Someone stole Chippo’s new banana tree two days after it was planted. That person SUCKS.

Our new appliances
[A bit premature since we don’t actually have them yet, but Emily wants to know what we got. So here’s the story…]

We’ve been planning to get a new cooktop and oven for a while not, but we didn’t actually mean to buy them last weekend. We went to a birthday lunch in Chatswood on Sunday and thought we’d do some window shopping while we were there. We went into the Harvey Norman in Chatswood Chase and ended up spending a while talking to the guy about
cooktops and ovens. We walked out of there pretty convinced that the Blanco 3-zone induction cooktop was our favorite and the Ariston OpenSpace 99 was our Dream Oven. (You can divide it and cook two things at separate temperatures! The top bit can hit 200C in, like, four minutes! It’s the biggest volume inside you can get without going wider/taller!) We did some googling and Internet research Sunday night. The prices at HN were pretty high, so we weren’t really thinking of buying from them. (They quoted us $1999 RRP for the Blanco, but Appliances Online had it for $1699, for example.)Monday was a public holiday, so we thought we’d go over to Alexandria as Prestige Appliances are meant to have a showroom there. They have some very different brands listed on their site and we wanted to have a look. Turns out their showroom isn’t open yet though. So we decided to check the Harvey Norman there to see if they had the Ariston oven installed. (The Chatswood store didn’t actually have one on display yet.) Turns out they did. While we were playing with it, a salesman came over and we started talking. Half an hour later, he’d done us a deal. The Alexandria store had the Blanco listed at $1697, and he knocked a bit more off since we were getting the combo. He also knocked a fair bit off the oven, and threw in free delivery and an extra bit off for cash. We felt pretty good about it, so we went for it. Put down a deposit with the rest to be paid upon delivery in 5-7 business days.

Lessons learned:

• The location of a retail shop makes a huge difference to the prices they post. The Harvey Norman in Chatswood Chase is in a big upscale shopping mall, and all the prices they showed were a couple hundred dollars more than what we saw at Alexandria. The salesman in Alexandria told us that his store has to compete with Winnings and the Good Guys, so they have more of an incentive to show lower prices.
• Know what you should be paying and don’t be afraid to tell the salesman what alternatives you’re considering. (I showed him a Samsung oven on Prestige’s site that was $1000 less, but he was also to prove to us that it’s a discontinued model of lesser quality.)
• Be prepared to haggle. I even pulled out the “Can you do any better if we pay cash?” line.
• Don’t assume that online is always cheaper. I was really surprised that HN matched Appliances Online’s price (and that was before he gave us our package discount). I also feel better about having a bricks-and-mortar to ring up if we ever have any problems.

We were both really happy with the service at Harvey Norman Alexandria. Arthur the salesman was great, even advising us against an extended warranty rather than going for the hard sell. They also had a “home economist” in the showroom who offered to let us demo the cooktop. (We told her we’d already tried it out.) All in all, we’re really happy. I can’t wait to get them installed!

Florida Girl in Sydney has a wonderful post celebrating her family’s three year “expativersary”. It’s a wonderful recap of the fears and worries they had when they moved here, the things they learned over the past three years, and the things they love about their new home. She’s also included some beautiful photos that show off the best of our city.

Geek Girl Runner episode 8 has been recorded… but it really sucks. I think I need to re-record. Basically, I put too much chili in my sloppy joes tonight and it lead to a major mucus issue. My first take ended up being ruined then by a serious coughing fit. Then my second take was ruined by the sound of me slurping on a cough drop and clearing my throat. Trust me; we’re ALL better off if I re-record. Hopefully tomorrow.

Dear Photon Group,
I understand that you’re in a bit of financial strife. Really, I do. You guys have been partying like it’s 1999 for years now. You’ve got to make cuts, and I get that. But would it KILL YOU to tell your employees BEFORE a 3-day weekend that you’re shutting their whole company down? Because otherwise they might go off and do silly things like buy several thousand dollars’ worth of kitchen appliances. And then they come to work on a Tuesday and you tell everybody that they’re fired and that really, really sucks.

No, the Snook isn’t actually fired. He’s one of the lucky few who gets to hang around for a few weeks and turn off the lights. They’ve said they’re going to try to find him another position in another Photon company. We’ll see. We’re not worried, but yeah, I might have hesitated on the goddamn oven if I’d known.

Edited to add: A little bit of further clarification. I’ve since been told that there were extenuating circumstances that prevented the news from happening last week, not the least of which was an attempt at a last-minute bail-out. I can appreciate that. Regardless of how Mumbrella have spun my post, I didn’t really mean to complain about FH management who were doing their best. I was (and am) just worried for my partner and dismayed at the timing of the announcement.