Fyi

[mustang65]

Just Remember This Is The Time Of Year Lowes And Home Depot Start To Clear Out There Inventory.. I Already Seen An Ad For 10% Off For All Riding Mowers $1000.00 And Up

[MikeL]

This is an absolute problem. I've seen cases where a consumer can buy a mower/tractor/snowthrower for a lower price than a dealer can. When you add in the markdowns, and special per cent off, it makes it even tougher to make a living.....

[cmcsox]

This should not be allowed to go on, there is no way that a customer should be able to buy a piece of equipment lower than a dealers cost. Manufacturer's should not let the big boxes devalue the product and the selling market this way!

[cruiser56]

Bad enough that the big stores sell below cost, but the product quality has declined as well. Most of the Toros, John Deeres, Husquvarnas, and Cubs in the Home Depot and Lowes are cheap imitations of the original products. We try to educate the consumers, but a low price is a tough nut to crack.

[z28 1980]

I'd like to see a mass channel store try and sell a new unit, pay employee's to receive it, warehouse it, put it together, pay to have the cardboard/crate disposed of, pay a mechanic to service it, have the expense of stocking parts, pay parts people to wait on customers, and answer the phones trying to fix customers machines over the phone, have a nice clean show room for the customer to see the machine, have a demo unit available for test drives, and deliver the machine, then to top it all off sell the unit for 10% off a price that is aleady shaved down to a whopping 12% profit margin and try to make money!

When a superstore is taking in >150,000,000 per location a low margin on a few mowers means nothing to them. I had a Wal-Mart manager tell me that his store did >120,000,000 the first year it opened and they would never miss the 100 or so mowers they took back or replaced for their customers and then put the mowers in the dumpster.

I serviced for this store for a couple of months. We kept all units that couldn't be repaired and used them as parts donors. We sold a lot of these parts back to Wally World. The store manager has a Mitsubishi generator, Stihl hand held equiment and a Snapper 21" commercial mower.

I have an excellent service department and we are quite willing to charge what a repair is worth and sometimes it exceedes the original price of the equipment. We always inform the customer before doing these types of repairs and often they say to go ahead.

Oldtimer
Pensacola, Florida