Airs Appliances in Philadelphia: good people, better prices

I'm generally of the opinion that you can almost always find things cheaper on the internet than you can in a brick and mortar store, and forget about finding good deals at small local places. This goes double for large appliances.

Airs Appliances in Philadelphia (1119 Chestnut Street for those of you in the area) has proven me wrong. Not only did we get a great deal, we got great service as well. If you're looking to buy an appliance in the Philly area you are doing yourself a disservice by not stopping by and chatting with the good folks at Air.

Why was I in Airs?

Marisa and I have been talking about getting a new refrigerator for a little bit. It would seem the success of the washer/dry combo unit has emboldened Marisa's zeal for gussying up the kitchen (which I approve of, mind you).

Our current refrigerator irks me to no end. I think it is pretty ugly, and since Marisa is a world class foodie it is often packed to the gills with all sorts of food. That's not a bad thing, but I can never find anything! And with all that hippy food in there there is hardly any room for 'Scott approved' foodstuffs (mostly Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, and yes I am well aware of the dangers of diet soda). We were both in favor of getting a new fridge.

The world of refrigerators is a wild and varied place. There are awesome professional fridges, very cool retro fridges (which are super tiny), and many more in-between. The space that we have to work with is pretty narrow, in fridge terms. It would seem that manufacturers are making fridges that are about 35 inches wide, which works well for most people. We have a space that, at most, can take a fridge 33 inches wide. We thought we would be stuck with some bottom of the barrel fridge, but we were wrong.

Helen at Airs steered us towards the LG LFC20760, which has everything we wanted:

• French doors
• Freezer on the bottom
• Comes in plain white (the floor model was stainless steel, but you can't put magnets on a stainless steel refrigerator, which is about 50% of the purpose of a fridge, if you ask me).

We were in fridge heaven!

We had no plans to actually buy a fridge while we were in Airs' lovely Center City showroom, mind you. We just wanted to get our hands on some fridges before we ordered one from the web. However, the price ($1139.95) was better than anything we saw on the internet for the same class of refrigerator and it even included delivery (which none of the places on the web did). Marisa looked at me and said, "Are we going to buy a refrigerator today?" I said, "It sure looks like it!" And so we did.

It'll be delivered on the 18th, and Marisa can't wait. My only question is: what do we buy next?

Comments

[Thad]

Cool. I'm with you on fridges needing to be able to hold magnets!

I'm not surprised you found the local appliance dealer to have a good price and be nice to deal with. Large appliances seem to be the one item left that local stores can be competitive on. I'd only use the Internet to find product information.

Forget Best Buy and the big box chains. They have "free delivery" but seem to charge more for the product. Not to mention getting harassed for the extended warranty by the clueless sales drone.

As for what to get next: maybe a new matching oven/stove/microwave? Talk about something Marisa would appreciate literally every single day of the week!

[Glenn]

How about a combo microwave/convection oven. I'm sure Marisa would like a convection oven. They're dope.... the kids still say "dope" for things yes? ;)

[j-bird]

Good luck with the LG. We have an LG fridge that has been great, but other friends with LG appliances have had really bad luck. The main problem is that in our area, it is almost impossible to find anyone to do repair work on them. I doubt that is an issue in a huge market such as Philly.

[Janice]

I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before your fridge and washer/dryer start picking on your stove and cause the stove to develop a depression that leads to a performance degradation...unless you have a dishwasher. They might go after that first. Dishwashers are weak and cry easily.

[Jill]

I am sooooo jealous! FRIDGE ENVY!!!

[Marisa]

Luckily the dishwasher is only about a year old, so it should be good to go for some time to come. The stove and oven are pretty funky, but I am oddly fond of them. My vote for the next project is the floors in the living room and dining room!

[Martina]

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