Most of the time I would say I love shopping as one season ends and another one begins because you can find a lot of deals then, but not this week. A family member gave Ellie money to go towards a new TV for her playroom. The one she has in there is a very old one (older than me), and I have to randomly knock the thing around to get the picture to come back in sometimes while she’s watching her PBS shows. We were going to put the money she was given together with $200 we set aside from our tax money to buy her a TV.
I never thought it could be so hard to buy a TV. I spent a few days reading reviews and making a list of my favorite TVs in her price range then we went shopping. We’ve gone to a couple different stores almost every night this week trying to find something for her, but since this is the time of the year the new TV models start to arrive in stores all of last year’s models are on sale. This would be great except we hit the stores about a week too late, so there’s hardly anything left except the display models.
Now, I’m usually all for an open box deal, but I’m not so happy about purchasing a Display model of a TV. Most stores reduced the prices of those TVs by $50. One store was also offering an additional 10% off for purchasing a display, but to me that’s still not enough. I know for a fact that store keeps their display TVs running 24/7, and unless there is a problem with the TV they use one of each model for the display all year.
We had picked out an LG TV that we wanted for her because we want it to be a TV that’s going to last for a few years. It was not only in the correct price range, but it was discounted $60 plus the 10% off. That knocked the price down to $298, but I still didn’t feel comfortable buying a display model. After it running that much in the store how am I supposed to know how quickly it is going to die? My home TV doesn’t run half that much, and it’s still hard to find a good TV in that price range that isn’t going to die in a couple years. Sure it came with a 1 year warranty, but that didn’t ease my mind. I might have purchased it if the discount was 25% off or if they had thrown in the extended warranty for free.
My second choice was to order a TV offline, but I wanted to at least get the chance to look at them in stores to see the picture quality. I’m not buying any large purchase like that based solely on reviews without seeing it for myself. Unfortunately when I went in search of the TVs we liked online last night everywhere I checked was sold out of the ones we could afford because of the new models arriving soon.
Luckily after searching all week we finally found a Phillips TV that was the 3rd choice on our list. Hubby had walked over to look at a psp game, and he just happened to spot a few new in box TVs that weren't in the normal TV section. They had been set to the side on a clearance shelf at the back of the electronics section, and we would have overlooked them if Hubby hadn't gone in search of that game. I’m just glad our search is over.
No comments:
Post a Comment