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• After listening to a sales presentation (a.k.a. "open house"), you agree to pay the membership fee, which is generally upwards of $5000. That membership is good for at least a couple of years, and your membership can subsequently be extended at a much lower annual rate. Your membership can be used at other DirectBuy locations in case you move.
• Although DirectBuy has a relationship with around 700 manufacturers, you are limited to the products which each manufacturer allows to be made available through DirectBuy.
• Once you receive your membership materials, you will be entitled to purchase items for your personal use (and for bona fide gifts) at DirectBuy's "direct to consumer" price plus sales tax, a handling charge for the DirectBuy franchisee, and shipping costs to the DirectBuy location.
• Except in those cases where the manufacturer agrees to ship direct to your home, you will need to arrange for transporting the product from the DirectBuy showroom to your home.
  • With a normal retailer, you would also pay sales tax and you would typically pay a delivery charge as well.
  • If the retailer has the product in stock at their distribution center, you will ordinarily be able to get delivery within a few days, instead of the several weeks it will take with DirectBuy when merchandise must be shipped from the manufacturer.
  • The cost of shipment from the manufacturer may be more than what a retailer pays, because large retailers will typically be getting full truckload shipments, while DirectBuy's orders from a particular manufactuer may not fill a truckload.
  • Alternatively, DirectBuy may hold orders so that they can combine the orders for shipping purposes and thereby obtain more economical shipping costs.
  • DirectBuy may obtain price concession from the manufacturer by agreeing to delay the fulfillment of their order, allowing the manufacturer to provide better service to other customers and to use its manufacturing capacity more efficiently, but resulting in greater delays than if you were ordering from a normal retailer.

Consumer Reports suggested that you should be planning on spending $25,000 to justify the DirectBuy membership fee, but I would advise that you not consider DirectBuy unless you're planning on spending $50,000, and most of that on high-end items. For a kitchen range, for instance, you should be looking at items normally priced over $5000. At the higher price levels, you're likely to find that there are higher markups, and very limited availability from the large retailers such as Home Depot and Lowes.

To determine if DirectBuy is worth the membership fee, you need to attend thte open house with a list of exactly which model numbers you're interested in purchasing. But for each item you're considering, you should have models from 3 different manufacturers of each item. That way, if DirectBuy doesn't carry that manufacturer, or doesn't carry that particular model, then you'll still be able to get a good comparison (and if they score 0 for 3 on your selection, then that tells you something too).

You should also know what price the item is actually available for, not just the list price. If all you have is the MSRP to compare against, then of course DirectBuy's price will look good. But if you walk in with a price that includes delivery to your home and compare that with DirectBuy's price plus handling, shipping, and delivery to your home, then you can really tell what your savings should be.

Remember, you only get one shot with their open house, so be sure to do a good job gathering your data beforehand, and get them to put the DirectBuy prices in writing. (But having said this, remember that the price can change even after you place the order. However, if you can show that DirectBuy showed specific savings which evaporated after you purchased a membership, this will be excellent ammunition when it comes time to sue them for the return of your membership fee.)

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