Amazon Crushes Big Box Retailers: My Personal Story of the Day


It is rather ironic that I have been currently reading a library book about Amazon.com called "The Everything Store" when I came home today on a hot, muggy day and smelled my dehumidier release an electronic death smell in our basement. I looked up when we bought our old Whirlpool dehumidifier, and it was in 2007 when we lived in our previous house and it was purchased at the now defunct "American" appliance stores for only $110. So I realized it was time to replace the unit with a new dehumidifier to last another 5 to 7 years. I let my lovely Acer Chromebook surf the Lowes and Home Depot sites to see what units are available for sale. Lowes.com only had Hisense, Soleus and Idylis units, but HomeDepot.com had Frigidaire and GE units which are companies I had actually heard about in my life. Home Depot had a well rated 50 pint Frigidaire unit for $229.00 plus over $20 in hefty Brentwood city and Missouri sales tax so the total would be over $250 if I drove over to the nearby Hanley store, purchased it there and hauled and drove it back to our house.

Then I had to see what it would cost to have the same unit shipped to my front door by Amazon.com if I was willing to wait a few extra days. The Amazon total was $196.44 with free shipping, saving us over $50 from the Home Depot price without having to drive over there and pick it up ourselves. Plus we even still had some Amazon gift certificate money from my persistent Swagbucks participation, so it cost us even less out of pocket. It is easy to see why the bricks and mortar retailers are having such a hard time competing against online retailers like Amazon when they make it both less expensive and easier as well.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trying out the L'Ecole Culinaire Presentation Room restaurant

Image
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi...
Read more

BMI & BMR Calculator (Body Mass Index and Basal Metabolic Rate)

Image
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight. 
Read more

Not all Frosted Window Films are the same!

Image
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized  film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions...
Read more