Applianced Protection Agreements Yes? No? Maybe?

This write-up appeared in Yahoo Voices a few years ago and has a lot of good stuff in it, not that I agree with everything it says. (I never do, do I?) There is a lot of confusion surrounding these agreements, and every retailer offers them differently. This article "Appliance Agreements, A Necessary Evil" goes a long way towards dispelling some of the confusion. In a future post, I will weigh in with my views, but many of them largely mirror the author's.

It's Not the Heat, It's the...

Humidity, of course. Where I work, we are selling dehumidifiers and A/Cs like beer at Fenway. Here's a great buying guide for dehums from our friends t Consumer Reports.

Portable Air Conditioners for Casement Windows

I get a lot of questions on how to install portable A/Cs in casement windows. Good news, it can be done, and it's not expensive. It will require some basic fabrication skills. Here's the article.

You Want It When??? Some Musings on Appliance Deliveries

Summer has descended upon us in force here on the Cape, and 2 million people are crossing the Bourne and Sagamore bridges. Many of these people are headed for their summer homes, fully expecting everything to be shipshape so that they may enjoy a tranquil summer here in our popular paradise. Not a few of these people will discover that their refrigerator/dishwasher/washing machine/dryer/water heater has decided to punish you for abandoning it during the winter by ceasing to function. Appliances appear to have feelings, too.

At Sears, where I escape the ennui of Cape Cod life by occasionally selling appliances, I have met a lot of these people in the past several weeks. I feel their pain...sometimes. Not so much because they might have to hand wash their dishes for a few days, but you can get pretty tired of pizza and restaurant food,  trips to the laundromat, or cold showers due to a broken fridge, washer/dryer, or water heater. Sears (and our competitors) maintain warehouses here on the Cape. We try to keep a small but representative inventory of appliances on hand for these sorts of situations, but none of us could afford to keep a large inventory here. Large inventories are kept in warehouses that are central to multiple stores where real estate costs are relatively low. Hyannis isn't central to anything except Barnstable and Dukes counties. It is also very expensive real estate. It is also, essentially, an island, especially in the summer when even the bears swim the canal rather than deal with bridge traffic. Try to imagine a warehouse on Wianno Ave in Osterville. Remember, we're essentially an island.

As a result, it's fairly unlikely that the lovely $3000 Samsung french door double drawer fridge that you want is sitting around in our local warehouse (unless we happened to get one that was returned - you never know. Ask, we'll check). And no, I can't sell you the floor model. Why, you ask? Well, it's the floor model. If I sell it to you (of course, you're going to demand a discount because it's the floor model, aren't you?) I have to replace it with a new one, which instantly becomes another floor model. Do the math.

We do have clearance items on the floor, frequently in the cartons, and those can be sold directly. Unfortunately, we can't deliver them... yet. You have to pick them up. All our deliveries are from our regional warehouse in Westwood. We are working on potential ways to implement store deliveries that still meet our delivery standards, but we haven't settled on anything as of this writing.

As I mentioned earlier, we also have some items in our warehouse available for pickup, but, for reasons explained earlier, this is a limited list. We can have an installer (ours or yours) pick up an item from the warehouse for installation, and this gets done on occasion for emergency installations such as water heaters. If an emergency installation is required, we will try to accommodate you.

If you read the fine print in ads which talk about same-day delivery, they will also say "of items in stock." Unless you get lucky or your needs are extremely flexible, this may not have a whole lot of value.

There is a saying that goes "don't dig your well when you're thirsty." You don't always have a lot of choice when you have to replace an appliance. (Hopefully, you are following some of the maintenance suggestions in the blog.) That's why Hyannis and Falmouth have so many laundromats and good restaurants. Too bad the ice houses are either gone or converted to condos...