Clark's Big Book of Bargains (20 page)

The difference among PVRs isn’t features. It’s the monthly or lifetime programming fee and how many hours of programming it can store. With most PVRs, you pay a monthly fee of $5 to $13, or a one-time fee of perhaps $250. Over time, it’s cheaper to pay the one-time fee. The danger with this, or any upfront fee, is that the company could go bust. We’ve had our ReplayTV for three years, so paying the one-time fee worked out well. But we really didn’t have an option. At the time we bought it, the one-time fee was included in the cost of the unit.

You can buy PVRs that can hold 30, 40, 60, or 80 or more hours of programs. We have a 60-hour machine, and it’s plenty of capacity. Our first machine was a 20-hour machine, and that wasn’t enough, but with 60 hours we’ve never had a problem. Lane can record every episode of every different
Star Trek
series—
Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager,
and
Enterprise.
She doesn’t like the original series.

Some manufacturers are combining PVRs with other devices, such as DVDs, and that may help broaden their appeal.

To use a PVR, you may have to have a phone line accessible. During the night, PVRs dial into the company’s system and download and update the programming guide for the next two weeks. If the World Series plays a sixth game, it loads that information into its system.

One danger of buying a PVR is that, unlike with a VCR, you need the services of the company that sells the device. If the company goes out of business, like a lot of technology companies have, your machine could become an expensive paperweight. The technology could be acquired by another company even if the original company fails, but it’s still a risk. Other than a cell phone, there isn’t another device that works only with one company. The satellite TV companies deal with this by renting the service rather than making you buy the equipment.

* LARGE APPLIANCES *

When you bought your last refrigerator, dishwasher, or washer and dryer, you probably based your decision on the brand name of the appliance, its features, and price, in whatever order was most important to you. Now I’d like you to add a fourth criterion—energy usage.

Your refrigerator is one of the biggest energy users in your house. So when it’s time to buy a new one, it might be worthwhile to spend a bit more up front to buy a refrigerator that will use less electricity each year.

Large appliances now carry an Energy Star label indicating they are rated for low energy usage by the federal government, or rated for low water usage for products such as dishwashers and clothes washers. That label generally means you’ll save a fortune in operating costs through the years.

When I bought a dishwasher several years ago, I chose an Energy Star dishwasher even though, at the time, Energy Star dishwashers cost a lot of money. Making dishwashers energy efficient, and efficient in their use of water, was new technology at the time, so these appliances cost a lot more. But the Energy Star dishwasher I bought recently was just $239 on sale at Home Depot. That’s the same or less than what people typically would pay for a dishwasher—and it does a great job of cleaning the dishes. If an Energy Star appliance costs the same as the one that uses more energy and/or water, it’s an easy decision.

If the Energy Star appliance costs more, it may or may not be worthwhile to buy it. I recently had to replace a refrigerator/freezer, and I bought a 25-cubic-foot model with icemaker for $799. The cheapest Energy Star model I could find of the same size was $1,249. So I checked the estimated energy usage on the labels, and the Energy Star refrigerator was projected to use only $5 less electricity per year. So I would have to live to be 840 years old (137 really) to make that pay off. In that case I made the decision to buy the much cheaper refrigerator and pay $5 extra a year for electricity. That was a rare case. Very likely, the refrigerator I bought was right on the cusp of receiving an Energy Star rating but didn’t quite make it.

If you look at the energy and water costs for Energy Star clothes washers versus those that aren’t, the difference is extraordinary. I saw a Maytag washer with the Energy Star label that was selling for $999.99. Its companion dryer was $599.99. The pair was projected to use $24 a year in electricity when used with an electric water heater or $11 a year when used with a gas water heater. That’s great. But it would be pretty easy to buy a good washer-dryer combo for $600, or $1,000 less than the Energy Star pair. That’s a lot more to pay for an energy savings of maybe $50 a year.

If you pay more for an appliance to save on energy usage, try to get an appliance that saves you enough on energy in three years to equal the extra cost. So if the Energy Star appliance costs $120 more, make sure you save at least $40 a year on energy or water use. Check www.energystar.gov, and click “calculate my savings” to see when you should buy an energy-efficient appliance. As manufacturers get better at manufacturing these appliances, it will make more and more sense to buy one. It’s also not bad for the environment.

Sometimes there are rebates available for buying Energy Star appliances. Check energystar.gov for rebate information.

The second most important characteristic of an appliance is its reliability. Certain brands are much more reliable than others, and with something as expensive and potentially long-lived as a refrigerator, you want one that will perform reliably and not require costly repairs. Normally I don’t care about brand names, but in this case, brand names really do matter.

The best place to find out which brands are reliable and which are not is
Consumer Reports
(www.consumerreports.org).
Consumer Reports
surveys its readers to find out what problems they’ve had with appliances, and reports those brand repair histories. It’s interesting that, even across different appliances, some brands tend to be relatively trouble-free, while other brands are likely to have problems. For example, Frigidaire and Amana show up in the CR ratings as being more likely to break down, whether the appliance is a refrigerator/freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, or clothes dryer. On the other hand, Whirlpool and Kenmore are consistently among the most reliable appliances.

It’s hard to buy a specific model based on
Consumer Reports
reviews, because the model numbers change by the time the magazine hits the newsstands. It’s really more a problem with electronics than appliances. But the magazine’s general information is really good—how you decide on features, ease of use, and quality brands.

Sometimes two brands can be one and the same, at different prices. Different brands are manufactured by the same company and marketed to different buyers at different prices. For example, the refrigerator I just bought was a Hotpoint, but it was identical to the GE refrigerator displayed about fifteen feet away. I asked the salesperson what the difference was between the two and, after checking the catalog, he acknowledged that they were identical. But the GE cost $80 more—a total of $879—than the $799 Hotpoint. Was I going to pay $80 more for the GE? No way.

One warning here for people who might be buyers of high-end homes. In that market, there’s been an obsession with ultra-premium appliances, and buying these appliances is a very bad idea. We had the misfortune of inheriting a house full of a particular brand of ultra-high-end appliances, and every one of them broke before the normal life cycle of similar appliances. We had to replace everything: the oven, refrigerator, cooktop, and dishwasher. I figured it was just bad luck, but in
Consumer Reports,
the ultra-high-end appliances are by far the lowest-rated in terms of reliability. That may be because these appliances are produced in smaller quantities, before manufacturers have figured out the best way to make them. That’s the reason you shouldn’t buy a car in the first model-year, before the manufacturer works out the bugs.

Ironically, we bought a beach house whose kitchen was full of the same appliances we had to replace back home, and sure enough, those appliances are failing and we’re replacing every one.

If you’re building a high-end house or remodeling your kitchen, don’t buy one of the built-in oven/microwave combinations, because there’s a danger of permanently installing obsolete technology. Put in a unit with two ovens instead, and use a counter-top microwave.

Most appliances are extremely reliable, and that will be especially true if you’ve selected brands that are known for reliability. So it is a terrible waste of money to buy a service contract on them. It would be far better to keep the money you would spend on all those service contracts in your pocket and use it to make the rare repair. That’s true for appliances and electronics.

The best places to buy appliances are low-cost outlets such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, which have decided they want to own the appliance market. They have Sears quaking in its boots, and Sears’s market share is shrinking. But Home Depot and Lowe’s are afraid of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, which is selling major appliances in more and more of its stores. Home Depot and Lowe’s have very good prices, although they’re not the cheapest prices. They do offer end-to-end service, just as you would get at Sears. They deliver the appliance, set it up, and haul away the old one. You can buy appliances at Sam’s Club or Costco and get a lower price (BJ’s sells appliances in only some of its stores), but then you’re going to have to figure out how to get it home, how to install it, and how to haul away the old appliance, and that has held back their appliance sales. Lowe’s and Home Depot sometimes offer free delivery as they compete with each other, but delivery isn’t the same as delivery, setup, and haul-away. If you’re like me and are incapable of hooking up anything, make sure the price you pay includes all three. If you want a great price and are able to do things yourself, try Sam’s and Costco first. Sam’s and Costco do offer delivery by a third-party service, for a fee, and they often double the warranty you would get elsewhere. But Home Depot and Lowe’s offer the best combination of price and convenience. Wal-Mart is still a wild card.

• Tips on Appliances •

• Consider an appliance’s energy usage and its repair record as two of the top criteria in making a purchase, along with price and features.
  

• If you pay more for an Energy Star appliance, make sure the energy savings each year will allow you to make back the extra cost in three years or less.
  

• Check
  Consumer Reports
  brand repair histories to find brands that are likely to be reliable.
  

• Avoid ultra-premium appliances, because they tend to break down most frequently.
  

• Home Depot and Lowe’s offer good prices for appliances and end-to-end service. They deliver the appliance, set it up, and haul away the old appliance.