Charlie:
Morton writes to to us, “The cold water faucet in my master bath doesn’t work.” He says, “I shopped at one of the large box stores and a plumbing supply store.”, and he says he found what looks like the same faucet in both places, but of course the big box one is cheaper. He wants to know, “Do you think they’re the same?”
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Tom:
No. Absolutely not. I’ll tell you why. You can go to a really high-end plumbing supply, when I dealt in –
Charlie:
Over like, what is it? Morrison or Ferguson –
Tom:
You’ve got Morrison, you’ve got Ferguson, I mean you’ve got a bunch of places in town. We just remodeled our bathroom and we went to a high-end place and got really good Kohler fixtures. We can go to Home Depot and get a Kohler fixture. They’re actually manufactured cheaper for the box stores.
Charlie:
They have plastic parts in them, and not metal parts.
Tom:
Not even that. Even more so, I mean they’re just not engineered at all as well. The bottom line is we’re in a global economy, a global manufacturing process, and you can have have the same casing, and all the insides can be bought from different companies under different engineering specs, and then they just shove them in there. It looks the same, but it’s not. So the answer is, no, they’re not the same. You get what you pay for. I’m sorry.
Charlie:
Here’s the other thing, Morton, if you look at that box, okay, write down the skew number on the box. The one underneath the barcode, okay? Then go to the other store, guess what, going to be a different number.
Tom:
I think I just learned something here.
Charlie:
They look the same but they’re not.