Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased these sheets (in King size, Silver Sage) in October, after doing a great deal of research. I gave them a good general review on Amazon when I received them. The seller fulfilled the order quickly, and the sheets are oversized, as noted, and they felt as though they would be soft after washing. But after using these sheets continuously for three + months, I find that they are NOT considerably softer; they were rougher than expected when I bought them, but I thought time and washing would fix that. It has not. I use the same sheets, washing them every week, and they are not softer. They also now have a tear along the seam in one corner. (I did not use bleach. I do, however, use hot water. It is absurd to suggest that sheets be washed in cold. Anyone can tell you that we all have dust mites in our homes. Cold water does not kill them. Hot does.) They also wrinkle terribly, no matter how quickly you remove them from the dryer. They even wrinkled on the bed after I line-dried them, which meant they started smooth. In addition, the sheets have begun to pill. From my research, this shouldn't happen with single-ply long staple Egyptian cotton (which is what these purport to be), even at the "lower" thread count, which I purchased because I didn't want heavy sheets. These are heavier sheets. Also, if you don't have a really, really oversized mattress (I have an older oversized one with two foam and one merino wool mattress toppers), you will find that the extra depth means that the bottom sheet doesn't stay smooth unless you tuck almost as much as a flat sheet. In addition, I received an e-mail from this seller after I purchased from them, which I found offensive in itself. The e-mail asked me not only to repeat my good general Amazon review on this site, but also to "Vote Down" negative reviews, which I found borderline unethical. I am pasting it below: BEGIN E-MAIL FROM SELLER: "Thank you for purchasing a sheet set from us through Amazon and for your subsequent positive feedback. We are a small, family-run business and our Amazon.com sales are very critical to the success of our business. We would GREATLY appreciate it if you wouldn't mind spending a couple minutes helping us. There are 4 easy ways that you can help: 1. Post a review on our product page letting others know of your experience with your purchase; it could even be as easy as pasting your feedback remarks. You can post a review by going toward the bottom of the product-listing page to where it says "Customer Reviews" and then to the right of that it says, "Create your own review". http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QIH89S 2. Vote down the negative reviews (assuming you disagree with what they say) by simply pressing "No" where it asks if the review "was helpful to you" at the end of the review. 3. You can help others more easily find our products by creating a "tag" for the search term you used to find the item you purchased. To use the tagging system, scroll down toward the bottom of the page and check mark tags you agree with or used to find the product. 4. Let others know that this is a great product by clicking the orange "Liked" button just below the product title. Again, thank you so much for your effort to help us. Please come back and visit us sometime soon. Thank you! Mike" END PASTED E-MAIL I did e-mail the seller yesterday, before posting this review, about my issues both with the product and their Chutzpah-filled e-mail, and have not heard back. All things considered, I would not buy these sheets again, nor will I buy anything from this seller. I realize that some people might not be offended by the e-mail--my primary problem with it is asking that we "vote down" negative reviews, since reviews are intended to help prospective buyers. It also makes me wonder who writes all of the positive reviews--we all depend on reviews online these days, and some merchants are manipulating the process by hiring people to write positive reviews. I am not saying this vendor does that. I don't know. But it doesn't seem a far leap from asking customers to "vote down" negative reviews to taking a bit more initiative. Essentially, the company is asking us to do their advertising--I'm sure I wouldn't have gotten this e-mail had I written a negative review the first time around.