Thursday, July 01, 2010

What price for a different store?

I'm getting ready to make a fairly significant size purchase. I looked online and found a price at Wal-Mart (the store that every one loves to hate). I looked at a real brick-and-mortar store, one with a good reputation and the same item costs about 10% more.

There's no question in my mind that the real store will do a better job of service. I can take the item back, ask for help, ask for suggestions, etc and they would spend time with me. But how much is that worth?

6 comments:

Brian the Red said...

Not enough info to answer. How much is 10%? A dollar? A hundred dollars? Walmart will take it back, so it will depend on whether I think I will need questions answered or suggestions (that I couldn't find with a Google search.)

Randy said...

Brian, good to see your name again.

Purchase is roughly $2000 (maybe as low as $1500). 10% is about $200...

Buggaboosmommy said...

does online give you a site to store option? with that, can you get the online price and pick it up at the store?

Brian the Red said...

At that price point I'm leery. The biggest purchase I made online was our previous TV at $900 and at that it was from Best Buy, so a local return option existed. I would end up at the store for this, but your mileage may vary.

Adam said...

I am not mad at Wal-Mart for making money. I don't believe the hype that they kill Mom and Pops. And I shop there when I think I can get the better deal there.

With that being said, Wal-Mart has a pretty good (nearly No-Questions-Asked) return policy... http://walmartstores.com/7658.aspx

I don't put a whole lot of value on the service side of the equation. When I bought my TV from HH Gregg, I left happy and haven't been back regarding the TV. They will all be about the same on return and hopefully a $1-2K purchase will render a quality product that doesn't require long-term care.

My final answer...if Wal-Mart offers site-to-store (free shipping) and is 10% cheaper than said brick-and-mortar specialty store, make it happen!

Randy said...

Thanks to all who commented. I made my decision to go with the bigger store and pay a premium over Walmart Site-to-Store.

Bottom line, I just didn't trust Walmart's handling of the product. And I wanted the expertise I got at the specialty store. I did manage to negotiate a better deal. Instead of discounting the price of the main object, I received some of the extras at a discount.

This was truly a win-win solution. The specialty store got a sale they would have lost and I got some extras.

Sorry, there's still a secret about what I bought, I'll blog about that in a week or so..