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Furnace Filter Warehouse Coupon
QUESTION:Well, did you find the item in the JC Penney's catalog, the Wards catalog,
... or did you get in your car, drive x miles to a place and look?
Compare apples to apples please. Items delivered to your front door
are not the same as items you have to go out and get. If your time
is worth very little, go to the warehouse clubs, look for cheapest
deals in the paper, clip coupons interminably. This is the way people
save money and that's great! Many people need to scrape a couple of
extra pennies together to make their Mercedes lease payment.
On the other hand, if spending time with spouse and children is important,
I will pick up my phone and in 5 minutes (less time than waiting in
the check-out counter :-) order my items. They are competitively
Comparing prices with other catalog outfits is the appropriate means.
You don't know what the distributor price was, nor the amount it
actually cost based on your volume, etc. For a direct distributor,
who receives 25% of the "business volume" cost back monthly, the
fan may have been a wash, but was certainly a better deal for his/her
business.
ANSWER: Yes, compare apples to apples. Many people consider these things to
be valuable (although it depends a lot on the nature of the merchandise):
- Being able to see and perhaps try out the merchandise before buying.
- Being able to compare different brands/models of merchandise by more
than the information printed in the catalog.
- Getting the merchandise right away rather than having to wait for
it to be delivered. (This probably turns into a disadvantage if
the item won't fit into the consumer's car, e.g. furniture or heavy
appliances. You pay extra for delivery or have the hassle of loading
and unloading it without damaging it. Do Amway dealers all have pickup
trucks to deliver refrigerators? Do they hire someone to deliver them?)
- Not having to stay around during the day to receive the merchandise,
or having it lying around outside to be stolen. (Amway might have
an edge here over mail-order catalogs if evening delivery can be arranged.)
- Being able to ask questions and get intelligent answers about your
selections (Is this printer compatible with this system and this software?
Will this setback thermostat work with my furnace? What does the warranty
cover?). Unfortunately, buying computers in stores not dedicated to
selling them may be just as bad or worse than buying from a catalog.
In my experience, it takes a lot more than 5 minutes to get past the
sales pitch for a dealership and even get to discussing merchandise.
Granted, this experience is limited to one area and only a couple
of distributors, but this is a major turn-off to even thinking about
trying to do business with Amway.
It bothers me that buying from Amway without becoming a distributor
doesn't seem competitive. I would hope that intelligent Amway
distributors still expect to buy occasionally from other sources for
personal use if they become aware of a better deal, taking into account
cost after dealer discounts and commissions.
What is the entry cost for becoming a distributor? How does it compare
with membership fees for discount warehouse stores? How long is the
cost good for? If all you want now is ONE fan, you have to consider
whether you can save enough in future purchases (ones that you really want
to make) to make up the membership cost and still come out ahead.
(Note that deciding to sell to other people is an independent decision.
"But you can retire rich!" isn't an argument for buying a fan from Amway,
nor for becoming a distributor so you can buy several fans cheap from Amway.)
I think Amway comes out way ahead of membership stores that want
multi-thousand-dollar membership fees for 10-year memberships (up front),
but behind local stores that have no membership fees at all, on this point.
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