Price matching.
Community
Reading the thread on Amazon and people's opinions on shopping local. I was wondering what people's thoughts were on asking locals to match or atleast be reasonably close in price. My wife and I are building an addition on our house. I would really like to use one of our local lumber yards to buy all of the materials through, but they are way out the price range as Lowes/Home Depot. It's only about an hour drive to the big stores. So driving up there wouldn't be a problem. My question is, is it bad etiquette/or out of line to go in and see how close the local store can get in price. I would be willing to pay more to get it local, but not 30% more. Thoughts?
Etiquette? Other than being polite, upfront and honest, etiquette has nothing to do with it, it's BUSINE$$. You need a product that you want to pay as little as possible for, and they have that product which they want as much for as they can get. Somewhere in between is the end result.
But I will add this...........
We just got done with a large, second story deck job. We got the lumber from Home Depot (delivered) and while it was low priced, it was GARBAGE. When I figure in the time it took us to load up the rejects, take them back, sort through the pile to get decent stock, load it up and then go back to the job, I'd of been better off paying more from a lumberyard that shipped DECENT lumber. Then we could have had the job done at least a half a day sooner. Employees don't work for nothing!
I'm done with the Depot as far a lumber goes.
Those little details on the stamp on the wood mean a great deal about the product strength, species/grade of wood and if it's kiln dried. I am a structural engineer, contractor and a framing carpenter in a former life and buy A LOT of wood and I'd never get dimensional lumber (2x4, 2x6, etc.) from a big box.......ply-wood or other manufactured products, I buy from them all the time, but you need to be careful because they're sneaky about details and how they beat the price to nothing. I second taking the entire list; you get different pricing when you have a $20k list as opposed to asking how much 3- 2x4's are and do the math yourself.
My father was a contractor and I used his license for many years to buy lumber and plumbing supplies. Lowes will match any competitors price at my local store. I used to get some lumber from an Amish saw mill and 2X4's were actually 2X4. When I was building houses with my dad we only used Douglas fir lumber for framing but you can't even get it now. My house has no yellow pine framing.
"You betta nail those in today because if you wait until tomorrow it only be good for a rocking chair!"
He wasn't lying either spike!!! The damn deck boards we used looked like cooked spaghetti a week after we put them in!
As a contractor, I would never buy any large quantity of lumber from Lowes, Home Depot. Their material is not the same grade as what we buy from the local lumberyard. And in many cases it's more expensive from lowes. Add in all the time and aggravation of not having enough material because half of it is not fit to use and it really becomes an issue. I see customers waste a lot of money trying to save a dollar.
When I was growing up we had two local lumber yards. One of my cousins father owned one. My cousin got sick and got so bad he nearly lost everything he owned. After years they discovered it was Lyme disease. We had never heard of it but they determined that he got it from a tick that came from up North in a load of lumber.
Having handled a lot of lumber in my younger years I often found bullets in the lumber. Have any of you guys ever seen that?
Besides the lower quality lumber etc. , understand that the big box stores and national retailers game the system with the politicians.
When looking to enter a market, they obtain TIF district sweetheart deals that exempt them from onerous property taxes and shift that burden to other businesses and residents. And many municipalities will now kick in grants for the build out in exchange for the projected sales tax revenues.
If the local lumber yard had the town pay for a significant portion of his building, exempted him from property taxes and sold spaghetti wood that wasn't properly kiln dried... his prices would be significantly cheaper too.
The higher the sales tax, the more incentive for municipalities to play this game. The higher the property tax, the more reward for the merchant. Government putting their thumb on the scale again. It's a big problem here in IL.
Do you see the same Pattern in rebar from home Depot too, Ben H?
DC, It's been years since I've bought any bar from a big box, but that's another great example. They used to sell grade 40 (40,000 psi) re-bar instead of the industry standard Grade 60 (60,000 psi) re-bar and consumers don't really know the difference because re-bar is re-bar right? NO!!! There are different grades and strengths of bars. I don't have my ACI-318 book with me to tell you how to differentiate between grades, but the little #'s stamped on the sides tell you the grade. With steel being a manufactured process at least there's only a handful of possibilities what grade it is, but with wood, there are so many possibilities. A 2x4 is not necessarily a 2x4 Douglas fir, structural select with a moisture content of less than 15%.
Use a good yard for dimensional lumber and forget about your possible "savings" going elsewhere.
I just built a sizable deck onto my house and after checking all four lumber options in town, the two big named stores were considerably cheaper than the two locally owned stores. I ended up going with the locally owned store because I asked the question about price matching Lowes and they did so without any hesitation. Glad I asked.
I'll second the poor quality of bulk buy from he depot. They blue printed our deck, spit out a material list and had it delivered. The PT planking was the mostissue matched , warped , uneven pile of crap ever
YUP! Just expensive firewood.
Did an addition in 2007, got 90% of all building supplies at UBC, same place most contractors did as well.
Gave me a "good guy" discount, even though I wasn't a general contractor. $50k worth I would hope so...
Normally the local guy will work with you if doing a big job. I'd for sure go talk to them...
I dunno; I prefer to shop at the local stores, but I've been there so many times and found it hard to walk away with the few usable pieces of lumber I was needing. These are small town rural-area stores. The prices are also higher. I've never done any big projects where I was buying the material that would make it worthwhile for anyone to give a discount, but if I did I would certainly check.
I was at Menards yesterday and bought a few pre-cut studs. It was some of the prettiest dimensional lumber I've seen in a long time. Pretty doesn't equate to strength, but what I'm using it for doesn't require much strength. I hand-picked it off the stack, but mostly it was reasonably straight. Crazy right? There isn't anything wrong with knowing your application. Buying select structural lumber or 60 ksi rebar when you don't need it is probably just a waste of money.
I have no pride when it comes to asking for a lower price.
Two years ago I am in WM and just happened to be walking by their funiture area. They had a camo recliner on the aisle for $249. My friends were bugging me about some nicer chairs for the cabin.
I am looking hard at them when the store manager walks by and asks if he can help. I tell him I am thinking about buying two, but ask if he can do better than the marked price. He scans it and calls back to the stockroom and asks how many that have. I hear 18, and i start to say how that has to be clogging up his storage.
He laughs and says how about $400 for two? I say sold.
Never hurts to ask, GL.
