedic’s refusal to honor my 90-night trial. I know that the only real takeaway here is gratitude for the breathtakingly unearned and undeserved good fortune to be able to shrug this off.
And yet there’s a part of me that feels…activated. Is it a Trumpian darkness in my soul? An infection, caused by some contagion carried on the wind of the times? Or has it always been there, a benign tumor suddenly turned raging and malignant and also knowing how to hold a grudge?
This is what that part of me thinks:
I am going to run for President.
And I am going to win.
And when I win, I am going to fix this.
I am going to fix all of this.
And also, when I win, I’M COMING FOR YOU, TEMPURPEDIC.
What Would Taylor Do?
A Song for Judith
Lyrics by Christine Sowder
Judith Judith
Why you gotta do this
What you gotta prove, bitch*
(*Please note that I don’t enjoy calling another woman a bitch on the internet but we’re rhyming here and it’s not easy)
Judith, Judith
That’s all I’ve got. SHIT.
Taylor, call me.
So far, I feel the best about this decision:
Also:
ANYONE IN LA WANT THIS FUCKING MATTRESS?
