From 2019. Maybe we are doing better now. I'd like to believe we are.
Unfortunately, we are not doing better (see current cite).
Individuals can’t fix what corporations and governments broke, but I still try to lower my footprint. It’s futile, but it makes me feel better.
We got aftermarket batteries from ebay and really, really like them. They jave served us well. Went from 3 amps to 6 amps too.Is it frugal to pay more for item from an authorized seller?
Today, I received a notice from Honey, the online shopping helper, telling me that they found a "better" price on the Ryobi 40v batteries that I buy. Although I am using Ryobi as the example in this post, it applies to just about any brand I can think of.
First of all, Honey, how to do you know that I own Ryobi tools? I never told you that, or did I???? Does everybody know everything about my life?
Anyways, Honey is a great shopping helper that has saved me money on purchases before, so I clicked the link to find out more.
So, here's the deal. You could get this Genuine Ryobi 40v 5Ah battery (not a knock-off) for only $130 on Amazon! Holy Cow! That's about $50 less than Home Depot price at $180 per battery. I could save lots of money by purchasing the battery through Amazon.... or could I?
Here is my thinking, to save myself both money and aggravation that I will pass on to you. This advice probably applies to other name brand batteries as well.
1) Amazon is not an authorized dealer for Ryobi.
These batteries are sold by unauthorized third party sellers. Ryobi will not honor any warranty on tools or batteries sold by unauthorized third party sellers. Why? Well, because, believe it or not, lots of their stuff is either stolen and resold, or used and resold as new. Another scam is people buying a pallet full of product returns and reselling the items as new.
Read the fine print on Amazon and you will find out that you have a 30 day window for a return to Amazon, after that, you have to deal with the seller. Read the reviews, and try to find anyone who had as issue with the battery and attempted to return it to the third party seller - not going to happen! Most likely, that third party seller has gone out of business or changed their name and you will never find them again.
Essentially, you have a 30 day warranty on that $130 Ryobi battery you bought on Amazon. You could also think of it as $1560 per year for the life of the (30) day warranty.
2) If you buy the same Ryobi battery at Home Depot for $180, you can register it with RyobiTools.com and are guaranteed a full 3 years of service backed by Ryobi and Home Depot. Of all the Ryobi batteries that I have purchased from Home Depot over the past 15+ years, I only had one battery fail and Ryobi sent me a new replacement battery no problems (I did have to prove that I had purchased it from Home Depot).
Essentially, you have a 3-year warranty on the $180 battery from Home Depot, or how I think of it, $60 per year over the life of the warranty.
So, what do you think, is it more fugal to save $50 and take your chances on a 30-day warranty battery from Amazon, with no expected support from the third-party seller after that, or are you better off paying that extra $50 and buying the battery from Home Depot, an authorized Ryobi seller, and getting a full 3-year warranty backed by Ryobi?
Well, I buy my Ryobi tools only from Home Depot. I wait for them to go on sale and then drop the cash. Most recent case is that I wanted to get an extra Ryobi 40v 4ah battery for my Ryobi 40v chainsaw. The battery alone cost $180 at the time. But I found a Ryobi 40v snow shovel kit, with powerhead, snow shovel attachment, charger, and 40v 4Ah battery on pre-winter sale at Home Depot for $190!
I suppose you could think of this deal at least a couple different ways. First of all, I got all that stuff in the snow shovel kit and only paid an extra $10 for the 40v 4Ah battery. Or, you could think of it as buying the battery for $180 and getting the powerhead, snow shovel attachment, and the battery charger for only $10 more. In any case, all the tools and the battery are backed by Ryobi for the full 3-year warranty.
That, my friends, is how these companies get you into their tool line and battery platforms and keep you there. It would make no frugal sense for me to buy other tool brands with a different battery platform due to the high investment cost of these batteries.
And, sometimes that's all you can do.
Without comparing each other, I give the credit to my composting success to my composting chickens. They do almost all the work. Frugal tip: If time is money, you can often justify the cost of machinery that reduces your labor and time to complete a project.
I know some people have saved a lot of money by purchasing off brand replacement tool batteries from Amazon and eBay. That's why I gave Amazon a chance and bought one. As I said, it stopped powering the chainsaw at 2 out of 4 bars. I contacted the seller and they said that battery was defective, so I accepted a replacement. Unfortunately, the replacement battery also stopped at 2 of 4 bars. So, I sent it back for full refund within the 30-day Amazon return window. Believe me, if the off-brand battery would have worked, I would have kept it at less than half the price of a genuine Ryobi battery from Home Depot.
That's quite ingenious! I love it. I've always been rather lazy and used my compost chunks and all. But we have a cement mixer collecting dust. I bet it'd work great to sift gravel out of dirt too for things like the duck run. So glad for the share.
Thanks for the feedback. I would have thought the composting might be faster for you living in the tropics. I know my cold composting non-turning pallet compost bins will take over a year to compost down. That's why I now have 5 of those bins, filling up one bin each year on average, and don't harvest the first bin until the last bin is full.
My chicken run compost is done in about 3 months due to all the scratching and pecking work of my composting chickens. It's a much better system for me.
As you alluded to, I usually sift my compost with my cement mixer compost sifter before I mix the compost with my topsoil to fill my raised beds or to be used as potting soil. That's a real labor saver for me.
For example, I used to manually sift my compost with a 2X4 frame on top of a wheelbarrow. It would take me about an hour and a half of back breaking labor to sift and fill the wheelbarrow. Now, I just toss the compost into the cement mixer compost sifter and have it sifted out in about 10-15 minutes. As a result of investing in the cement mixer compost sifter, I now sift out much more compost, have doubled my raised bed gardens, and grow 2X-3X more people food. All of that is saving me lots of money. That cement mixer compost sifter paid for itself in the first day of use!
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