DirectBuy

We recently bought another KitchenAid refrigerator and they sent a bill through their concierge service. I processed the bill and then they processed the payment. When they send the shipment through, it goes through KitchenAid’s parent company which is called Whirlpool. DirectBuy hands it off to Whirlpool and Whirlpool then has everything electronic. They called and said when they were coming to deliver and I couldn’t contact them back. If they show up and I'm not there, they give two more tries. And there's really no way of communicating with them when they show up to deliver it.

The Whirlpool situation is less than desirable because they called on a weekend and I tried to get back in touch with them. Then DirectBuy has a hard time getting in touch with them. They read off a number to you and if you don’t get it correctly or if they’re speaking slowly, it’s okay. But they speak fast or soft or the communication’s not a good connection and you don’t know what number they’re talking about and then they can’t find your order. Then they just show up and you better be there. So, that’s less than desirable.

The thing that kinda bothers us is when we joined back in 2005, we had to pay nearly $2,000. Now, the membership is like $200. Why did I have to pay so much back then and so little now? Also, they used to have local stores and that made it a lot better because you had the in-store advantage of being able to see the products. Now, everything's online and it's more difficult because if you’re gonna buy it online and spend a lot of money on it, you wanna make sure you know what you’re getting. Just a picture online and a couple of reviews don’t tell you what you need to know.

I’ve tried to communicate with DirectBuy when I’ve had concerns and they’ve made some adjustments. There has been some change from last year so that’s good. Also, they fixed the delivery problem. There used to be a stack of charges. If you order something and want it delivered, then it was like one price was for the delivery to your driveway, another price for the delivery into your house, a third price for delivery into your house to a specific room, and another price for delivery into your house to a specific room and unbox it. They don’t have that anymore. Now, they bring it into your house, set it wherever you want, and they take the packaging away.

We’ve not been so pleased lately because they got rid of all their showrooms. We like to see and touch and get a better feel for things we’re doing. And now, we’re kinda stuck doing that on the internet. And I don’t think they have all the products that they offer on the internet because that would just be a Herculean task. Another thing is the manufacturers that they represent, some of them stay for the long-haul, but a lot of them, you buy one you really like, and then, you check back with them a year later, and they don’t offer that manufacturer anymore. And that can be a little frustrating.

We recently bought a bed and a frame for another house we bought in Florida. We were told that the delivery of both of them would be four to six weeks. So, they have a tendency, which is a good practice, to under-commit and over-deliver. I think it is a good thing. But the problem is, in this case, we really expected the frame to come before the bed. The bed came before the frame, and the bed had white glove delivery. So, we really couldn’t have a delivery until the frame got there. And we kinda got a nasty letter from DirectBuy saying, “Hey, the company has been holding onto this mattress for a month, and they need to deliver it.”

We ordered the frame a week before we ordered the bed. And it was a little frustrating because we were waiting and waiting for the frame. I could’ve bought the frame on Amazon and had it there in two days. But I decided to buy it from DirectBuy instead, which probably was a mistake. Another thing that was interesting was it was cheaper on Amazon than DirectBuy, which was kind of a rare occurrence. I give DirectBuy credit because they did credit me the difference, which was nice. I didn’t expect that.

There's one thing that really frustrates me. When we first joined, they took American Express for the membership fee. And then, they stopped taking American Express and they only took Visa. Then, a couple years ago, they started taking American Express again, which I was thrilled with. But a couple of months ago, before we made this purchase with the mattress and the box springs, they stopped taking it, and it’s frustrating. I really like to use American Express wherever possible because we get points, and we travel a lot, and we use these points for traveling.

We still haven't heard anything so I emailed him last week and asked if we could have an update on our cabinetry and I have not heard anything back. Our remodeling is actually a little delayed which is why I'm not too concerned about the cabinetry. So we got time yet. Also, it's harder to purchase from Directbuy than it used to be 'cause we used to be able to go to the location, look through books and talk to people. We did our kitchen through DirectBuy four years ago almost, and there was a woman that we sat down with, and we went through all the cabinetry and all of her recommendations and drawings. It was so much simpler because we could actually talk with somebody physically right there and go through the project.

Now, we've done two projects since, and it has been more on us doing all the legwork of going out to different places to check things out and to do all of our searches for numbers and part numbers. But over than those, everything else was beautiful with Directbuy. There was one woman that I emailed back and forth with on our Kohler order and Delta. And she was so quick. We would email all the stuff that we were wanting to purchase and things we couldn't find on the website. She emailed us back within a day and said she would get those prices for us then she sent us a spreadsheet with everything and it was amazing.

We have been a member since 2002 and we always recommended Directbuy on a caveat. I recommend it to a brand-new homeowner who doesn't have any insurance or people who are looking to completely refinish their house or who are at that stage where they've had everything for 20 years and are looking to refinish things, redo things, get new furniture. If you're not at either of those stages, it's usually not worth the money.

Once you get used to buying through DirectBuy, the process is easy. However, their website is terrible. It doesn't load properly and it doesn't remember where you were. Most websites, when you go back and hit the back button, it'll take you to where you were before. If you're scrolling down hundreds of items it will remember you were on item 56, for example. With DirectBuy, it doesn't. It's slow and poorly classified. Sometimes when you go into lighting fixtures, they have 30 of the same lighting fixtures.

I have recommended DirectBuy to friends, and they have joined too. With DirectBuy, you just need to really know what you're buying. Also, they should look at reevaluating their product line. They have some products that they should just get rid of them. Lastly, I ran a business and in the electronics business, as an example, the margins are low, therefore, DirectBuy's prices will not be that competitive, relative to a Best Buy when something is on clearance. But there are products that are generally higher priced where the margins are huge and therefore, DirectBuy looks really great. As an example, I bought faucets recently and DirectBuy's price was no different than Home Depot on the exact same product. I bought a piece of furniture as well that was $2,400 on Wayfair.com and was $1600 on DirectBuy. Big difference. And so, they need to be clear with people and manage people's expectations about where the savings are.

We haven’t used DirectBuy as much as we intended. We bought various pieces of furniture. When I was executor in a particular case, I did use it to fix up a house that was looking after. But right now, I have three feral cats that live in the house with me, and I don't want workmen coming in and out of the house because they're not gonna watch them. My mother is in Charleswood Care Centre in Winnipeg, so as long as she’s alive, we’re not gonna do anything with the house until she’s gone. And then, we will make more use of DirectBuy. Another thing is that it’s hard to work out of like a bar fridge downstairs. And it takes about eight week for delivery for a lot of things. So instead of going through DirectBuy, we just went to Home Depot and bought a fridge and had it delivered a couple of days later.

I do like that the quality of things from DirectBuy have been good. When something has been damaged or not quite what we wanted, they’ve been very good about taking it back and replacing it, and getting things fixed. The staff has always been very good when I’ve talked to them. We continue to pay the membership. At first, we paid $5000 years ago. And then, we had to pay a smaller amount now. We’re paying around $300 a year for it. We don't always get our value every year, but when I did have to fix up the house for resale, that I was executor of, then there was more purchases that year.

When my nephew got married, I wanted to give them a wedding gift to help them set up their home. And the guy at Winnipeg that was running the store was great. I went in and told him that my purchases were not for myself and they were gifts. He gave me a bunch of fabrics, swatches, and told me that I could take them home and let the kids look at them. And I appreciated that. I'm happy enough to continue renewing membership and I would recommend DirectBuy to people.

We are totally thrilled to be able to bring our cabinetry back up to perfect working order. We are very satisfied with all of the products and services we have received from DirectBuy. We highly recommend DirectBuy and thank Melinda ** for being an excellent representative of their company. We recommend that you try DirectBuy. You with be happy with the quality of the products offered and the support and service you will be provided.