Unintended Perk of the Online Mattress Boom: Never-Ending Free Trials (wsj.com) 270
Dozens of bedding venders such as Casper and Tuft & Needle offer generous return policies. Life hackers are taking advantage. From a report: Over the course of 15 months, Mr. Bir slept on five different mattresses, each one purchased and returned consecutively using the free-trial policies of dozens of bed-in-a-box startups. It all began in 2016, when Mr. Bir, a new arrival to New York City, was uncertain about how long he would stay, and in need of a cheap short-term sleeping surface. "I didn't have the intention of churning through so many," said Mr. Bir, 31, a technical architect at Slack Technologies. What began as a makeshift solution soon grew into an elaborate scheme, calculated to stretch the trials as far as they would go. "You could literally do this and never pay for a mattress," he realized. Online mattress sales are booming in the U.S. The success of direct-to-consumer services like Casper Sleep Inc. and Tuft & Needle, which deliver neatly boxed mattresses to consumers' doors, has spawned hundreds of copycats. To entice shoppers who would otherwise prefer to test the firmness of the mattress in the showroom, many of these online upstarts offer free home trials that can run for as long as a year. The customer typically pays for the mattress up front and gets a full refund if the mattress is returned before the cutoff.
For consumers like Mr. Bir, the implications were obvious: a virtually limitless supply of brand-new mattresses that, other than one's dignity, cost nothing -- that is, as long as they remember to return the mattresses in time. That's the rub. Two years ago, Lily Liu-Krason, a 26-year-old data scientist living in New York, found herself overwhelmed by the sheer number of mattress options available to her, so she followed a colleague's suggestion that she sign up for several of the free trials. Ms. Liu-Krason splurged on Casper's $149 same-day delivery and installation service, thinking that she would return her roughly $800 mattress before the 100-night free trial period ended, at which point she would start a free trial with another mattress maker.
For consumers like Mr. Bir, the implications were obvious: a virtually limitless supply of brand-new mattresses that, other than one's dignity, cost nothing -- that is, as long as they remember to return the mattresses in time. That's the rub. Two years ago, Lily Liu-Krason, a 26-year-old data scientist living in New York, found herself overwhelmed by the sheer number of mattress options available to her, so she followed a colleague's suggestion that she sign up for several of the free trials. Ms. Liu-Krason splurged on Casper's $149 same-day delivery and installation service, thinking that she would return her roughly $800 mattress before the 100-night free trial period ended, at which point she would start a free trial with another mattress maker.
this is why we can't have nice things.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I vote for enlightened self-interest.... it's not always pretty but it's a sure sight better than socialism
Re:this is why we can't have nice things.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:this is why we can't have nice things.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That "asinine markup" is a direct result of scams like this and the assholes who encourage them.
Re: this is why we can't have nice things.... (Score:3)
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Second hand furniture is very popular here. The older the better, too.
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Personally, I've been using the same mattress for about 20 years. Bought a new $20 memory foam topper for it a few years ago, not feeling any problems since then. But everybody's body has different needs I suppose.
Re:this is why we can't have nice things.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Life hackers are taking advantage.
That's certainly a... novel term for what they're doing. Sort of like saying "The IRS regulations contain loopholes in various places, life hackers are taking advantage to avoid paying taxes", or "Some people don't have burglar alarms on their houses, life hackers are taking advantage to acquire new large-screen TVs and laptops".
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Building your own mattress from pads from the arts & crafts section when you can't afford a real bed, that's a lifehack. These people aren't 'lifehackers' they're just leeches t
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Cool story bro.
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You want people to have a positive impression of your country, try voting for someone who at least seems to respect the laws of your country. Don't blame the world for judging you based on the leader you elect.
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Very likely the company finds the benefits of their policy far outweigh the costs of a few leeches.
Your underlying assumption is that the number of leeches remains low compared to the number of standard customers. However, as we have seen in the past, the number of people who abuse a system generally goes up, and the system gets changed - ruining it for everyone. (See L.L. Bean and REI)
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More likely the company is just as unethical as the people doing this. They will take that mattress, already sold for 20x what it costs to make, refurb it and sell it as new again.
New cover and out out goes again.
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I can't speak for the others, but Avocado green upped their return period from 100 days to a year recently, and claims that they get so few back that they don't have them sent back, but instead donate to local charities.
I'm planning on buying one on their next good sale (I missed by one day this month!)
And since I'm judging by CR's ratings (the nearest demo is over 300 miles away), I wouldn't consider it without the return policy (although I'm sure not sleeping on it for a year if I don't like it!)
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>".... and that's how the world works: we get what we want and everybody else is on their own. "
That is how the world works for the unethical, yes. Many people are not that way. The question is- why are generations becoming more and more unethical? I have lots of theories- most of them revolve around the deterioration of the family and education system.
Re:this is why we can't have nice things.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably the realisation that the people promoting the ethics don't live by them and are actually just trying to get you to screw yourself for their benefit.
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>"It's probably the realisation that the people promoting the ethics don't live by them and are actually just trying to get you to screw yourself for their benefit."
That is very cynical. Many, many people who promote ethical lifestyles do, indeed, live by them. Or at least try to, the best they can. Traditionally, ethics (and morality, values, self-control, and responsibility) were taught by involved parents and often through their religious involvement. As I previously mentioned, the breakdown of fa
Re:this is why we can't have nice things.... (Score:5, Interesting)
why are generations becoming more and more unethical?
Like the guy said: The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.
The guy was Socrates, but I'm sure it still applies ... [bartleby.com]
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What reason do we have to believe that they are? Your question might not have an answer, or worse, you might end up having to explain why generations are getting more ethical (also hard to believe, but possible). I suspect that you won't find any evidence that even faintly suggests peoples' ethics are significantly changing at all.
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That's why competition is so good, assuming you don't get taken in by the marketing crap the big mattress makers put out and automatically buy their expensive stuff. We've got a king mattress that's (a) the most comfortable mattress I've ever slept on and (b) has lasted close to ten years with no sign of wear. Typical mattress prices from name-brand stores here are $800-4,000. This one was $400.
Unfortunately most people still go for the hype. My retired and living on a pension neighbours shelled out so
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Yea, cheapest can be most comfortable. My mother had a mattress that still has the 1970's price tag $89. When she passed 20 years ago my wife and I used it till we left the country "willing" it to our maid in perfect condition. Today they want you to spend $4,000 on a 4 year mattress. Ha.
Irresponsible (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any idea how much waste this creates? Just because you can take advantage of something doesn't mean you should
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No, they won't
A) It's a crime.
B) Most importantly: It's a huge liability.
I wont buy one because I want to try my mattress first, and sending these back are often a pain in the ass.
AND I like having the company the sells me a mattresses dispose my old one.
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Re: Irresponsible (Score:3)
I wonder if they are reading this (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were a mattress company, I'd seriously be thinking about changing my policy...maybe, share names with other companies to prevent abuse. At the very least, keep a log of customers and verify they haven't pulled the scam with them in the past. I'm sure they could strike a deal with the credit bureaus to check CC numbers with previous customers against a new one presented to them.
Nobody wants to buy a used mattress. If they resell the mattress as pre-used, do they mark them as such and charge a lower rate? No.
No. They hope people will just forget about the return date and keep the mattress. Those that get returned are probably destroyed or donated to a charity and they get the write-off. I am hard pressed to believe that a mattress costs anywhere near $800 to make. Maybe, $100. The rest of just "padding" (pun intended) as a customer won't buy another for 5-10 years.
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So you are suggesting blacklisting, sorry mattress-blacklisting.
I'm actually cool with that (reduce "try it" time frames).
My box mattress is awesome, and was inexpensive. Add a weighted blanket (where have these been all my life?), and you don't fall to sleep, sleep hits you.
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Most, if not all, of these companies don't even bother with making you return the mattress - they just refund your money and tell you to take it to a local recycling or donation center.
Either that's not correct, or they must make you provide proof of the donation. Otherwise the people in this story wouldn't need to abuse company after company pulling this scam. They would just scam the first one and be done with it.
Re:I wonder if they are reading this (Score:5, Informative)
It's a bed in a box. Once it's expanded, it's not possible for the consumer to repackage it for shipping back. Even if it was, it's not economically feasible to ship the thing back to a warehouse for restocking.
The markups on these mattresses are insane, which is why this works. However, if this "life hack" starts trending upwards, these companies policies will likely change. As someone noted upthread... "this is why we can't have nice things".
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It's not just the markup - box stores have the same markup.
What they don't have is a physical location and staff. The savings on that are immense. Warehouse space in Iowa is dirt cheap. Freight shipping is dirt cheap. Websites are dirt cheap.
They're being the amazon of mattresses, and like amazon, it's cheaper to eat a bunch of returns and just landfill them than try to sort through them to see if they're able to be resold.
Thing is, it's so vastly much cheaper to have a warehouse in Iowa and no branches aro
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Yeah, I could cut coupons too (Score:5, Informative)
But you trade your time for doing this for time doing other things. Let's say it's a money issue, and the mattess is $800. A mattress lasts...shoot, I don't know. I hate coil mattresses and have had the same solid cotton futon for over 30 years now.
But let's say it lasts 10 years. You buy maybe 5 in a lifetime, then. That's $4000. If I make $20,000/yr, that's 80 hours of my labor per mattress, assuming I don't pay any taxes on income (yeah, right). 2 weeks of labor per decade, 10 weeks in all.
If I make $50,000/yr, that's 32 hours of my labor per mattress. 3 days of work every decade, 3 weeks in all.
If I make $100,000/yr, that's 16 hours of my labor per mattress. We're already into the range where I lose an equivalent amount of money just by taking time off to have it delivered and removed.
So, yes, that may make sense for you, but it's a lot of extra work and hidden costs to you personally.
"For consumers like Mr. Bir," (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Bir isn't a consumer. He's a leech, a scammer.
Legitimate consumers and the environment have to pay for his exploitative behavior.
Why celebrate this? (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy is a scumbag running a scam, and he's being celebrated? He's stealing from retailers and creating a huge amount of waste.
Re:Why celebrate this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ultimately they HAVE to issue 'free trials' because you have no ability in an online store to 'just go lay on it and see how it feels' like you do in an old fashioned bricks and mortar store.
So to sell online, they don't even (really) have the economic recourse of ending the free trials.
He's literally exploiting a weakness in ecommerce generally - and one that the ENTIRE INDUSTRY is vulnerable to. All ecommerce stores generate massive amounts of "basically perfect products" waste...some small % donate it, but most destroy it for fear of creating a grey-market that undercuts they primary sales (ie Burberry, IIRC).
My only thought is that perhaps these stores can sell the "only used for a free trial period" mattresses for a discount, but even then I sort of doubt it because the discount I PERSONALLY would need to sleep on someone's short-use mattress that could have been used for all sorts of gross things, probably exceeds their profit margin.
I don't see a way out of this, as long as ecommerce is a thing, nor a consistent logical way to punish him that wouldn't be collusive practices between businesses (and likely held to be anticompetitive).
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The subject of the article has no intention of paying for the product he is ordering, and he's openly bragging about it. At best the mattress companies should sue the shit out of him to make an example. That's a good way to minimize that "weakness" and curb future exploitation.
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So to sell online, they don't even (really) have the economic recourse of ending the free trials.
True, but they could make the trial period much shorter; that would make daisey-chaining trials a lot more inconvenient. Who needs more than two weeks to evaluate a mattress?
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This is a America buddy. Screwing people over and then leaving a big stinking mess behind for some one else to clean up is the basis of our economy.
The weird part is some one wrote an article about it being done on such a pedestrian scale.
Re:Why celebrate this? (Score:4, Insightful)
we're 99.9% animal and we act like it; no different than a lion that sees a easy mark, takes it down, eats what it wants and then just walks away; doesn't clean up the mess nor let the prey's kin know nor even thinks about it ever again; and yet nobody thinks the lion is a piece of shit for not 'caring' for anything but itself
the expectation that humans will act above our base instincts is where our disappointments come from; once I realized that civilization is nothing more than a thin veneer and just below that is a feral animal, things make much more sense
as a whole, we're just animals pretending to be otherwise
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This guy is a scumbag running a scam when he really has no reason to with the amount of money he's making. I hope Slack fires him. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ka... [linkedin.com]
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So, really, he's a scambag?
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Has it occurred to you that those huge margins are because of the"free shipping" compounded by assholes like this stealing from them? If you don't like the price of something THEN DON'T BUY IT! It doesn't make it OK to steal it.
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That's not a perk (Score:3, Insightful)
That's intentional abuse of the companies' time and money.
Re:That's not a perk (Score:5, Insightful)
Ordering a product and accepting delivery with no intention of paying for it is NOT legitimate.
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You are ignorant to the point of being a danger to yourself. Intent to defraud [uslegal.com], which could easily be proven in the case of "Mr. Bir", is a criminal offense. In California, if the amount of money involved is less than $950 you can end up in jail for a year. In other states it could be a felony.
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You are ignorant to the point of being a danger to yourself. Intent to defraud [uslegal.com], which could easily be proven in the case of "Mr. Bir", is a criminal offense. In California, if the amount of money involved is less than $950 you can end up in jail for a year. In other states it could be a felony.
If "Mr. Bir" told the salesperson when he ordered the mattress that he was going to return it in eleven months, it would not be fraud. It's not hard to imagine the conversation: Customer: "I plan to return the mattress within the free return period." Sales: "That's our policy, we will get it shipped out right away." The salesperson is thinking "Ideally the customer will forget to return it, may actually like it, and either way, even if the customer is scamming the company, *I* still make my sales quota."
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This is really stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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$130 seems low. I've bought super cheap mattresses before, and man were they terrible. I suspect the market has improved a little bit, but from what I've experienced you have to spend about 3-400 for something worth sleeping on.
After years of back pain, I spent $6000 on the best mattress I could find. Worth every penny, compared to back surgery.
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Showrooms (Score:2)
who would otherwise prefer to test the firmness of the mattress in the showroom
You can't even rely on that. Tired of "firm is better", I wanted the softest mattress I could find, and found a soft one in the showroom. When it arrived it was as firm as any other.
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who would otherwise prefer to test the firmness of the mattress in the showroom
You can't even rely on that. Tired of "firm is better", I wanted the softest mattress I could find, and found a soft one in the showroom. When it arrived it was as firm as any other.
My parents ended up buying one of those showroom mattresses where 1 side is firmer and the other side soft (to demo the different feels) since they both liked a different level of firmness.
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who would otherwise prefer to test the firmness of the mattress in the showroom
You can't even rely on that. Tired of "firm is better", I wanted the softest mattress I could find, and found a soft one in the showroom. When it arrived it was as firm as any other.
Try a natural latex mattress. Most vendors sell them in layers to allow you to customize to suit you best. For queen and king beds they'll also let you do different layers on each side.
We have 3 Savvy Rest [savvyrest.com] mattresses (master, kid, guest) with our's being the oldest at around 15 years. A few years ago we took our bed apart for a semi-annual cleaning and found a few of the layers were deteriorating abnormally. Traded emails with them, sent pictures, and they replaced the failing layers at no charge to us (mat
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Isn't this the defitniion of fraud? (Score:5, Insightful)
They think they are "lifehackers" but isn't purchasing a product and using it with the prior intent to return it in a used state fraud?
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no, returning goods after use is a consumer's right.
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You are morally and ethically bankrupt. He never had any intention of keeping the product.
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Its a genetic condition common among descendants of people from the Goldilocks region.
Re:Isn't this the defitniion of fraud? (Score:5, Insightful)
>They think they are "lifehackers" but isn't purchasing a product and using it with the prior intent to return it in a used state fraud?"
Yes, but not in a legal sense. It is the same mentality of people who go into a physical store, look at the products, use a salesperson's time to answer questions and provide a demo... and then leave and order it from some other online vendor. As if none of what was given to them has value. It is clearly unethical. Not illegal. Unethical. And some people apparently have no sense of ethicality, or they do a really good job of rationalizing their unethical behavior to the point they believe they are doing nothing wrong.
These are warning signs of a society in trouble- and it traces, almost always, back to the disintegration of the nuclear family and parental involvement in teaching morality, values, ethics, and responsibility.
And there are a lot of people who seem to thing legality defines what is ethical or moral. It doesn't. It is wrong to curse at someone or be rude, or abuse your body... but it is not and should not be illegal. Conversely, it is right to be polite and to help others, but those should not try to be codified into law. Law and government cannot replace what is being lost in the home during the formative years.
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not "lifehackers", but "parasites" . . .
hawk
Damn you, WSJ! (Score:5, Funny)
Two years ago, Lily Liu-Krason, a 26-year-old data scientist living in New York, found herself overwhelmed by the sheer number of mattress options available to her, so she followed a colleague's suggestion that she sign up for several of the free trials. Ms. Liu-Krason splurged on Casper's $149 same-day delivery and installation service, thinking that she would return her roughly $800 mattress before the 100-night free trial period ended, at which point she would start a free trial with another mattress maker.
Alas. With no subscription to the Journal, I may never learn the fate of Lily Liu.
Re: Damn you, WSJ! (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m going to pretend she got ran over and went to hell.
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I'd check my "free mattress" with a black light (Score:2)
Because if I were a mattress company, I'd be resending the returned mattresses out for more "free" trials, especially to people who are on the "free trial list".
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So it's OK to steal from them?
Oh the poor mattress companies (Score:3, Interesting)
drawback: they stink (Score:2)
and I mean that literally. I just ordered a new mattress which arrived vacuum-packed. Cut it open, and the 'new foam' smell is so bad it's been parked in my hallway for 1.5 weeks now.
When your time isn't worth anything... (Score:3)
... You can waste hours and hours of your life trying to save a few hundred dollars on a mattress.
Luggage, too (Score:4, Interesting)
I know someone who does this with luggage. He'll buy a really nice set of luggage ($1000 and up) and go on a family vacation with it. When they come back he returns the luggage for a refund.
The same guy also does this at Best Buy and Sears with large appliances (washers, dishwashers, etc), except it's even scummier behavior.
He buys dishwasher and has it installed. A week later he calls with a bullshit complaint as to why he doesn't want it. They come and remove it.
In the meantime, though, he's placed a few small marks on the item in places where they don't show, using a magic marker.
The item goes back, and he heads to the Best Buy Outlet Store where they send all the returned and one-off items. He examines them and finds the one he marked, and then buys it for ~%50 off the original price or so.
In the end, he gets a $500 dishwasher or dryer for ~$250 or so.
Is it legal to do this? Maybe, but there's no doubt it's sleazy behavior.
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I know someone who does this with luggage. He'll buy a really nice set of luggage ($1000 and up) and go on a family vacation with it. When they come back he returns the luggage for a refund.
Honestly, if you don't really care about looks, the best thing you can do for cost/protection is to use a hardsided, rolling cooler as your luggage. Those things are much more durable than your average luggage, have no zippers to get snagged/ripped, and if you seal it up real good with tape it's more or less waterproof. If you've got a little more money to spare you can buy yourself some Pelican cases.
Not too smart (Score:3)
How is $149 every 100 days "free"? (Score:5, Insightful)
They still charge to deliver and install. Sure, I can get a new mattress every 100 days, but it still seems prohibitively expensive to me when I have to pay delivery and installation. It means I'm paying almost $50 a month for the free trial.
Some "Life Hackers" outsmart themselves with their "cleverness"
Venders? (Score:2)
Sloopers!
Environmental cost ... (Score:2)
Slabs of foam that are done in 4 years. (Score:2)
Are they any good? (Score:2)
The real question is are these mattresses any good? You can't trust online reviews anymore.
What an incredible hassle! (Score:3)
So let's say you "take advantage" of this "incredible life hack." Every few months you haul in yet anther mattress and install it while making sure the old mattress gets packed up and shipped off in time for the deadline. Have you actually ever hauled a mattress through a house, maybe up and down stairs, and replaced it? Since you must get the new one in before the old one goes you inevitably have the old one sitting around for awhile before you can get it shipped off--even if it's free. That's a lot of work and a logistical nightmare, but if you think you are being clever doing it, knock yourself out, bro.
Is this really even worth it for any of us? (Score:3)
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He's the poster-child of the entitlement generation.
Re:Not really a Life Hack (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary (and I guess the article - but who is going to read it) says this is a Life Hack. Not really. This is a scam. Sure, it is legal. It is completely unethical. I guess that's who we have architecting Slack - unethical people. Can you imagine having the chutzpah to actually tell people who are writing an article not only your name but how awful you are as a person? For Mr. Bir to not even be ashamed of his behavior is really, really off kilter. As others said upthread - this is why we can't have nice things. Too many self-centered, unethical a-holes.
It's a life hack in the same way that buying a big TV before the Super Bowl and trying to return it afterwards, or leaving the tag on a dress is a life hack, in that it isn't. It's just unethical.
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The mattress sales companies have a slam-dunk action against this guy and it wouldn't be slimy to pursue it.
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"Purchasing" something involves paying for it, something this scammer never had any intention of doing. It's straight-up fraud and he's proud of it. He think it makes him clever.
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Wait! I forgot about vacuums where you can see a little tornado!
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