Experience with Direct Buy

[rogerwa]

I am embarking on a major remodeling project very shortly. We are putting an additon on the back of our house, moving the laundry room upstairs, gutting/totally changing our kitchen, and installing h/w floors in the whole 1200sq ft main floor.

While we have a high level idea of how much the construction aspects will run, we will be replacing just about all of our applicances and will need to furnish the new space.

The Direct Buy club does marketing in our area and has two 'showrooms', and while I am usually skeptical of places that force you to come in and meet with them before you know the details of the deal, it does claim significant savings over retail. With the amount of work we will be doing, the membership fee may be justifiable.

Has anyone worked with them? and What are the details/downsides. If you do not know what it is you can google direct buy and will come up with their site, which is pretty devoid of actual details.

My intuition says to stay away, but it never hurts to ask.

 

[tommays]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

google Direct Buy club complaints


Lets just say you will have to do a lot of reading and see if you think there valid as in some areas they have a good BBB rating and other areas real bad


Having redone my house, siding, windows, floors ect i just shoped for each item and found a fair vendor for each (IE you can return things if there is a mistake on there part)



Tommays

 

[rogerwa]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

I guess my intuition was right. Predatory would be my best description. I would never commit to a purchase of that magnitude without the time to think it over and do due dilligence. if your business model cannot withstand the due dilligence, then you must troll for suckas. Which it seems is their MO.

I understand empire carpet has the same buy now or forget it mantra. I can't understand running a business that way.

I'll be curious to hear if there are any positive experiences that are posted here..

 

[Kenneth Brown]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

We looked into DB real hard while building our house. They will save you money over retail. You also will not be able to benefit from any sales. The retail price they use is exxaggrated IMHO. We passed on it, stuck with locals and big boxes.

 

[ondarvr]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

I wanted to check them out before my major remodel also, even set an appointment to meet with them. I checked out their rep on line and it was poor, but thought I would give them a chance. I had the first appointment of the morning, I got there early and watched them walk in and found they're not the group I wanted to deal with. What I found was similar to what's being said, they want money up front for possible discounts on inflated prices prices on a limited supply of products. They have no reason to follow up and help you once they have your money. I was able to find much better deals on everything by just looking around and asking a lot of questions. By checking into sales, overstocks, rebates, close outs, and Craig's list, I was able to do my whole house for less than the bids I was given on just my kitchen.

Prices have dropped dramatically over the last year and contractors are hungry for work, so you should be able to find very good prices on your own.

 

[KM2]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

Don't now anything about direct buy, if your going to do your flooring yourself I would go to Lumber Liquidators in Blaine for the wood.

 

[rogerwa]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

Not sure what we are doing for the H/wflooring yet. We had assumed a natural in-house finished oak. But we will also look at some of the other types. My wife was interested in tigerwood. LL is definitely on the list of things to check out..

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

We went to (2) different Direct Buy 'invitationals' in two different cities. It was the same thing both times. Reminded me of the ol' time share sales technique. Divide everyone up into couples with individual hosts which helps keep all the questions 'local' and at your table only and then start the hard sell. If I recall it costs about $1500-$2500 bucks just to join....so its highly unlikely you get any financial advantage on your first buy. After that...how often are you buying major appliances once a month...or once every three years. They said I can buy a cheap toaster through them and I asked them how long does delivery take....well about 3-5 weeks. Who waits 3-5 weeks to buy a toaster? If you are refurnishing a very, very large house....or two, from scratch it might pay off. That was not what we were thinking. We were considering a couch or two...and that was about it.
I wasn't too impressed with the whole hard sell. They are very stringent and careful about anyone who you know getting in on it and using/sharing it....even your kids and they are very restrictive about it. When I said that we (my wife and I) wanted to think about for a day or so. We were told...nope...the offer is good for tonight only...and there are no more invites back. I said forget it and we left.
We got another invitation (6) months later from a new local sales representative. What a joke.....nope not for me.
Interesting evening out tho'....go for the fun of it and compare notes with the feedback you get on this.
BP

 

[jsfinn]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

My folks got an invitation to one of their sales thing. I did some Internet research on them and decided that more people than not had problems with them and asked my folks to skip it.

They went to the sales thing anyways and walked out half way though because the sales guy wouldn't tell them exactly what it would cost to join and you couldn't see any merchandise in their "warehouse" (that doesn't exist). It's all catalog mail order stuff.

Something like Costco (I'm a HUGE Costco fan) may suit your needs. They sell appliances and other furnishings on their website - including hard wood flooring and have a very liberal return policy.

 

[beezee28]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

This Direct Buy sounds like a big rip off from the comments I read. As the saying goes 'let the buyer beware'. Personally I would rather go to the local lowes or home depot where you can choose the things you want and have a return policy if it goes bad and you don't have to wait 3-5 weeks for it. My 2 cents worth.

 

[muskyone]

Re: Experience with Direct Buy

for your applicances i would ck out applicancesmart we got a ge profile ss fridge for 750 it had a small dent in the side but we got dishwasher micro and stove and i belive it was all under 3k all ge all ss