{"id":37,"date":"2007-09-19T13:56:50","date_gmt":"2007-09-19T18:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cae.tntech.edu\/mwr\/2007\/09\/19\/lowes-and-staples\/"},"modified":"2024-10-27T14:26:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T14:26:19","slug":"lowes-and-staples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/2007\/09\/19\/lowes-and-staples\/","title":{"rendered":"Lowe’s and Staples"},"content":{"rendered":"

A student working in one of our labs noticed that a piece of equipment had dead batteries, and asked me to get replacements. Nothing special, just 6 regular D-cells. The next day or so, I head to Lowe’s<\/a>, and use my university card to pick them up for around $9.50, tax-exempt, for 8 batteries. I bring the receipt back to the office, and mark it up so that the cost is assigned to the right account, and am asked:<\/p>\n

“Did you check at Staples<\/a>?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um, no. I get everyday electrical stuff at Lowe’s. Power strips; surge suppressors; extension cords; heavy cabling, plugs, and receptacles for hooking up high-power heaters or parts of server racks; etc. There’s an industrial electronics place in town that’s good for heavier-duty batteries, but these batteries will probably last for years regardless. Staples is more for when we need a cheap network switch right now<\/b>.<\/p>\n

“Staples has a state contract, and if an item is on their contract site, we have to document that we can find it cheaper elsewhere.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ok. So I finally went to Staples today. Not that they can actually price check the batteries without charging and then voiding my university card:<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n
Vendor<\/th>\nList Price<\/th>\nDiscounted Price<\/th>\nBattery Quantity<\/th>\nCost per battery<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tr>\n
Lowe’s<\/td>\n~ $9.50<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n8<\/td>\n$1.19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Staples<\/td>\n~ $7.50<\/td>\n~ $7.47<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n$1.87<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

The mind boggles. Office-supply stores don’t sell batteries for cheap, even if you have a contract with them. Why doesn’t the state board that wrote the contract know this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A student working in one of our labs noticed that a piece of equipment had dead batteries, and asked me to get replacements. Nothing special, just 6 regular D-cells. The next day or so, I head to Lowe’s, and use my university card to pick them up for around $9.50, tax-exempt, for 8 batteries. I … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Lowe’s and Staples”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/renfro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}