Posted on 12/25/2018 6:21:08 AM PST by US Navy Vet
So awhile ago I stated on here that my wife and I would be doing our Christmas Shopping at local/small businesses. We managed to do about 1/3 of our Shopping at Local/Small Businesses and the rest a Big Box(Wal Mart etc) and/or Amazon.
Does Harbor Frieght count?
As I told some co-workers a few years back while we looking through a Harbor Freight catalog.
These are the kind of tools that you buy and put in the trunk of your car and hope that you never need them!
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
About as much as Sears used to. Did you buy it on-line or from a REAL person who lives locally and pays taxes/rent and/or local mortgage?
I’ve indulged some on Chinese take out, er, Harbor Freight in the past couple of years.
So far the wrenches, ratchets, and impact stuff has stood up the same use I put my front line stuff through.
Just as an FYI, it depends who you buy from on Amazon but you could very well be buying from a small business. There are many individuals who sell through Amazon using their FBA program. Many people buy wholesales, closeouts or private label and use Amazon as their storefront. Sure, Amazon gets a cut but you are helping out a small or midsize business more.
I am buying iPhone XS Max in weeks not months.
Got pretty much everything from Amazon and Walmart. Free shipping is a huge bonus.
It seems like when working on my sailboat I always need some specialty tool....like an 12 in long screwdriver to make changing the valve in the head easier. Harbor Freight is right down the road. Easy in. Easy out and always has what I need.
*** Does Harbor Frieght count? ***
Lol, friend and I were putting up one of those Arrow metal sheds. Lotta sheet metal screws. The battery on my $20 harbor freight drill/driver outlasted the battery in his Makita.
Talk about shocked, we both were.
Didn’t do any shopping this year or last and hope to do none next year.
That’s why I have 2 batteries for my Makita as well as about a hundred bits for all those oddball fastners we run into...
With the advent of the online shopping, many of the stores that used to carry things don’t because they would be competing with themselves and paying more to operate than they can save online. No store, no employees, no taxes...nothing but receive an order and ship it from a centralized location. Never meet the consumer, never fight traffic to get there.
We use it more because we can’t find what we need as the stores don’t stock it. I remember three years ago I tried to buy a soft serve ice cream machine for my daughter’s family. I found one all the way across the country in Florida, and got it. Couldn’t find anything in the stores but I could on line and they guaranteed shipping time. So from then on, if I see something advertised at the price I can use local, I may buy. But I don’t go out of my way to look. Just push a few buttons.
rwood
That person would no longer help me cut my grass than that person who processed my on-line order who lives somewhere else, pays taxes where they live and either rents or has a mortgage. z
So I chose the on-line order because I could do it in my pajamas and they shipped it to my house for free......
Oh, and I didn’t have to waste any time fighting traffic to get to a store only to find they didn’t have what I was looking for........
“Just as an FYI, it depends who you buy from on Amazon but you could very well be buying from a small business. There are many individuals who sell through Amazon using their FBA program. Many people buy wholesales, closeouts or private label and use Amazon as their storefront. Sure, Amazon gets a cut but you are helping out a small or midsize business more.”
We have noticed that many small business are selling on Amazon via many ways.
Amazon has the Prime Smile program, where you can designate a small % of your purchase to go to your charity of choice. Your choice not some East or West coast elite liberal’s choice.
Our gifts came from Amazon, Costco and Walmart. We didn’t have to drive, stand in line and insulted by a clerk who didn’t want work. That doesn’t happen at Walmart, good people and good prices.
As a veteran, I can order many great items at good prices, free shipping and no sales tax from their exchange.
I got great prices on my wife’s perfume and a gift to the house, a Dyson 7 portable vacuum cleaner, with free shipping and no Kalifornicator sales tax.
“Oh, and I didn’t have to waste any time fighting traffic to get to a store only to find they didn’t have what I was looking for........”
Also, we miss having our vehicles broken into at a mall parking lot, to steal what we bought or some careless driver putting a dent into the side of our vehicle.
I tried buying local, but no one had what my peeps wanted. No one can carry everything.
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