Product Trends Magazine

About the company: “AngelBeds.com was established with one purpose in mind: to offer the highest quality mattresses at affordable prices. Our dedication to quality craftsmanship and materials, combined with our dedication to responsive customer service, has helped us to become the premier vendor of premium sleep products on the Internet. Every mattress is shipped directly from the factory, and comes with free shipping. We’ll even install your mattress for you if you select our white-glove delivery service option."

The big pitch: 90 Day Sleep Trial, 20 Year Warranty, and a Lowest Price Guarantee!

The average person spends one-third of their life in bed, so a good mattress is essential to maintaining a healthy body, productive worklife, and happy hours of snoozing. Angelbeds.com offers memory foam beds, based on NASA developed memory foam technology, which they claim are better than anyone else’s, including the much beloved Tempur-Pedic™ mattresses that are all the rage.

Angel Beds provides detailed information regarding their various mattresses and mattress accessories on their website. They have five beds to choose from that range in size from 8” to 16”, and pictures of each mattress are available that can be enlarged for a better examination of the mattress. You can see pictures of what each mattress is composed of, plus the handy bit of info that the mattresses are dust mite-resistant and easy to clean.

www.angelbeds.com offers a “sleep trial”, which we think is just great. What that means is you can try out your mattress for 90 days, and if you don’t think it’s a great night’s sleep, return it for a 100% refund. Angelbeds also offers a 20-year warranty and free shipping, which basically means if anything ever goes wrong with your bed - ever - you’re sorted.

Angel Beds also provides information about mattress accessories, such as adjustable frames, memory toppers, mattress pads, and pillows, which makes them the complete one-stop shop for everything sleep-oriented.

On the negative end of things, AngelBeds has been said to have occasionally made it hard for customers to return their mattresses, so do ensure that before you buy, you check out the AngelBeds site and be sure you’re buying what you really want.

The Product Trends rating: All your bedding needs in one website, order by phone or purchase online, detailed pictures and product descriptions… It all looks great to us, and we’ve not found a whole lot of dissatisfied customers out there. Four and a half stars. —Reviewed by Jillian Dobbs

To try AngelBeds for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: "AbsoluteHome.com is another store brought to you by Home Décor Products Inc. Home Décor was started in 2000 because the company believed (and it still does believe) that is a better way to buy fixtures for your home than in a crowded store with limited selection and unknowledgeable sales people. The business has grown to over $55m in sales and has over 50 employees."

The big pitch: The Champion Toilet; Ten year worry-free warranty.

AbsoluteHome, a Home Decor company, has a nice shiny website and a big range of products, which would make most people think that they should be trusted with their money. But we’re not so sure.

From all reports we’ve heard, and it’s our job to dig up as many as we can find, AbsoluteHome.com is an utterly horrible company to deal with. Complaints range from orders not being received in a timely fashion to awful customer service, and others have whined that it takes a long time to get through to them on the phone. If customers do get through, they are on hold for at least 20 minutes.

According to reports, AbsoluteHome.com doesn’t keep in contact with its customers well. People aren’t told that there is a problem with their order until they contact them asking where their delivery is. and although, AbsoluteHome.com does have a wide selection of products for the bathroom and kitchen, quite frankly, if what we’re told is true, you may never get your merchandise. They have many lighting fixtures… if the order doesn’t get lost.

It would be one thing if all of these complaints were indicative of a company struggling with its own growth, or trying to figure out ways to improve itself, but if customers return AbsoluteHome merchandise, there is a 25% restocking fee applied to the order - something that is downright nasty, and not made clear up front. In addition, it seems that the restocking fee comes into play often, because many customers have alleged they received their items damaged, missing parts, and in poor working order.

AbsoluteHome.com’s products are reasonably priced, but that won’t do you much good if you don’t receive them in good condition.

The Product Trends rating: Our lowest rating is zero stars. AbsoluteHome.com gets one star. Its owners and employees should NOT be proud of that fact. — Reviewed by Rachel Heller

To try AbsoluteHome for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: HomeClick’s industry knowledge, manufacturing contacts and extensive inventory located in our 270,000-square-foot warehouse in Edison, New Jersey, has helped us become the leading and most-trusted virtual showroom for high-end products. At HomeClick, you will find the largest collection anywhere of premium brand name Bath, Hardware, Kitchen, Lighting, Outdoor & Tableware products at the lowest prices.

The big pitch: Free shipping on all orders over $199, and no sales tax (except for New Jersey residents).

Bakc in the day, when the internet was just starting to boom, a small New Jersey home decor company with two stores decided to set up a tiny Yahoo Stores online shopfront, just to see whether this internet thing would really have any legs. The response, according to the owners of the business, was incredible, and before long they were investing in a full-on internet presence that could handle the overwhelming demand. That website would be called HomeClick.

Now, if you’re like me, shopping for ‘home furnishings’ is right around ‘going to the dentist’ on your list of things to do. Fortunately, HomeClick makes the whole shopping adventure a little more pleasant than most, because the products they sell are much different from the stuff you find lying on a Wal*Mart shelf. This is no ‘Made in China’ homeware - this is the best of the best. From toilets that are nothing short of works of art, to kitchen sinks that make even a jaded old cynic like me step back and say "whoa."

I mean, you haven’t seen a kitchen sink until you’ve seen one made out of gold-tinted titanium!

To be sure, HomeClick is not the place you go to replace a burned out coffeemaker. But if you want to replace that old MrCoffee with a Starbucks Barista Digital Italia Espresso Machine, or perhaps replace your old GE refrigerator with a 48inch side-by-side built-in refrigerator with a temperature management system, icemaker, tap water purifier, SatinGlide freezer basket and electronically controlled storage areas that keep different foods at different temperatures, then HomeClick is the place you’ll find your homeware dreams come true.

As much as HomeClick specializes in top of the line home, kitchen, and bath items, that doesn’t mean you can’t find one heck of a deal there. When this item was written, you could purchase an $800 Veneto one-piece elongated toilet fitting for just $279, or a $2900 Nexus Air Bath for half price - $1464. And if that’s not enough for you, HomeClick also runs a ‘virtual outlet store’, which takes prices of excess inventory down by as much as a whopping 75% off the list price.

Faucets, cookware, cutlery, bathroom fittings, fireplaces, appliances, kitchen accessories, lighting, outdoor furniture, shower sets, whirlpools, grills, tableware - if you could buy it for the home, then you’ll find the best quality items right here.

Of course, not everybody can afford to buy the best all the time, so HomeClick makes it easy to purchase by offering financing options, online gift certificates, and even a HomeClick credit card that earns you discounts when you use it to buy furnishings, with 0% interest for the first 12 months. If you want even bigger discounts, join the HomeClick newsletter, which alerts customers of snap specials and gives them free shipping on all orders.

Now for the down side: HomeClick seems to trust their delivery to a company (or companies) that do not hold customer service in very high regard, and according to our research, this has led to a multitude of complaints over the past year. Additionally, because HomeClick has such a high turnover and their prices are so low, they do on occasion tell you that items you’ve ordered are on back order. On top of that, you should be aware that your credit card will be charged as soon as you place your order, even if it takes a few days to get your order shipped. For most people, that’s fine, but some take umbrage to immediate payment processing, so if you’re that kind of person, beware.

This, however, is a marginal annoyance when you shop around and find out just how low HomeClick’s prices are - Lowe’s, Home Depot, Faucet.com - these places cannot hold a candle to the low prices of HomeClick. Granted, the products they sell are not exactly low end, but the prices they charge for high quality products are simply unbeatable - even if you purchase through your plumbing contractor.

With no sales tax (except for local New Jerseyites), and free shipping for any order over $199 (which is likely to be just about every order), if you’ve recently decided to redecorate your home and finally build that dream kitchen or bathroom, you simply have to stop by HomeClick first.

The Product Trends rating: Customer service matters, and though we had no problem with our test order, the fact that others have had issues with delivery times gives you reason to be cautious. That said, this stuff is high quality and dirt cheap - if price and quality matters to you, our advice is give it a shot. Three and a half stars.

To try HomeClick for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: No matter whether you’re looking for video games, toys, games, standees, soundtracks, home furnishings, gift certificates, convention items, DVDs, collectibles, clothing, books, stationery, artwork or posters, if it has something to do with Star Wars, you’ll find it sold at the officially mandated, Lucasfilm-owned Star Wars Shop.

The big pitch: Discounted items for sale everyday, including exclusives that you won’t find anywhere else.

I have to admit, I hated, hated, hated the last three Star Wars movies. I know certain people love them and get all up ins, but to me, they were some of the worst big budget filmmaking in the last thirty years, like a trio of Waterworlds all lined up in a row. But hey, what do I know? I have a life that doesn’t involve Yoda-talk, so maybe I’m just missing out.

For those that aren’t missing out and worship the ground that George Lucas walks on, there’s the Star Wars Shop, the official Lucasfilm merchandise outlet that sells everything from ‘holiday edition Darth Vader statues’ to something called a ‘Lando in Skiff Guard Disguise Mini-Bust’.

I have to say, I wouldn’t know a ‘Covert Ops Clone Trooper Figure’ from a ‘Star Wars Porcelain Character Ornament Set’, but one thing I can tell you is that the items on sale at the Star Wars Shop are a lot cheaper than you would expect, especially seeing as much of it is limited edition collectible gear. I don’t know that I’d personally spend $279.99 on an ‘Attackus Wicket Statue’ or $399.99 on a 15 inch ‘Attackus Tusken Raider Statue’, but presumably someone out there will be saving every last penny of their summer babysitting money to do just that, in the expectation that one day it’ll be worth, like, $405 or something. So good luck to ‘em.

But you don’t have to be the geekiest geek of all geekdom to shop at the Star Wars Shop. Even a Star Wars hater like me can geek out a little at the General Greivous Bobbleheads (for just $16.99!), or the Framed Episode IV Film Cells (a snap at $69.99). And yeah, okay, I’ll admit that I wigged out a little at the Dark Side basketball jersey, though there’s no way I’d meet the hundred-dollar price tag for it.

All in all, what could have been a giant nerd rip-off is actually a collection of reasonably priced merchandise (for the most part) that will find a warm place in the hearts of those who dig it. We abide.

The Product Trends rating: It’s not our scene, but credit where it’s due, some of this is good stuff, especially to those who have The Empire Strikes Back memorized down to the last line, or have hung an Attack of the Clones poster over their john. If you go to sleep at night thinking about scenes from Return of the Jedi, then this is the store for you. 3.5 stars.

To try the Star Wars Shop for yourself, click the image below: