Last year, our dryer gave up the ghost. In fact, even the repair man declared it “dead” on his official form and refused to charge us. You can read about the entire original Adventure in Scratch & Dent Land Experience. Last week, I was giving some advice to a friend about best practices for shopping Scratch and Dent and thought perhaps you might want in on my top secret tips.
- Find a reliable store. This was a bit hit and miss for us at first. Begin by polling your social media networks and seeing if anyone has had a positive experience with a particular store. You might also yield a good result by simply doing an internet search. There’s a wide range of scratch and dent retailers. Some are affiliated with a large chain and specialize in overstocked or floor model items. There are also more local independent stores that recondition used items (the type of store we went with). Ask questions of people who have had both favorable and unfavorable experiences to see what was the key to their success or what they would do differently.
- Call a repairman. Your appliance may be beyond hope but the expert who will know best what you shouldn’t purchase this go around is a repairman. Call and quickly quiz your local handyman to see what needs the most work. Our repairman encouraged us to stay away from high end models with too many features. He said he received frequent calls on those appliances with complicated electrical systems and fancy pants extras. Top loading, front loading, two doors or one, gas or electric, brands – ask about all elements of your appliance to get a good handle on what your replacement model should like and what you should avoid.
- Scan Craigslist. The Scratch and Dent store we selected actually posts most of their inventory on Craiglist, too. This helped me get a good idea of the stock before we trekked across the city to cheek it out in person.
- Look inside and sniff. We purchased a dryer but I think this applies for any appliance. You want to inspect your purchase thoroughly, especially if it’s been repaired. Especially for items that will launder your clothes, make sure there are no strong residual detergent fragrances or smoke odors. Check the seals on dryers or refrigerators to make sure they are in good working condition. Yes, you’ll look a little silly, but you’ll be thankful later.
- Ask for a discount. I know it sounds ridiculous, but you can get a discount even at a discount store. We were able to get 10% off, free delivery, and they even credited us to haul our old dryer away because they would repair it and resell. Especially if you’re purchasing more than one appliance, the retailer might be willing to sweeten the deal (someone purchasing 6 appliances saved 25% while I was in the store). If you have cash in hand (the only way to purchase my friends), that discount might climb.
- Inquire about warranty. Our dryer included a free one month warranty. However, the store encouraged us to call if anything happened within a year’s time. It’s been over a year and we haven’t had a single problem but there was peace in knowing that if something had gone wrong, we would have been covered.
In the end, our dryer was less than $180 delivered, including tax – almost half of the very basic model we had considered purchasing brand new (not including tax, delivery, or haul away). The scratch and dent version was much larger and nicer than the teeny new model we might have bought.
Have you purchased scratch and dent before? What was your experience?
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We bought our washing machine second hand off craigslist. We got it for like $60. It still working great 3.5 years later! And our dryer we got for free from a friend. However, we did have to do some work on dryer recently for like $50 but it’s still a steal! We ended up buying from a guy who was a washing machine repair man and he had several machines in stock at his house.