You Want Outlet Prices....?

You say you want to save a few bucks on appliances, so you visit a scratch and dent store...like the Sears Outlet or something.  Sure enough, they have all kinds of appliances from refrigerators to dishwashers to LCD televisions, and all of them are deeply discounted due to the following:

- They are aesthetically challenged, meaning they are as the name implies..scratched and dented, some profoundly, some superficially, but they are flawed appearance wise

- The item is simply overstocked at retail locations and they have to move them, profit margins be damned!

- The item is a return, meaning someone else didn't like it...congrats, you just bought a fridge at a glorified garage sale!


The Better Half And I attempted to buy a new refrigerator at the Sears Outlet, and so far it has been a most unpleasant experience.  Apparently, outlet prices come with outlet service...not so much from the sales staff (the manager at the Tukwila location is a miracle worker, Sears is not paying him enough to keep that place from imploding), but from the delivery side of the equation.

Our refrigerator was supposed to be delivered on 2/14, along with our ding and dent dishwasher. I took that day as a work from home day so I could keep an eye on the delivery guys as they carried stuff in and out.  Around the time the fridge was supposed to arrive, I received a call from the delivery team stating they couldn't find the fridge...because refrigerators are so mobile and all that, it probably scurried away.  They asked to reschedule for Saturday, but the dishwasher was on the way, so I didn't burn a WFH day for absolutely nothing.

We spent Saturday patiently waiting for the fridge.  When it arrived the delivery team was surly and out of sorts.  There were more issues locating the oh so elusive fridge, but they finally wrangled it onto the truck.  Here's where the real fun begins.  Since I had no real idea what time they were arriving, I didn't empty our existing fridge.  The delivery team was all pissy about having to wait for me to remove bags of frozen vegetables, freezer burned peas, and condiments from the fridge.  They became even more agitated when I asked for them to not bring the new fridge in until I cleaned the space where the old one had been, something that took me about 5 minutes to do....

I gave them the all clear signal and they brought the new fridge in...and it was gargantuan.  We looked at and were sold a counter depth fridge, had it measured by the sales staff and confirmed it was counter depth, it was stickered as counter depth, and our fargin receipt said it was counter depth.  What we received was a 31 cubic foot fridge, one about the same size as a fridge/freezer you'd see at your local morgue.  All of this explains why the fridge was so hard to locate...the delivery team was looking for a counter depth appliance, which they could not find.  So I guess they grabbed the nearest one to the door and hoped we wouldn't notice. 

The delivery team refused my refusal to accept delivery of the new fridge and set about hooking it up...even as I objected.  When I told them to haul the thing out, they said they couldn't because they were out of time (must be a union shop) and had to move on, leaving me with a fridge I could stuff the bodies of at least two decent sized hobos into...should I be so inclined.   Luckily, we had a guest over when the delivery team pulled their stunt or I would have gone into a full-blown berserker rage on them...we're talking the Hulk crossed with Wolverine with maybe a little Mr. Hyde thrown in for good measure.  There would have been carnage had I not kept my wits about me as I didn't want to terrify our guest.

At the moment, I still have a Battlestar Galactica sized fridge sitting in the kitchen and our old one wondering what it did to be relegated to the garage.  The Sears delivery team is supposed to be over sometime tomorrow to haul Gigantor back to whatever netherworld it sprung forth from.  While they are here we are also going to discuss the lovely gouges in the floor the last team left as a reminder of that debacle.

What have we learned from this episode?  Sometimes, it isn't worth saving a buck or two shopping at an outlet store for big ticket items.  Maybe springing a few extra bucks is the price you pay if you want the items you paid for actually delivered.  We are taking a break from fridge shopping, but when back in the hunt we'll be going to Lowe's or Home Depot...