Idle ramblings- Local Business vs. Cost Effective- when to say when?

1988RedT2 said:

In reply to cyow5 :

For me, Lowe's died when they stopped acting like a local business.  At my Lowe's, I get mundane quality, high prices, and lousy service.  Frankly, I can get that anywhere.

What's funny is we swore off Lowe's when we were in northern Virginia. We had a string of consistently awful experiences, none related to the products and all related to the people/operations. HD was about the same distance, so we went there instead. When we moved back down the NC, HD seems to observe this zip code as Lowe's turf, so the extra near hour of roundtrip driving was not worth it. We gave this Lowe's another shot, and it makes me think of how teenagers can be when their parents are looking vs. not, haha. Put the HQ nearby and the store straightens up real quick. Not perfect, but marked improvement. 

90% of the time I will go out of my way to buy local. Frequently I end up disappointed.

When a local business tells me repeatedly they can order it, I usually stop going there. 

I don't mind paying a premium for convenience but ordering something and having to return to pick it up is the opposite of convenience. 

Given a choice between a big box and Amazon, I'm going to lean toward Amazon because I don't have to leave the house. 

That said, there is a butcher about 2 miles from our house that we buy almost all of our meat from. While their prices are fairly reasonable, they are not convenient. The lines are always long and 2 hours is a reasonable wait time to get in and out. I have showed up 30 minutes before open time and was #45 in line. But the quality difference is so extreme that grocery store meats, beef in particular, actually taste terrible. It makes standing in line easy. 

Sadly, I spend a lot through amazon because of the convenience.  Give me a store that carries the same set of stuff (or even better, cut the crap out of it) that I can purchase online for 20% more and I'd happily give them my money instead.*

I don't want to drive to go search for E36 M3, its a gigantic waste of my time.  I don't want to create a different account for 50 different vendors.  I just want to be able to find my stuff easily, and get it efficiently.  

For stuff like restaraunts, breweries, etc. where I am going somewhere anyway, I'll never choose a big chain if I don't have to.  Not because they are inherently evil or anything, but I just prefer the character and experiences of local stuff.

*I do a lot of purchases for work, and similar stuff applies.  My expense reports are easier if I just use a few vendors and Amazon carries a wide variety of the small E36 M3 we need.  McMaster has higher prices and whatnot than MSC, etc. but I don't care because they make it easy to find and design for stuff (supply CAD files) and ship quickly and efficiently.  I would waste SO much more $ trying to find what I need elsewhere.

I've all but given up caring. I need the cheapest option regardless of what it is because I can barely afford that. Finding all the local stores that have the same trash I can get online except with a 100+% Mark up will Ensure I don't so business with them. 

Pretty much my only exception to this is the general store in town. I know she's buying stuff at the grocery store and upcharge to resell, but driving 2 minutes there and back instead of 20 minutes there and back is where I don't mind paying a little more. She does a great service for all the old people in town that can't drive or find rides, so conveniences helps. 

I'd love to quit dealing with Lowe's, but HD is a 30 minute drive each way, and my local Ace is a traeger dealer with double priced Chinese parts. Their ONLY redeeming quality is they refill propane tanks instead of swapping them. My Lowe's is full of useless lumps, the quality of their stuff sucks, but the mom n Pop lumber stores are only open from 9-11am on the 5th Tuesday of last week, and the plumbing supply place went commercial only. 

prodarwin said:

*I do a lot of purchases for work, and similar stuff applies.  My expense reports are easier if I just use a few vendors and Amazon carries a wide variety of the small E36 M3 we need.  McMaster has higher prices and whatnot than MSC, etc. but I don't care because they make it easy to find and design for stuff (supply CAD files) and ship quickly and efficiently.  I would waste SO much more $ trying to find what I need elsewhere.

I would love to use local vendors. We have a couple of door suppliers in town. I can't get any of them to provide pricing in a timely manner. I ask for a quote and get crickets. I'm paying $300+ to ship a door panel because the better service is worth the money. 

Toyman! said:

prodarwin said:

*I do a lot of purchases for work, and similar stuff applies.  My expense reports are easier if I just use a few vendors and Amazon carries a wide variety of the small E36 M3 we need.  McMaster has higher prices and whatnot than MSC, etc. but I don't care because they make it easy to find and design for stuff (supply CAD files) and ship quickly and efficiently.  I would waste SO much more $ trying to find what I need elsewhere.

I would love to use local vendors. We have a couple of door suppliers in town. I can't get any of them to provide pricing in a timely manner. I ask for a quote and get crickets. I'm paying $300+ to ship a door panel because the better service is worth the money. 

 

Yep.  Honestly, if someone around the corner had it for the same price, that trip is still costing me more money than having it shipped to the front door.

Its strange that I have an Ace hardware 1/2 mile away, and another 1 mile the other way. One closed for 9 months or so then remodeled into a"fancy" hardware store with $1000 grills.

Why does this cost $6?

pheller said:

It's whether the service outweighs the price difference. 

For things that do not require service, I'm going with the cheaper option. 

For things that do, I'm going with whoever offers better service. 

This is why 9/10 I do all my bike related stuff at home with online sourced parts. I have never found bike shop service to be worthy of the price, except for maybe wheel building and suspension rebuilds. 

The only thing I don't know how to do is lace a wheel. Plus my local guy is Chad Degroot so......

In reply to Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) :

Because Hillman is insane. the washers are fine, but when you get into the wierd stuff the pricing gets off the wall. 

In reply to Mndsm :

One day, I’ll get with Chad about some wheels....

Toyman! said:

90% of the time I will go out of my way to buy local. Frequently I end up disappointed.

 

This nails it right here. I want to be the guy that supports the locals, but reality has different plans.

I think a part of it for us is our loca area. The Daytona area is too big to be a small town that's off the radar of the predatory big boxes, but too small to have a truly diverse and competitive local scene. We're a prime target for boxes that compete well on price but fail miserably in every other way because there's no competition, either from other boxes or independents. 

One thing I've tended to notice is that local places that are WORKED by their owners tend to be very customer oriented and offer good service, but they'll also take criticism pretty harshly. Like dude, you're the one person here who can make this better, instead your making it worse? 

But often when local businesses are run by a bunch of underpaid folks while the owner is never around, they tend to suck just as much as any non-local place.