Furnishing new house - large purchase strategy

Inspectorfi on 23/03/2021 - 13:30

Hi all Ozbargainers, I'll be moving into a new place later this year and will be looking to furnish almost from scratch. Wondering if anyone has had any experience with large purchase orders, in the realms of $15-20k?

What I'm thinking of doing, in lead up to the end of financial year sales is something like:

Approach Harvey Norman with my list of items (fridge, ovens, TV's, lounge (maybe), dishwasher, washing machine, etc) and then whatever they come back with, take that quote to The good guys, JB-hi-fi etc and see if I can go around in circles a bit and see what I can save?

Any tips you can suggest? Some additional things I'm looking at is seeing if I can pay the balance off in advance with gift cards, i.e. can get 7.5% Harvey Norman discount at Sunsuper, and JB is usually 5%, some places have limits for how many GC's you can use in on transaction, but I could maybe ask to split into several transactions if they want the business? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Home & Garden

Comments

  • Belistic on 23/03/2021 - 13:38
    +1

    My experience.. I gave HN the exact items I required, they price checked everything then gave me a great price.
    I prefer my local HN over TGG or JB.

    • Inspectorfi on 23/03/2021 - 13:44

      Sounds like a good experience, I'm hopeful my local HN will come to the party as they'll be able to stock everything, good to know, thanks.

  • pformag on 23/03/2021 - 13:40
    +2

    Is it a new build? You might be able to get in contact with Harvey Norman commercial division via the builder if they are nice and get a price up on everything.

    • Inspectorfi on 23/03/2021 - 13:45

      Yes a new build, and we have spoken to the builder and he's fine with us buying our own items and them installing them. We'll just use that money from the contract elsewhere. He uses TGG commercial and they don't have the fridge I was after, which is why I was thinking of getting some items from commercial (where I can) and others in the EOFY sales, thanks for the advice though!

    • AquaDigger on 23/03/2021 - 14:00

      +1 for HN Commercial. The prices are very good and the guy we are working with in Canberra has been great.

  • StickMan on 23/03/2021 - 13:41
    +2

    I mean HN has a huge range, they could provide quote with the cheapest, most expensive, or highest margin items. This is completely irrelevant because you didn't actually pick the items based on feature set or personal preference.

    Home appliances are furniture prices are through the roof due to corona. Lack of imports, and masses of people spending time at home with more available cash, means that prices are sky high and discounts are very minimal.

    I'd strongly suggest you keep your own list of items, and then keep a shortlist of good prices and places where they are. Then once you have some kind of idea, you can start approaching stores to "do a bulk deal" of some kind.

    Keep in mind a 10-15% discount off full priced items used to be a 100% given, as was free delivery, when you're buying so much. I think you're gonna struggle even with free delivery, and should focus on items on big sale.

    • Inspectorfi on 23/03/2021 - 13:47

      Great points.. I guess with everything going on I'm a bit disadvantaged, to a degree. I have a list (generally) of the items I'm after, and it will add up to a decent amount so I'd like to think I'd get a good deal from one of the stores, even best case would be my local HN matching a price I could get in Sydney or somewhere. I was going to look at some CC hacking at the time too if I cannot use GC for extra price reduction… so see what options come of it all! Thanks!

  • jv on 23/03/2021 - 13:46
    +3

    Any tips you can suggest?

    There's a hard rubbish collection in our area next Monday…

    • Inspectorfi on 23/03/2021 - 13:47

      haha.. very helpful, thanks.

      • jv on 23/03/2021 - 13:47

        This is OzBargain after all…

  • geek001 on 23/03/2021 - 14:12
    +1

    My experience, the few times I was in HN, the sales person couldn't do price matching/price beat other people because it was "below their cost" or gave me a measly discount. Haven't been in one in the last 10 years. TGG was better, although they couldn't do 20% off their own ebay prices. JBHifi was relatively painless, I asked for a discount, and they gave me a good one without haggling, but their home range is quite limited.

    • Inspectorfi on 23/03/2021 - 15:03

      I thought all of that might be the case, JB are pretty limited in this market. Thanks for the response

  • paulpavs on 23/03/2021 - 14:27
    +4

    If it was me i would be listing and researching all the items you need to the exact make and model including a back up (1st, 2nd or 3rd preference). Get the RRP of these and pop it into a spreadsheet.
    Go to HN/TGG commercial and get them to quote the discounted price on these same items, again pop into the spreadsheet to check out the savings.

    Then wait for the EOFY/black Friday (if you can wait this long) sales which may or may not be helpful on the items your after and buy them then (comparing against TGG/HN Commercial pricing). that way you know the RRP, the discounted "commercial" price and the true sale price and you can make an informed decision.

    The remaining items set up alerts on price hipster (or 3 camels whatever your favourite website is) based on HN/TGG commercial price (if TGG/HN price is $1000, set up an alert saying $900 so you know that its on sale cheaper than what you can normally get it for).

    By the time that the build is ready/completed, you should have a list of all your items, RRP, Commercial pricing and sales prices. If the items dont go on sale or you dont receive an alert just buy them at the last minute for the best price. The more time you have the better this strategy works. Also needed is a place to put all your stuff if the stores cant hold them for you..

    • Inspectorfi on 23/03/2021 - 15:05
      +1

      Wow, this is a very comprehensive response, thanks so much. I think this is exactly what I'll do. I have a spreadsheet started with model numbers etc ready to get this going, but I really like the idea of price hipster (never heard of it?) so will utilise this for sure, thanks so much.

  • bargain huntress on 23/03/2021 - 15:01

    appliances ok but are you sure you want to get all new furniture? depending on your budget you can get better quality stuff used.

    • Inspectorfi on 23/03/2021 - 15:04

      Not sure about furniture, I was just thinking if I was getting a big order from HN I could price some furniture too, however yes we will be buying new unless we could get comparable quality second hand, however the items will be big and hard to transport etc.. 14KG washing machine, 706L fridge etc

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join