is your hydro store a ripoff? prefer walmurt?

[joluvs2gro]

I'm telling you, try craigslist for your lights atleast. All kinds of businesses are getting government money for converting to fluoros and they selling loads of metal halides and hps for nothing. I am going to pick up 6, 400 watt Mercury vapor, which are the same ballast and ignitor as a metal halide, for a lawn mower that I bought used last year. Just trading even up, the guy knows he is looking out for me but he don't care, he just wants them out of his garage.

 

[Amstel Light]

maybe one day you will be able to visit your shrink while shopping at wall-mart? Get a filet-o-fish if they have a wate?

 

[Pirate]

Use GH if you don't like buying snake oil.

Yo Tony............I do !! And I never said it was ALL profit.

So what's up fellers? Am I the only one here that says Hydro shops are rippin folks off?

Why is everybody always pickin on me ? (thats a song verse)


AAAAAARRRRRRRR !!!!

 

[swampy_nz]

my local hydro store(newzealand)is called "the switched on gardener"and its mascot/logo is a little guy named "Herb"lol.aint no mistaking who they are marketing to and many times myself and other shoppers have openly discussed growing with the employees.I myself shop around and will buy where things are cheapest.

 

[DocLeaf]

Tip: walk in,, pick up item,, ask price,, then put it down on the floor. walk about a bit.. then ask the price again. continue process until the price is lowered

Times are hard, if shops wanna make the sale then they're gonna have to start playing ball.

To be fair, haulage costs per pallet have dramatically risen in EU over the last few months, so most stock prices went up.

All the best ALL

 

[ogatec]

love my local shop, if yer having problem go to a new 1...there are 4-5 to choose from in my city alone.

if your shop is charging more than msrp DEFINITELY stop shopping there & find a new place to go..

 

[maryjanesdad]

if walmart starts selling hortilux bulbs the world as we know it will cease to exist

 

[Herbsman_OS]

I get between 10%-15% off of my purchases at my Hydro store.

 

[dongle69]

There is a chain store here in Humboldt called North Coast Horticulture Supply.
They are from a chain called Family Hydroponics.
Their scam is they mark stuff above retail and give 'preferred' customers a 'discount' which brings the price back down to retail.
It sucks because they have the market cornered on some goods that you can't get at the other stores around here.
I drive 10 minutes further south to a store with way better prices on the nutrients that I use.

 

[o0th3d4nk0o]

i mean when it really come down to it its all robbery.

i guarantee they make batches of nutes in such large quantities that they make half profit selling at the price they do.

and then they split their shit into part A and part B to make just that much more money

 

[Seismic]

My local place only has a good price on dirt and nutes, but for equipment I usually stick to ordering online.

 

[Lifebreather]

I use my local hydro shop for nutes, poly, and for emergencies. Everything is so expensive. Any of the big stuff (ballasts, bulbs, filters, tents, meters, co2) are so expensive they are out of the question.

They could get SO much more in sales if they made their prices reasonable, but they are beyond reason. They are ludicrous. They would rather sell ten ballasts a month at $150 profit than 40 at $75. It's hard to leave the store and not feel fleeced.

...I also have a problem with my local hydroshop guy. When I first got started, years ago--I asked him what cloning gel/solution/powder worked best. He convinced me that this combination of 2 expensive brands together worked best. Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want. I never finished either of those containers from that original purchase, and I just use plain ol' tap water now. When I go in there to look for controllers or ballasts--I generally bring up the rooting hormone and walk away from expensive shit. Ain't gettin' my money!

Fool me once...

 

[JQP]

I just built a grow closet (about 12 sq. ft. 7 ft. high) and started growing pot again. The only thing I mailordered was a little electric greenhouse I wanted for seed germination. Everything else has been cash. I won't even use my Barnes & Noble discount card when I buy High Times!

I'm cheap because I gotta be cheap. I buy used stuff (like parking garage lights for 10 bucks - 150W HPS & 175W MH), stuff from electric supplies, a few neighborhood garden places, and mostly Lowe's and Wally World.

JQ

 

[rave420]

as a matter of fact, you can root using nothing but plain tap water.
Take healthy cutting, place in water, wait and watch roots grow!

Just thought i throw that in. Technically, you don't need any products to clone. My mom has been doing it just the way my grandmother has been doing it etc. My mother clones just about every garden crop using nothing but water.

What you're paying for with all these fancy products is the illusion of reassurance and comfort. A ballast is nothing but some metal parts and copper coils, i can buy the parts at my DIY-electronic-store for less than 15 bucks. Of course, it's tricky to build it in a safe and reliable fashion, but you can do it, you know?

These days we pay for the comfort of walking into a store and picking it up of the shelf, taking it out the box, and plugging it in. how many people are dazzed 'n confused when they have to ASSEMBLE something that comes out of a box?

I don't mind building stuff myself, i try to do that whenever i can.
I placed an order over 150$ at a chemical company, ordering salts used to mix fertilizer. Now i can mix ANY product out there at the fraction of a cost. I can mix the whole Bloom Grow Micro series and pay less than 0.10 for a full res. Using store bought nutes it's more closer to 0.10 A GALON.

 

[stoned teacher]

I like my local hydro shop...good prices......I'll do some DIY, but for nutes (yeah GH), coco, ph meters, lights (I would rather not meet a random person and explain what lights are for....)...I'd rather not f++k around....

Some things I get from other places, but I feel more out of place when I go to the agriculture supply store....a bunch of farmers walking....the owner has been a farmer so he knows his stuff, then me...a dude growing in the basement....I don't even want to ask a question....

Home depot is great of course....

The hydro shops know the value of the stuff their selling (value as determined by the value of what we produce with it), they got their overhead to take care of, they hit on a specific market, and make the money giving people what they want....I'm not hating on it...i'm glad i have a place nearby

 

[Tony Danza]

Yo Tony............I do !! And I never said it was ALL profit.

So what's up fellers? Am I the only one here that says Hydro shops are rippin folks off?

Why is everybody always pickin on me ? (thats a song verse)


AAAAAARRRRRRRR !!!!

I'm not trying to pick, and many shop prices are laughable, I just think it's Canna, Ngw, Sunsystem and the like who are the real bandits--not the shop owner. Most small local business owners merely make a decent living and I'm sure most grow shops are in this boat as well. Calling out a shop for it's 100% markups when every other retail outlet does the same thing is misdirected.

Now that I sound like a total shill for grow shops, I will say that the only things I get there are things I can't find elsewhere--because there's definetly a hose job there no matter who's at fault. The big moneymaker for the hydro market is the average stoners unfamiliarity with the regular garden shops/hardware stores in their town.



But I will forge a rubbermaid tote out of my own flesh before I set foot in a wal-mart. Anyone who shops there is in serious need of some education. What good will that $.50 you saved do you when your entire local economy is destroyed. The tax revenue they give to the local government is the same revenue that your local businesses were paying before Wal-mart ran them out of town--only most communities are run by morons who actually give Wal-mart tax breaks--so they pay less than the businesses before them did. At least the extra money you spend at a local shop stays in your community where it might come back to you one day--money spent at chain stores leaves forever.

Shop local, shop union, or at least learn where your money goes when you spend it.

 

[sparkjumper]

Of course its not the owners in most cases,if you want a bag of fox farm perlite you're going to pay 35-40 bucks for it,my advice is to stay away from it it's addicting.Still when I add the costs of FF or PBP products with electrojuice to the amount recovered its ridiculoid.Laughable!It should be illegal haha.Walmart is kickass for dehumidifiers and air conditioners though lol

 

[Tony Danza]

The one thing the chain stores have going for them is totally non-existent customer service. Nothing worse than "can I help you" when you're standing in the garden section with an armload of reflectix and three PVC elbows. My local hardware store has excellent service and they all know me (I'm a tradesman), so naturally I can't buy grow stuff there unless it happens to look like my normal purchases.

 

[nephilthim]

property room.com home depot .i really don't like my local dro store I will go out of town to some place the overhread and volume of traffic means I won'tget to badly bent over

 

[magiccannabus]

They same guys complaining about stuff made in china probably drive Toyotas, wear Nikes, watch Samsung TVs and type away on a sony computer.

Give me A Hydro shop, walmart, sears, home depot, costco or the 99 cent store. I go where I get what I need at the best price. And you do too so quit lying !!

First off Samsung is Korean, Sony is Japanese, and Nike is made in China but owned in the USA. There are huge differences between the fair trade and labor practices in those countries. Korea and Japan do not hurt us the way China does, our relationship with them is more reciprocal.

I shop at the cheapest places I can generally, because I am desperately poor. If I had a little more money, I would always buy local, because that keeps that money local, and in turn betters the community around me. When I give money to Walmart, only a tiny bit of it pays employees and taxes, most goes to Walmart headquarters, nowhere near me. Basic economics tells us the more money that leaves a community versus money that enters it, the worse the conditions are. There are some very good civic-minded reasons to buy local. For those who can afford it, they really should do so.