|maybe that's the problem, jack. people are to willing to settle for |less. think about it. you're willing to walk into a dirty store and |be treated poorly in order to save a few dollars. very sad thought |that the average person can be bought for a couple bucks.
There is also the sometimes fallacy that the you're saving the few bucks at the Borg and it's worth the grief to get them.
A coupla examples:
1) A few days ago, I decided to build an overhead rack to store some lumber in my garage. I have open I-joists so I installed some blocking between them and dangled some three-foot lengths of ½" threaded rod down to support the rack. After putting some load on it I decided I better add a couple of more rods. It's a 20-mile round trip to HD but only five miles to a little one-man hole-in-the-wall hardware store out here in the country where I live. The $3.87 each rods at HD cost $2.99 at the Do-It-Best, or whatever it's called.
2) I added some grounding to a ham radio tower of mine. AWG 6 bare copper, fifty cents a foot at HD, 30 cents at a local electrical supply place that caters to DIY.
When I built my house addition a few years ago I found a lot of this. If you're buying one do-dad at HD and it's 47 cents versus 33 cents someplace else, you probably don't care. But when you buy a hundred do-dads, that 30% lower cost is real money. The specialty shops gave better service, had knowledgeable help and very often lower prices. They also offered quantity discounts.
Wes Stewart