My Peeve About Hardware Stores

[marimus]

Our "bolt bucket" (yes yes, on the right)

 

[LBrown59]

One of my My pet Peeves is concerning any store {not just hardware sores}
that does not have The entrance and exit doors side by side.This is especially bad for the handicapped which causes me to label such stores as non handy capped compliant in spite of them having handicapped stalls coming out the wazoo.
Wall mart and Lowes are bad about that as well as most other Big Box Stores.
It's also a saftey hazzard in case of a fire or other emergency.

 

[Cat_Driver]

My pet peeve is that these clerks don't check returned products.

Many times I have purchased products that have obviously been returned and missing parts.


Phone machine I bought had messages from whoever purchased it the first time.
Drill batteries that were dead used batteries.
Worst one that didn't happen to me but the service girl told me about was a person bout the combo Dewlt pack and it was full of ROCKS. Someone purchased the product took the three tools out and filled it back with rocks and got their money back

 

[patrick_g]

We are approximately 25 miles from towns with TSC, Orcheln's, Atwood's, Ace Hardware, Wally World, etc in 3 different directions. There are smaller closer towns with no hardware and one 12 miles away with a small combination furniture and hardware store that has a few things. Just a couple miles away there is a trailer manufacturer that retails trailer stuff, welding supplies, and a modest selection of nuts and bolts as well as 80lb bags of Redicrete.

If (and that is a big if) the trailer place has the hardware you need you save a 50 mile round trip so paying 2-3 times normal retail is quite welcome.

Much more practical, especially with today's fuel prices, is your own stock of a fair selection of common fasteners. You can easily afford to tie up money in stocking some fasteners when compared to the hassle and cost of a trip to get one or two nuts or bolts.

So in self defense I stock some hardware. I have some HF bins mounted on the wall to hold 5/16, 3/8, 7/16, 1/2, and 5/8 nuts, locks, flats, and 5 lengths of bolts.
I built a cart to hold hardware too. I bought some HF bins and assembled a pair of them back to back and put them on tall legs. I put more bins at one end. IT is a work in progress, I will buy a couple more HF bin sets to install under the top two and probably add some shelves to use the enclosed volume below the bins or maybe hinge an end and put bins on both sides as well as having shelves.

I have an assortment of drywall screws in interior and exterior grades as well as using bins to hold boxes of hardware. I put the whole thing on caster wheels for convenience.

Buying at a big box store and to a similar but lesser degree, buying at TSC, Atwood's, etc is strictly caveat emptor as the "associates" only associate their time with their hourly rate and typically have little clue about the products. I gave my wife a detailed note to take with her to Home Depot. I asked for the PVC conduit fittings that let you run PVC conduit into a j-box and secure it. The "knowledgeable" assdashociate (gaming the censor routine) sent her out with a package that clearly stated on the front that it was for putting metal armored flex conduit into a j-box. There were 3 other similar items on the list. Of 8 or so items I wanted, only 3 were correctly handled, 1/2 inch PVC conduit and 45 and 90 degree 1/2 inch PVC elbows. I don't expect experts but I do expect they should be able to read the label and know that armored steel flex conduit is not PVC plastic!

Anyway here are pix of my bins. I have other supplies but they are not as photogenic or organized yet.

To expect that customers will not mess up the contents of hardware bins or expect store personnel to sort them out is truly misguided wishful thinking not at all congruent with reality, unfortunately. I am one of the few who when changing their mind will return an item to where I got it. What bothers me more than homogenized hardware is homogenized milk or other "needs refrigeration" items left laying somewhere (not in a cooler) by a customer and then some store person just returns it to the cooler. How many hours at room temp does it take to maybe encourage bacterial growth in a steak or bottle of milk?

In the one picture you can see part of my DeWart collection (DeWart is Chinse for DeWalt) I would dearly love to not have started the collection and have Ridgid instead. I ran out of shelf space and made wine glass style hangers for some of them (more to come.)

 

[Egon]

The Neigbours shop at Pat's Emporium!

 

[mjncad]

Buying at a big box store and to a similar but lesser degree, buying at TSC, Atwood's, etc is strictly caveat emptor as the "associates" only associate their time with their hourly rate and typically have little clue about the products. I gave my wife a detailed note to take with her to Home Depot. I asked for the PVC conduit fittings that let you run PVC conduit into a j-box and secure it. The "knowledgeable" assdashociate (gaming the censor routine) sent her out with a package that clearly stated on the front that it was for putting metal armored flex conduit into a j-box. There were 3 other similar items on the list. Of 8 or so items I wanted, only 3 were correctly handled, 1/2 inch PVC conduit and 45 and 90 degree 1/2 inch PVC elbows. I don't expect experts but I do expect they should be able to read the label and know that armored steel flex conduit is not PVC plastic!

In the one picture you can see part of my DeWart collection (DeWart is Chinse for DeWalt) I would dearly love to not have started the collection and have Ridgid instead. I ran out of shelf space and made wine glass style hangers for some of them (more to come.)

Last year I replaced the water heater in the house and the inDUHvidual plumbing specialist working at Home Despot didn't know what a T & P valve or a boiler drain valve was. I always replace the cheap plastic drain valves with metal ones.

DeWart...I like it. I call them DeFault.

Nice work on the mobile hardware rack.

 

[patrick_g]

Last year I replaced the water heater in the house and the inDUHvidual plumbing specialist working at Home Despot didn't know what a T & P valve or a boiler drain valve was. I always replace the cheap plastic drain valves with metal ones.

DeWart...I like it. I call them DeFault.

Nice work on the mobile hardware rack.

Thanks, It isn't done but has proved very useful so far. I intend to add two more of the racks like the two with the yellow bins. I have more of the grey ones to use on it, probably at the other end with the panel to which they will mount on hinges and shelves in the enclosed volume.

The OSB flanking the gray bins on the cart were added as "bumpers" to protect them as they would easily be dislodged if bumped into (I'm not always perfectly graceful.) They work fine now.

We had a "Payless Cashway" building materials store on Hy 9 in Norman (Home of OU) go out of business (became an Atwoods) and the outfit running the liquidation kept bumping up the % discount on the retail prices to keep things moving along. I eventually got 70% off on a bunch of boxes of bolts and nuts. larger stuff 1/2 inch up to about an inch in various lengths, many carriage bolts too, many were hot dipped galvanized not just plated. Given the increase in prices in the following years it was a terrific investment. I don't have to use much of that collection to be bucks up on the game.

Pat

 

[MikeD74T]

My peeve is why they feel like they have to empty their inventory this time of the year, EVERY year to the point where it looks like they are going out of business.

All that does (besides make their books look a smidgeon better and making me furious!) is drive their regular customers back to the "mom & pops" who still have what you need in stock.

In New Hampshire it's because they have to pay an inventory tax once a year. Better to sell as much as possible, do inventory & pay tax (on much less stock), then restock. Our warehouses with parts for our own use, not for any resale, do the same thing. It's a real PITA to have to wait for parts that are on the shelf 10 months of the year. Sometimes we have to pull parts ahead of schedule & put them in the shop to get them out of inventory. I've seen dumpsters full of excess new parts because it's cheaper to buy new when needed than pay tax for years until it's needed. MikeD74T

 

[Bird]

My peeve is why they feel like they have to empty their inventory this time of the year, EVERY year to the point where it looks like they are going out of business.

All that does (besides make their books look a smidgeon better and making me furious!) is drive their regular customers back to the "mom & pops" who still have what you need in stock.

Yep, like MikeD74T said, some states have an inventory tax, as does Texas. I'm guessing Oklahoma either does not have such a tax, or that it's a much smaller tax than Texas because several years ago, I knew of an RV dealer who had dealerships in both states, and in December (the week after Christmas) he had the employees busy moving as many RVs as possible from the Texas facility to the Oklahoma facility, then on January 2, they started moving them back because the tax was on the inventory on the premises on January 1.

 

[dgl24087]

Yep, like MikeD74T said, some states have an inventory tax, as does Texas. I'm guessing Oklahoma either does not have such a tax, or that it's a much smaller tax than Texas because several years ago, I knew of an RV dealer who had dealerships in both states, and in December (the week after Christmas) he had the employees busy moving as many RVs as possible from the Texas facility to the Oklahoma facility, then on January 2, they started moving them back because the tax was on the inventory on the premises on January 1.

A local automobile mega dealership used to do the same thing, moved virtually the entire inventory of 2500 cars and trucks to a neighboring county that had a significantly lower inventory tax rate. 2-3 years battling in court over this and the county lowered the inventory tax.