{"id":849,"date":"2010-02-27T11:38:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T17:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/2010\/02\/27\/product-endorsement\/"},"modified":"2010-02-27T11:38:29","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T17:38:29","slug":"product-endorsement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/?p=849","title":{"rendered":"Product endorsement"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just ran through the online Ikea mattress recommender<\/a>.\u00a0 It offered many helpful suggestions but did not recommend that I purchase the item that I’ve been sleeping on for the last month, the Solsta<\/a> sofa bed.<\/p>\n

That’s probably because the Solsta is not a bed.<\/p>\n

Shortly after I arrived here, I had a brief email exchange with Angela, the owner of the boat.<\/p>\n

Me:\u00a0 “I do have some issues with the ‘bed’ though — either I don’t know how to operate it, or it is simply not a bed.”<\/p>\n

She:\u00a0 “My understanding is that Daniel’s been sleeping on this sofa bed for the last few months?”<\/p>\n

So I went searching online for backup.\u00a0 Ikea confirms that it is a ‘sofabed.’\u00a0 I tried googling certain key phrases like “Solsta:\u00a0 not a bed” and “Ikea Solsta incredibly uncomfortable” and “Ikea solsta permenantly injured houseguest” and “solsta sofa bed open back surgery”\u00a0 These search phrases turned up nothing but the occasional product-review site at which happy consumers rate the Solsta as a good value and give it an average ranking of 5 out of 5 stars.<\/p>\n

Curious, since it is marketed as a bed and yet is not a bed.\u00a0 This puts me in an awkward spot.\u00a0 If I could find anyone to back me up on this, I would’ve cheerfully bought an actual bed and deducted the price from my rent.\u00a0 As it is, I’m left feeling like the only sane person in a world gone mad.<\/p>\n

Here’s the Solsta in its latent, folded form:<\/p>\n

\"foldedsolsta.jpg\"<\/p>\n

And here it is, unfolded:<\/p>\n

\"unfolded-solsta.jpg\"<\/p>\n

So, already you’re getting the idea that ‘unfolding’ really just involves piling the couch cushions on the floor next to the couch. \u00a0 Not so bad — it worked when you were five, right?\u00a0 Here are some close-ups of me standing on the middle and end sections of the bed, respectively:<\/p>\n

\"solstasoft.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\"solstamedium.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Notice how part of it gives when I step on it, and the other part doesn’t?\u00a0 In case it’s not totally obvious, I will make you a diagram:<\/p>\n

\"plywood.png\"<\/p>\n

Here, from the product instructions, is a diagram suggesting how I should sleep on this item:<\/p>\n

\"solstainstructions.png\"<\/p>\n

So, the first thought there is, Oh!\u00a0 They’re using the back cushion to cover up the plywood!\u00a0 But, no, the diagram is the other way around.\u00a0 He’s sleeping like this:<\/p>\n

\"legamputate.png\"<\/p>\n

Here, the red arrows indicate the point of eventual calf-amputation.\u00a0 Perhaps the man in the Ikea catalog already has two wooden legs, or is only 4′ tall with a deceptively long torso.\u00a0 If he is a normal-sized 4-limbed Swede, then this drawing has captured him moments before he leaps out from under the covers and punches the product designer.<\/p>\n

An alternative is to slide the cushion around and actually use it to mitigate the effects of the plywood.\u00a0 That gives us two options:<\/p>\n

\"backsurgery.png\"<\/p>\n

Here, the red arrow indicates the point of spinal failure.<\/p>\n

\"dangle.png\"<\/p>\n

This is nearly tolerable except there’s some amount of foot-dangling involved, and the plywood provides low enough friction that over the course of an evening I find myself in the above mentioned spinal-failure situation.<\/p>\n

So, after a couple of nights of such experimentation I finally ran into Daniel and asked him for advice.\u00a0 His solution (which I’ve stuck with ever since) is this:<\/p>\n

\"elevated.png\"<\/p>\n

I would NEVER have thought of this, but it turns out to be the only non-injurious option.\u00a0 Sure, my feet go numb from the elevation and I end up curled in the fetal position by morning, but it does prevent permanent injury.<\/p>\n

In case you think that I’m merely growing soft in my middle-age, I feel a need to mention that when in college I lived in an apartment that contained a similar piece of furniture — a foam loveseat that unfolded into a mattress.\u00a0 It, however, was soft for the entire length.\u00a0 And even then<\/em>, at age <\/em>19, I refused to sleep on the thing.<\/p>\n

What is going on at Ikea that they think this is a bed?\u00a0 What is going on with the consuming public that they are buying (and, on craigslist, reselling) this item all the while thinking that it is a bed?\u00a0 I have never encountered a product that fails so completely at being the thing that it was intended to be.\u00a0 There should be firings, class-action lawsuits, product recalls.\u00a0 But instead, there’s this<\/a>, and this<\/a>.\u00a0 Thanks a lot, internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just ran through the online Ikea mattress recommender.\u00a0 It offered many helpful suggestions but did not recommend that I purchase the item that I’ve been sleeping on for the last month, the Solsta sofa bed. That’s probably because the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}