Friday, November 28, 2008

Saved A LOT on a big ticket item!

I'm not usually a Black Friday shopper. The one time that I got up at 4 am to shop the day after Thanksgiving, I stood in line for 2 hours and then was too far back to get a ticket for the one thing that I wanted (a video camera). I vowed to never shop that day again!

Well, today I broke that self-imposed rule and it was totally worth it!

Actually, I wouldn't say that I shopped, really. I found one unbelievable deal that I had to have, walked into the store to get it, and then walked out 20 minutes later with much satisfaction.

You see, we have a need for a high-efficiency washer and dryer. Why such a luxury? Well, I consider it more of a necessity than a luxury. After some research, we found out that these washers use around 13-15 gallons of water per load, compared to 45-50 in a regular washer. And the dryers dry clothes in half the time. Since I don't hang my clothes in the winter, I use my dryer about 1/3 of the year and right now it takes about 2 hours (2 cycles) to dry a load of laundry. Not very efficient.

So, in light of the water issues we had the past year and our desire to decrease our electric bill as much as possible, we decided that we should invest in a high-efficiency set.

The next step was to find the best deal. We never pay full price for anything, so being the bargain shoppers that we are, we set out for some dealin' and wheelin'. On our quest, we found a Maytag set at Lowe's that was 10% off, plus there was a $100 manufacturer's rebate. The set would be around $1350.

Okay...deep breath...if you've ever priced these machines, you'll know that you can't get them for much cheaper than that unless you buy an off-brand, but this is something we don't want to take chances on. We still had a hard time swallowing that price tag, so we decided to sleep on it and then check the "scratch and dent" store the next time we were in town.

Well, as luck would have it, Ryan's cousin visited our family yesterday after the Thanksgiving meal and told us about the most incredible deal on high-efficiency washers and dryers I have ever seen! In fact, I thought she must have read it wrong...it just seemed too good to be true. She said that Sears was offering a Kenmore set for...drumroll, please...$599!

Yes, you heard me right...$599 for the set! Could it be true? We just had to find out so we headed to the nearest Sears late this morning. The sale was to end at noon. Not only are we bargain hunters, but we are also procrastinators, so we ended up walking into the store at 12:07. Oh well, we thought, maybe it just wasn't meant to be.

Well, we found the set right away and a lady walked up to ask if she could help us. We said, we came in for these but I guess we're too late. Nope! She said if we hurried we could still get them! In fact, if we had been earlier in the day, we wouldn't have been able to get them at all because they sold 4,000 in one hour, their entire supply. But she said they had just received permission from headquarters to sell a few more.

Okay, if you work at Sears, maybe you could tell me...was she just pulling our chain or could that really happen? Anyway, it doesn't matter to me because we walked out of that store with a brand new front-loading, high efficiency washer and dryer set for less than half of the "good deal" we originally found!

And better yet, she was able to call it into the store nearest to us and we could arrange to not pick it up until February...hopefully, the new addition that we want to put it in will be finished by then! We are so grateful to Ryan's cousin for letting us know about the deal.


Since this was such a great deal for us, I decided to add this post to Super Savings Saturday.

Blessings!

Brandi

3 comments:

Leanne said...

I found you from Moneysavingmom. Congrats on the washer/dryer. My Dad and step Mom and my sister and her husband actually got the same ones that you did! They were really excited too.

Momzoo said...

what a great deal. We purchased set of HE washer and dryers about a year ago and I LOVE them! I could go on and on (but I won't), they were well worth the price. (I didn't get as good a deal as you did though)

cheapsk8mom said...

wow. that's really all that comes to mind. That's so awesome!! *kicks self*