Saturday, September 25, 2010

Just back from a walk in to direct buy.  We weren't allowed past the gates so to speak.  I signed up for an open house tomorrow morning then came home and read a consumer report article that says it cost just under 5k to join.  Also the review wasn't all that fantastic.  Looks like we won't be joining direct buy!

If you have had good luck with them please let me know.

More Later,

xo

Plantress

1 comment:

  1. Back at the very end of the 80's, John and I were members of "Uniway" (probably the forerunner of "Direct Buy"). It was about $300 to join and for the most part we were not impressed. First they had a very small showroom and most of their merchandize was through catalogs. Secondly if you saw something at a furniture store, etc. that you wanted, you had to get all the information yourself, from model numbers to fabric names/numbers, wood finishes etc. Rather awkward; "Um, uh excuse me sir, could you tell me what the model number of that sofa is. Um okay, uh what's the number and or name of the fabric. Uh-huh. Um how about that coffee table the one over in that other display ... no, not the bamboo table, the deep walnut , no, no the square table with the granite top... uh just a minute sir .... uh sir?"

    I do recall that I found a dinette set by ChromeCraft at Haverty's that I loved. Naturally the set was not in any of the one million and one catalogs that Uniway had so we had to see if we could get more information. After repeated visits to get all the model numbers; even to the point of crawling around under the tabletop and turning the chairs upside down looking for numbers on the bottom of the seat cushions, I'm sure John and I were put on Haverty's black-ball list. They probably told their security guards to forcibly remove us should we ever enter their store again. =O
    Once we took this information back to Uniway we found out that Haverty's numbers were different from the standard ChromeCraft numbers so it was a waste of our time, not to mention our dignity.
    Perhaps Direct Buy is different but it sounds like it is based on the same principle and at around 5K you'd have to be either building a brand new home or gutting and completely remolding an old one to get your money out of the membership.

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