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Comment by gzu | Hacker News Reader

You really can't beat going into a physical store for a large ticket item purchase. No waiting for shipping, easy to return, viewing the product in store.

Recently purchased a MBP from Bestbuy. The first one I received had noticeable back light bleeding near a screen corner. Walked back in the store the next day to return. The process from an online retailer would have taken weeks.

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A while back we had a refrigerator die, and I was like "no problem, I'll run to home depot and get one".

they could NOT handle it. Everyone seemed annoyed that I wanted to do this. They have refrigerators on the floor but only a few are for sale, and they can do delivery in theory but they didn't seem to know if their delivery guys were available or not.

I went over to Lowes next door and it was the same deal. I was astonished. Couldn't give them my money.

So yeah I got it online, which was a very smooth experience but was without a refrigerator for a few days which is not good.

That's your experience. When my fridge was dying, I went to Home depot. They had one, I ordered it, they delivered it, even took off the door off the hinges to bring it in, installed it and placed the doors back on the hinges.

same day? I've had the same experience as you if you are willing to wait a few days. they are great at the delivery/install.

I'm not sure if anything has changed there. Huge bulky items have always been delivered from a warehouse ~days later. Online hasn't changed anything with that, I don't think. Sure, sometimes you'll get lucky with a popular model they keep a few of in-store, but that feels like the exception.

You can't go to a mattress store and walk out with a mattress either, generally.

But they do have these items in the store out on the floor, they could have done it but it just seemed like they didn't want to make an effort. I realize your choice of model is going to be limited if you are in a hurry, but if you want to compete with amazon, being eager to sell people appliances day of would be a good way.

Yeah I was somewhat surprised when I bought a new washer and dryer. Took my truck to the store so I would have space, get there, and they are like yeah its going to be two weeks for delivery. They keep none of those items on hand, as they are too large. Its all out in a warehouse somewhere else, and they just aren't prepared for someone who wants something now. It makes sense, but is not something I thought about before experiencing it.

Interestingly, the one place you could do this (walk in and buy a new washer/dryer/fridge and drive away with it) was Sears which has closed their stores in many major metro areas and are basically going out of business...

This is only true of a small portion of the sears with warehouse attached (aka the ones not in malls). Even then, I purchased my last two dishwashers there, and in both cases it took a couple days to deliver.

If you want something right now, go to one of the scratch and dent appliance places. Same basic deal as hd/lowes/bestbuy when it comes to appliances, just about the only ones those stores have in stock are the ones that got returned.

I worked at a Sears when I was younger. The location didn't have a large warehouse attached (smaller one, but it was only for smaller home and garden/electronics items), but there was one in town so for some items we'd sell and they'd go there to pick up. I do recall at points where items were sold from the store, but that was a rarity.

Huh, interesting. I bought a dishwasher a few months ago from Home Depot and it was smooth sailing. Picked the floor model, they pulled the item from the back, we payed, and then they helped us load it into the car.

Just an FYI, Best Buy sells appliances as well. Not sure if every store lets you take them home right there though.

I'm surprised. I went to Lowe's, finally decided on a new dish washer and they got it down so I could stick it in my car. Perhaps refridgerators are a little different though since they don't fit in cars quite as nicely...

It's great for a big-ticket, low-margin purchase like an MBP, but poor for cheap, high-margin items like cables and accessories. Which is, of course, where they really make money.

They'll price match a laptop to Amazon, but cannot price match a $2 Ethernet patch cable because they're retail space, not a warehouse.

What about consumer electronics like TVs and stereo systems. Are those low-margin?

TVs are low-margin. Audio varies.

Can confirm the other comment. TV's are very low margin. It's not uncommon for them to sell at a loss, or even severe loss (if you're buying other higher margin items).

Audio isn't typically so bad, but I think it depends on the systems.

The "home theatre in a box" items outside of Bose tend to be pretty low margin in a lot of cases.

Real amp/stereo/surround setups can be pretty decent margin.

My knowledge is derived from a smaller, mid/high-end outfit, so I'm not too sure about Best Buy but I assume the TV's are about the same.

All that said, if what you need is a cable to get your big-ticket item working right now, a lot of us will find the markup on the cheap, high-margin item well worth it.

You save time by getting it right now, so that's worth something.

I'm not sure you save time: That round trip to the store might take an hour. Conversely, you could defer the task that needs that cable until the day after tomorrow, take 2 minutes to buy it on Amazon, and spend the next 48 hours on other stuff.

To me, the hour trip to go to the store is much more burdensome than 2 minutes on my computer plus 48 hours of doing everything else that I have in my life...I run my brain on a round-robin scheduling algorithm, and there are plenty of other tasks that can keep me busy while I wait for that interrupt to return!

I've bought plenty of SD cards online for my raspberry pi and dashcam. They all die and start giving errors within a month or two. Even tho I went of my way to buy name brand, and not the cheapest 4 star cards. :-/

Look into high endurance cards for dashcams. There are a few different brands with them.

I love the Raspberry Pi, and all the good it's done for computing. I have 3 of them currently. But, I don't want anything SD card driven for my next SBC. They are too volatile for heavy use.

The Beaglebone Black has eMMC onboard.

Even the nice consumer SD cards aren't really designed for high write endurance. I would look into industrial cards like the Swissbit microSDs with SLC: https://swissbit.com/products/nand-flash-products/cards/micr...

These are some of the most counterfeited items of all, so I'll only buy them from industrial distributors. I figure they are accustomed to vetting their suppliers and have a reputation to protect.

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you buy the MacBook Pro directly from Apple? If I'm not mistaken the price is exactly the same in both stores. Is Best Buy just closer to you, or do you have a specific reason for going to Best Buy over Apple?

I think at the time they had a better sale price. It was a slight discount vs msrp. I also was able to sign up for a store credit card to get 10% back in rewards on the first purchase. Top that off with like 3+ Best Buy locations within a 30min drive of my area.

Ended up being a very good deal. If I bought from Apple would have missed out on free rewards, msrp discount, and the drive to Apple store is a bit longer

>Walked back in the store the next day to return

But they could have been difficult about this right?

In the EU at least, buying online means you can always return no questions asked within 14 days. Buying in store means you are bound to the shop's returns policy.

Wait really? What's to stop me from setting up a side business selling mbp hard drives then?

Jail time

They could. But why would they? They're just going to return it to Apple.

Not Best Buy related but I tried purchasing an elliptical online from Amazon along with assembly. One company does the shipment and a third party does the assembly. The assembly guy cancelled on me because it was raining (not really hard) and he couldn't come out at a reasonable time.

I cancelled the assembly, had the box returned to Amazon (of course its not their regular shipping). I then ordered from Sears. They came on time with the equipment and they did the assembly.

Back on topic. I'm debating whether to use Geek Squad to mount my TV (I have no mechanical skills) or purchase it through Amazon for half the cost.

I ordered a MBP from Adorama and got shipped an empty box. It took about a month to get the notebook. I ended up ordering from B&H and having Adorama just refund me because they were taking legit forever to "investigate". I hate that I didn't throw the box back at the UPS guy when I realized it was empty :(

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