Appliance Sales - Frequent or Not?

Hello everyone! I am new to this forum, but I was hoping you all might have some advice for me on buying our new appliances. I did a search before posting this, but I didn't see any threads on this topic. I apologize in advance if this has been asked before.

We are in the middle of remodeling our kitchen and we have picked out our appliances that we want to buy. Several of the stores we have looked at (Sears, Best Buy, Home Depot) are currently running sales (ranging from 10%-15% off) that end tomorrow or Thursday. We are not quite ready to install our new appliances..we're still several weeks away from that point. However, in order to get the sale price, we are willing to go ahead and buy them now and store them until we're ready to install them.

I'm wondering if appliances are the kind of thing that retailers are frequently running sales on, or if we should jump on these prices now. Any insight you have is appreciated.

I don't know if your local newspaper archives the ads for appliances as well as the news text. If it does you could look for patterns. There may be a variation in how often sales are held depending on the season, the economy, and each company's individual overstock situation.
Hopefully this is more easily predicted than what the stock market will do.

It's an interesting question. Maybe some MBA or economist can answer it.

If there is no "penalty" for buying now, like, e.g., costs associated with storage, Decision Theory says "buy now" but I'd first compare the make and model with complaints and class action lawsuits on the Net.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Google News Archive Search

Epigirl:

My own personal experience is that appliances are almost always on sale at one place or another. The whole idea behind the "sale" is to prompt you to buy now for fear of missing out on a better price. As soon as this sale is over, there'll be a different sale for 10 to 15 percent off appliances. That's really not much of a discount, anyway. You could probably get 10 to 15 percent off just by asking for a "nice guy discount" cuz your salesman is a nice guy.

Stoves are pretty much about the same no matter who's model you go with. I like GE digital timers better, but you should make sure the timer can do any funky stuff you want to do with your stove before buying it. (Like coming on while you're at work, baking supper for 2 1/2 hours and then shutting off by itself just before you get home.)

What you SHOULD do is phone around and find out where the GE appliance parts distributors are in your area. Here in Canada, GE distributes it's parts through a company called "Camco" which is now part of the Mexican "MABE" group. Mabe parts distributors will have GE appliances available and on sale every business day of the year.

I wouldn't buy GE when it comes to laundry equipment. Maytag and Whirlpool have the better designs when it comes to washers and dryers.

However, for fridges and stoves, the working principle is the same for everyone's product, and it's just a matter of finding the appliance with all the features you want.

Dishwashers is something I don't know about. My sister has a Maytag Performa dish washer, which is Maytag's "builder's brand". And, she's happy with it.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the input! You seem to have differing opinions, though...

...anyone else out there want to play tie-breaker?

Not in that cranium contest....

Wanna keep it simple? Consumer reports does this for a living. :trophy:
Remember there are no real deals....pay for a list about what actually lasts and save money.....I happen to agree with most of consumer reports tests, I always buy Bosch.

In my experience too, it may depend on the store who sells it and probably their stocks as well. Some stores may offer sales just because they want to lower down the number of their stocks. So it always depend. Just my opinion.

Thanks, guys!

Well, maybe we're suckers, but we went ahead and went for the sale. Home Depot was having an extra "internet special" on top of their 10% off sale prices, so we went to Sears and asked them to beat it. Of course, they did, so I think we did allright. If nothing else, we got one more step in the renovation crossed off the ol' list.

Epigirl:

Sears doesn't make their own appliances. Kenmore is made by one of the other major 5 appliance manufacturers in the US for Sears.

You'd do well to mark down the model and serial numbers of each Kenmore appliance you have, take them to any appliance parts shop and find out which manufacturer made each of your appliances. You'll find that the manufacturer will make a nearly identical unit to yours with only minor changes requested by Sears. It'd be great if ou could get the model number of the manufacturer's equivalent appliance.

The advantage to doing that is that if you ever have to ask for advice on one of these forums because your clothes dryer isn't heating or your dishwasher isn't filling, you can say your dryer was made by (Whirlpool, for example) and it's model number such-and-such, or your dishwasher was made by (Maytag, say) and it's model number so-and-so. That way, someone with experience repairing Whirlpool laundry equipment or Maytag dish washers will be able to help with confidence. If you tell him it's a Kenmore, and he asks you who made it, and you say "idunno", then he's not going to know how to diagnose the problem because he doesn't know what kind of machine you have.

Thanks, good point!

We didn't go with Kenmore, though, we bought LG appliances....just purchased them at Sears.

Awesome! I would love to see a review of them in our appliances section.

We're taking delivery in a month, so once I'm using them I'd be happy to review them! So far, I can say that they are averagely priced (not the cheapest, not the most expensive), and also, they're pretty. Plus, LG is having a big rebate through June 2. It ranges from $200-$1000 depending on how many appliances you get and (oddly) whether you buy a wall oven. We're getting $500 back from them because we bought four LG appliances.

LG stands for Litton Group. They're made in China, but they make decent quality stuff.