Supporting local business - easier said than done

[Leo Enticknap]

The bearing in the cabin air blower motor in my car has been gradually failing for the last few weeks, but the squeak has now become so loud and persistent as to be a distraction while driving, and therefore a safety issue. So it's time to bite the bullet and replace it.

I've just been to the Honda dealership, O'Reilly's, Pep Boys, and an independent local auto parts store. The dealership wanted $185 up front for an OEM motor, back ordered for "around 10 to 12 weeks." O'Reilly's and Pep Boys had aftermarket ones for $65 and $80 respectively, but also with a special order wait time of weeks (Pep Boys blamed Mad Vlad for that). O'Reilly's also wanted to charge me $20 extra for shipping! Surely the whole point of using a bricks-and-mortar store is to not have to pay extra for shipping! The indie place could order one for $62, but again, with a possible wait of weeks. He couldn't give me even a ballpark delivery date.

Went home and went on Amazon. $59.99, delivery on Friday, free shipping.

Much as I have fears about the dominance of big tech and Amazon killing Main Street, I have to get rid of that squeal as quickly as possible. It's torture. So I placed the Amazon order. Furthermore, touring the auto parts stores was an hour of my time that I'll never get back.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

And we all know who and what is really responsible for the supply chain issues and the "national coin shortage" which out here mysteriously appears and then suddenly disappears at random.

i too have turned more to online buying, mainly due to availability but also lack of customer service, since the downward spiral of customer service has been going on long before the whu flu. it used to be that you could count on the person at the local auto parts or hardware/home improvement store actually KNOWING about what they they were selling, but that is so rare these days you are often better off doing some research online, then BUYING online once you get the right answers.

Even that can sometimes backfire IF your online purchase is picked up at a local store. For example, some years ago I bought a Denon AV receiver online through Best Buy with pickup at my local store in Hawthorne. I picked it up, took it to a very high profile client's screening room and installed it. But it was defective right out of the box..it had NO audio output at all. I boxed it back up took it back to the store to exchange it....and they refused to do it since I had bought it ONLINE!!! They wanted me to buy a new one, and credit my card back (which of course would take 3-10 business days.)

After a 30 minute tirade and a threat to call corporate and sue them for refusing to exchange a seriously defective product (as well as the 6 others waiting to do returns ganging up on the manager and telling him to just exchange the damn thing) they finally did a direct exchange. I did write to corporate and the manager and returns guy got fired. And I have never shopped at Worst Buy since.

And the real kicker to that situation? I found out that the online price and the in-store REGULAR price were EXACTLY THE SAME.

Best Buy.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'll buy certain things at local retail stores when it makes sense to do so. With some items I prefer buying them in person, such as clothing (so I can see how it fits). For computing and mass produced consumer electronics products I mostly buy online unless the device is something cheap and common like a USB flash memory stick. The last consumer electronics item of significance that I bought from a brick and mortar retail store was my iPad Pro. And I bought that a few years ago from an Apple store in Oklahoma City.

In the past I would feel a little guilty buying from Amazon, but that was because they weren't charging sales tax (giving them an extra, unfair pricing advantage). Now they collect sales tax.

I've ordered 4 different computer systems in the past several months. A new notebook for myself to use at home and 3 desktop systems for myself and 2 co-workers at work. All were ordered from Dell. None of the local retailers could carry the kind of systems I wanted to order. Walmart, Target and Sam's Club carry mostly cheap, entry-level crap. The couple local companies who custom build systems use a lot of sketchy, off-brand crap for components and then try to charge an arm and a leg for it. If you want a custom-built PC the ONLY way to do it is buying the case and components yourself and doing the assembly yourself. Dell might be a "big, evil corporation" but they have volume buying power. I at least know what's going into those systems. If I wanted to buy the same PC guts and build my own system I would end up spending a lot more money and be waiting a lot longer for parts to ship.

All of the PCs I ordered took enough time to ship. The notebook I ordered was an Alienware X17. Thanks to supply chain issues and crypto bastards I had to settle for one with a RTX-3070 graphics board instead of the RTX-3080. The 3080 would have cost me a few hundred more and have me waiting weeks or months longer for the unit. My old Dell XPS notebook was on its last legs. I needed a very good replacement now rather than a "perfect" system much later.

We had to wait several weeks for each desktop PC to arrive. One of the desktop PCs I ordered ended up not working after unboxing it. Something on the motherboard had failed. Dell immediately agreed to exchange the system. But the upshot was the Dell XPS-8940 line had just gone out of production. So they sent a XPS-8950 with an even better CPU. The 8940 had an 8-core 11th gen Core i7 CPU; the 8950 came with a 12-core 12th-gen Core i7. Bigger case, more expansion for memory on the motherboard; it came with 64GB of RAM, but can be upped to 128GB. The only downside was the 8950 was loaded with Windows 11 Pro. The other two that came in earlier were pre-loaded with Win 10 Pro with free upgrade options for Win 11. I've been sticking with Win 10 for now until I know its safe enough to upgrade.