You guys do realize that large vendors like Walmart and Amazon negotiate huge discounts because they buy in bulk for their warehouse/chain situation, right? So, a local store has to pay far more for the same item. Also, the amount paid to employees and benefits given affects all of this as well. Amazon is extremely harsh about how it negotiates, their approach is "Here's what I'm going to pay or your products will not be in our warehouses." And they have so much power that the companies have to cave. People love to shop over the internet. And all of this has destroyed local business in America. Not just that we're cheap and lazy, but this creates a vacuum of choice. So what are you going to do? I'm not rich, but I try to buy everything I can at the local store, and for internet orders I'll pay PA's prices or AoA or people that support our hobby/industry. Same with photography stuff, local store then internet that is NOT Amazon.
Yep. You hit the nail right on the head. And I do appreciate buying certain things at a much lower price than I could at a local store. One of the things that the loss of the Mom & Pop stores created is the ability to go into an old, small, locally owned hardware store and buy a repair part for something. In the town I grew up near, there was a hardware store owned by a local family. I can recall multiple trips to the store with either my dad or my granddad looking for a repair part for a bathroom faucet, or a water pump, furnace, light fixture, etc, etc, etc. The elder family member owner would sit there in his rocking chair looking at the part. He'd study it carefully, then stand up and say, "I'll be right back." Then he would head to a REALLY old, open, elevator. It was a freight elevator actually. He'd head to the basement and you could hear him rattling things as he moved old boxes of stuff around. Then, the elevator would come back up and he'd come over and hand Dad or Granddad the part they needed. Try that at Walmart. LOL!
We've become a throw away society. You don't fix a faucet anymore. You just replace it with another cheap one. When we bought this place and did all the remodeling, the master bath was completely gutted and we started over. We picked out high end fixtures including a very nice, high priced, Moen faucet. We started having problems with it about 6 months ago. Two weeks ago our contractor tackled that problem. He removed the faucet and showed us where the problem was. The mixing valve was toast! It was leaking badly. No replacement parts for it. So, we put a brand new one in.
I used to build computers. I started before you could buy a Dell, Gateway, or HP. Actually, my first computer was built on a piece of plywood. LOL! But I did begin to build computers for customers. I could build a better computer for less money than any of the brand names could. Over time, those companies got big enough that they started doing exactly what you are talking about. They'd tell hardware manufacturers how much they would be willing to pay for parts and pieces. Then, they started negotiating with Microsoft for copies of licenses for Windows. They were buying tens of thousands of copies and I was buy a half dozen. It finally got to where I just could no longer compete. I started telling everyobdy to just go to Walmart and buy whatever is cheapest.
