Wicked Attitude

This was the question we found ourselves asking when our 13 year old dishwasher started quitting its day job of cleaning on the top rack.  Well of course you can’t replace one thing and not the rest right?  I mean you could if you wanted the same color but we don’t.  We didn’t get a choice of our appliances when we moved in so we wanted a say this time, which means stainless steel.  We started racking our brains on where to look and off we went.  Our biggest dilemma was the fridge because we have limited space (33″) with our current fridge but most are 35 7/8″ which would cover 3″ of our window that we never use.   We decided on the GE Profile series and we both really liked the features of the bigger one but felt we needed to find the smaller one to rule it out or see if we should go with it.

To hopefully save anyone else out there some time, I’ve listed what we found out there and keep in mind the prices may be different depending on your area.  We asked the same question of all of the following stores…how much to install a microwave since it’s the smallest appliance that needs to be switched out.

HH Gregg-$120 to install and they had the highest prices of anyone we looked at.  The “sale” price was the regular price listed elsewhere.

Lowes- $130 to install and our particular “salesman” was like a racist Larry the Cable guy so we decided if we went with Lowes it sure as heck wouldn’t be with him.

Sears- $159 to install and while the salesman was nice and we’d probably feel okay going with them, his talk of how badly they were cutting back hours made us feel like they were ready to close their doors anytime.

Home Depot- $99 and the saleswoman was quite possibly the most helpful person we’d encountered.  The delivery charge is refundable by rebate for the stove and fridge so it’s essentially free and the more you buy of the Profile series, you get money back in the form of a check card so we’d get back $300.

Needless to say we’ll be going with Home Depot and it’s important to know all accepted competitors coupons.  I believe that Sears was the only place that said they’d match and then beat it by 10% but I don’t know if that was a limited time thing or not. 

We also stopped by a place that sells scratch and dent appliances not because we were interested in those but because we wanted to see the 33″ model and they had a few of them in stock.  They just happened to have the bigger one and the smaller one right next to each other and that made the decision easy.  Bigger one!  I highly suggest you do this if the model you are thinking of is not in stock at places you look.  Chances are a scratch and dent place will have it and you can look before you buy.  They also save you a good $500-800.  We would’ve considered them but every one of the ones we liked were dented far beyond what we considered acceptable.

So hopefully some of our legwork will give you a place to start!

Update:  We bought ours from Home Depot who matched Sears 15% off sale at the time.  We just checked HH Gregg’s prices on the exact same models with their 20% off “sale” and we still paid $20 less for each appliance!  Bottom line, don’t buy from HH Gregg, they obviously will always be the highest price even with a supposed sale.