Appliance Shopping Part 1

For the last 2 weeks, it seems like all we've been doing is running around from shop to shop looking at all the appliances to figure out what we want, what the prices look like, and plugging it into our Google spreadsheet to see what we can afford. Our only break from appliance shopping seems to be going to Home Depot to price faucets, sinks, and other building materials like plywood and insulation. Who would've thought that Home Depot carries kitchen sinks priced at $2k? Leave it to me to find stupidly expensive sinks!

One thing we really noticed after visiting all these stores was the difference in sales methods and attitudes. Interestingly enough, the salespeople at Sears Home were a lot more knowledgeable and sincere with guiding us to what we need then the more "specialty" stores like Appliance Canada and Sleep Country. As Kel would put it, the salesman at Appliance Canada was more like a car salesman! He couldn't provide any more facts than what we already know and when asked about the price of the products his response was "They're all around $2000". Kel pushed on and asked whether he could list the prices for us so we can see actual numbers, and the salesman goes "They're all about the same." I had to literally ask "Can we get something ON PAPER?!" before he nodded and retreated to his office to look it up and write us quotes! The salesman at Sleep Country was even worse. He stood monitoring us trying out the mattresses without providing any information, like we were loitering kids! When asked a question, he'd look at us questionably like we were stupid and wasting his time. Needless to say, we left feeling "to hell with him!"

Contrastingly, Frank the appliance guy at Sears Home, would insist on printing out spec sheets on all the options we were contemplating so we can take our time, go home and sleep on it. Frank also informed us of their special VIP sales event next weekend and advised us to delay our purchase as to take advantage of it! There was a manufacturer's rebate for LG appliances that ended on Saturday and when asked which would be more advantageous: LG rebate versus VIP sales, Frank actually sat down and crunched the numbers for us! And so.... we've purchased our first fridge! The price match + manufacturer rebate actually worked out cheaper than the VIP event and we now have until next weekend to decide on our other appliance options.

Similarly, Mike the mattress guy at Sears Home, gave us so much information we felt like we had a crash course 101 on everything there is to know about mattresses! He taught us the difference between brands and their lines, from how their coils are shaped, to the difference between materials used, and latex versus memory foam. Now we just need to make our final decisions...