Direct Buy - Scam? - Page 2

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

Well, I'm not judging my savings off the retail numbers. I'm basing it off what I'd expect to pay at Star (Higher End) or Fingers (Medium) or even Gallery (Low quality).

Lower Quality Retail: $1000 with a 50% margin, they sell for $25% off for $750. Direct buy would sell for $500.

Medium Quality retail: $2000 with a 50% margin, they sell for $25% for $1500, Direct buy sells for $1000

High End: retail $5000 with a 75% margin, they sell for %50 off for $2500, direct buy sells for $1250. Yes, they have a lot of stuff where they are selling for 25 cents on the dollar of retail.

It takes a LOT of purchases to make up enough savings vs. sold price elsewhere to "pay" for the membership fee. Not so bad here ($3000), but $5K elsewhere, I expect you would need to be buying at least $20-25K to make sense.

Anyway. I didn't care for the high pressure sales technique, but for me, it works. For 90-95% of you, I expect it will not work. Go to IKEA and buy your stuff.

berettafan · 08-01-2008, 06:13 PM

paid quite a bit less than retail on my last furniture purchase from the local store.

my secret?

i paid a bunch of scammers $5k for the priviledge of shopping for junk furniture.

well, no that's not true. actually what i did was say 'give me your best price; i have an order penciled in w/ xxxxxx in NC and if you can get w/in $100 or so i'll take it to avoid shipping hassles.

'make a decision or forever be out' is bull****. plain and simple. if your product has value you don't need to do that. common effing sense will tell you that.

i think these places find victims because some folks just don't understand quality and it's very difficult to comparison shop furniture (much like carpet).

Dave L · 08-01-2008, 06:34 PM

Well Red Beard seems happy so I guess it works for some. I would never join anything where an immediate decision is required and where high pressure sales are used.

My wife and I used to go to "presentations" at ski resorts. We would be offered lift tickets or $100 gift cards (that can be used for lift tickets) so we would agree to go after we were done skiing. We would eat their little snacks and because I am in sales I would name, out loud, every sales tactic that the sales person would use as he did his pitch. The forced close "one week or two" and "standing room only" (we only have 3 units left) were so common it was ridiculous. They would usually get real angry so it was a fun little game.

Whats worse is that they dont even care if it works or make sense for you and have no interest in actually helping. Thats not sales thats pond scum.

89911 · 08-02-2008, 04:07 AM

High pressure is something to avoid. There was a scam going which involved purchasing a timeshare. They threw in some dinner certificates to Red Lobster with the deal, which the buyers used that night. The buyers reconsidered and under the 3 business day rule, decided to withdrawal the contract which they were told they could do at the signing. WRONG! By using the crappy Red Lobster certificates, it was found that they had already used an integral portion of the contract and could now no longer rescind the deal. True story printed in our paper.

stealthn · 08-02-2008, 06:28 AM

Hi Tim,

My wife and I are members, but it was $2000 when we joined. This was before we build our house so we spent a lot there, and easily made back the money.

You just have to do your pricing homework. I even got winter tires for the wifes truck at a huge discount there, but some things are still more expensive.

At $5000 I don't think I'd join either, and the wait for stuff is looooong.