| Sometimes you want to actually check something out before you buy it and that's the value that a Best Buy can provide that Amazon can't. Recently I am needing to replace my failing 15 year old color laser printer and I've been trying to find a local store that has them models I'm researching in stock (want to print Tabloid for woodworking drawings - so not a large number of stocked options). Both Staples and Office Depot had the printers, but none of them had ink in them and the store managers refused to install ink. This was frustrating because I wasted easily 2 hours between both stores waiting for the manager to even be available. Best Buy had only 1 printer model but it had ink cartridges installed at least, but had no paper. A store associate helped fix that, but apparently the printer wasn't printing with black despite showing it had black ink. The associate kept wanting to demonstrate the printer not by printing a nice mixed content page but by copying a sales tag. Needless to say I haven't been able to get print samples from any local retail establishment and I'd pay (reasonably) more than Amazon prices to get an good idea of the output quality before buying plus the instant gratification of being able to take a new printer home immediately. Hell since it's an ink jet I'd probably even buy the PSP/Extended Warranty without a fight. All of these retail business are blowing their primary advantage by not having well working demo units available. I may still end up buying from Best Buy or Staples but only because I can return to the store instead of having to ship back and pay for that return shipping like with Amazon. |
If you were buying 100 business printers I bet they would be happy to give you a demo.