Yesterday I posted about not being able to find 1-inch chlorine tablets for my wife's new hot tub. Today I took a more scientific approach and was able to locate them. Naturally I promptly went down and purchased a 2-pound pack of them. How did I do it? I resorted to old-school technology and was reminded about how we did things before the ubiquity of the Internet.
We have a pool-supply store close to our house and it is across the street from where my wife works. Before going into the office she stopped by the store to see if they had what we needed. Nope, they did not. She sent me a message about being unsuccessful and I went to work trying to locate the tablets. In the old days when dirt was new and dinosaurs still roamed the earth, we had these nifty little books known as the Yellow Pages. If you needed anything, like chlorine tablets, you would look up all of the pool supply stores in the area and call them one-by-one.
The Internet-era method of doing the same thing is to open maps.google.com and set the size of the window to be how far you are willing to drive. Next enter what you are looking for in the search field. When I pulled it up today, I zoomed out a bit as I was willing to drive rather far and then put "Pool Supplies" in the search field. It brought up a bunch of different companies. Hovering over the red pins with my mouse provided more information about them. I didn't worry about calling any of the pool contractors or builders and only focused on supply companies. Fortunately all of the listings had phone numbers and so I started calling them.
The first place I called knew exactly what I was looking for and explained that they only had powdered chlorine, not tablets. The next place didn't have them either. My 3rd call was to a wholesale distributor and they didn't sell to the public. I politely asked if they knew someone that might have what I was looking for and he gave me a lead. Unfortunately they were not listed in my Google search and so I had to look them up by name. I found their phone number and gave them a call. They had the 1-inch chlorine tablets in stock and so I jumped in the car and drove down to the store.
Interestingly I was the only customer in the store. I told the salesperson that I had just called him and he immediately went to the shelves and pulled a container from the shelf. He had plenty of supply if I needed more but I want to start with one. Besides, now I know where to go to get more.
Online retailers like Amazon are great for bargain hunting, especially if you don't mind waiting a few days for your order to arrive. Unfortunately I would have had to wait until the end of January because of supply-chain issues. Making a few calls got me what I needed today for exactly the same price as listed on Amazon. No, I didn't get free shipping as I had to take my time, drive to the store, and use about $3 in gasoline. After searching for several days, that is a bargain. While it may be tempting to use Amazon for all of your shopping needs, sometimes it really is better to buy local. Now to go set up that hot tub.
No comments:
Post a Comment