Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Amazon vs Home Depot

I needed another 6" ruler. Sometimes I can't explain Amazon pricing. Someone must pay that much.





BTW - have you ever searched HD for anything? They have a lot of stuff that isn't in the store, with free delivery to either the store or your home. I've ordered from them quite a few times. Their shipping is almost as fast as Amazon and they will often beat Amazon prices. Their return policy is very good, too. You can order online and if you need to return it, just take it to the nearest store.

It seems that quite a few people would rather pay more and buy online than actually walk into a store. Those are a must have in my shop!

Just out of curiosity I looked them up at Mcmaster Carr $3.71 but no free shipping. https://www.mcmaster.com/6813A61/

Yep, I rarely just buy from amazon without comparing somewhere else.

HD has a daily email you can sign up for with sales and free shipping. It's been helpful to me.

I remember when vendors used to give you those!

And they were made out of good American Steel as opposed to that Chinese Junk that the Amazon one is probably made out of!


And we had to measure both ways everyday uphill in the snow!!!!!

Exact opposite of my experience from the past week with chainsaw parts.

While I admit to ordering the wrong part, the difference was crazy from Amazon vs. Stihl dealer.

From Amazon I ordered a complete kit[consisted of 5 pieces of antivibe buffers] at $12.95

The Stihl dealer hit was $12.95 per buffer.

After much help from people here I could have tried Amazon again but none of the listed sellers offered any dimensions and you just couldn't tell from the pics, I needed the saw back up and running as it had already been a week +
3 of the pieces from the Amazon order fit perfectly[they just weren't replacing the broken parts on saw]

So had I bought all 5 at the dealer it would have been $65 vs. $12.95 at Amazon

This is comparing the same brand, Empire, made in India. Amazon does have some Chinese knockoffs for about $2. $17 for a 6" strip of steel is just absurd.

Why is it that so many otherwise good steel rulers don't measure from the end? The markings start 1/8 to 1/4" from the end making it useless for many uses.

a lot of stuff from Grizzly.

If you were to visit the same item on Amazon on successive days...I'd bet that by the end of the week you will be getting pop-up ads offering the same item cheaper and cheaper. I was looking to replace a lost pocket size vernier caliper a while back...by the end of the week they were offering the same caliper for 50% of the original quote.
I hate being a slave to internet buying but Home Depot is 90 miles and Graingers is a 110 miles. Gas here is 5.59.

Some sites monitor abandoned carts pretty heavy. Stick it in the cart and let it hang out a couple days. Sometimes you'll suddenly get a code/coupon in your email to entice a purchase too.

Doesn't work all of the time but I often try it on non-Amazon sites where I don't need the item immediately.

I recently got a 15% discount on something that way. After it sat in the cart overnight, they emailed me with an offer.

A trip to a big store like HD or Lowes for me involves a 25-30 mile round trip, so 1.5-2 gallons of gas, plus my time. Add to that the uncertainty about what’s actually in stock, and the difficulty of getting someone, anyone, on the phone that can and will help, and online with free shipping is a good bet. Same goes for the shotshells I buy on a regular basis. Last ones I bought locally, an even longer trip, were $100 a case. I can almost always get them cheaper and dropped on my porch to boot. I’ve done very well buying parts for my truck on Amazon, and they know what I drive and offer the correct stuff, every time so far.

OTOH I buy a lot of stuff from the local farm store and also TSC, depending on which direction I’m traveling that day.

Those 6” rulers get used a lot on my loading bench and for checking level when mounting scopes.

We're far enough out that we do a lot of online shopping. Also, the stores here have a very basic inventory, not a lot to choose from. We recently bought some bar stools. We got them online for $120 each. The local price for the same model was $300 each. I like to buy local but I'm not paying that much difference.

Same here. Just got 10% off some fiberglass fence posts yesterday by letting them sit in the cart overnight.

Or don’t have a HD local.

Closest to me is 60 miles..

Some things never change. One of them is that it always pays to compare prices.

Amazon makes shopping easy. I go there for info but often buy elsewhere. Amazon's prices aren't the lowest around.

Bingo! And NEVER sign up for Amazon's automatic reorders. I buy one flavor of Purina Dog Food from Amazon. Buy another flavor from Walmart. Originally ordered both flavors from Amazon until the one flavor nearly doubled. Crazy thing is the two fulfillment centers for our area are 5-10 minutes away from each other...

I love using HD ship to store and my house

HD had me wait 2 weeks for the wrong parts and then the delivery was split so they called the backorder as delivered top. I prefer to hands on shop but do buy a lot from Amazon because my wife can't be left alone and is too crippled to always go.

Better scales are engraved, not stamped. You old machinists will know; my preference was a 5R satin flex. I can no longer read the 100ths, 50ths give me fits.