On Mar 17, 7:33*pm, BDBConstruction wrote:
As most of you are well aware I am an anti-borg to say the least. Well
here is the latest I found out today. Local lumberyard tells me that
they are getting a lot of people saying they are out of line with
regard to pricing on 250' boxes of 12-2 romex. Salesman calls a fellow
salesman at the borg and says "wtf is up with this"? *Borg salesman
replies, "ahhh, hehe, you don't realize that corporate changed all our
wire to 200' boxes instead of 250' ". The new packaging minimally
mentions the footage in the box as opposed to the old packaging.

This of course goes along with Kellogs putting a couple ounces less
ceral in the same box for the same price, Lays and other chip makers
doing the same for chips, and so on. These minimal reductions (not to
say that 50' of wire is minimal) of course add up to millions of
dollars across the nation. Whats odd is why there would not be a
notice posted in the wire isle telling the guy who figured a job for
750' of wire that he now needs 4 boxes instead of the three he has
bought for the last 35 years.

Yet we still question,
Mark

So I was out all day today after material and went in the direction of
the wire so did a little checking. I additionally talked with the VP
of our elect. supply and got some info.

So they are infact selling 200'ers though at this point it is only at
a couple locations. The price is competetive with my local lumberyard
(they backdoor electrical products anyway) but higher than what I pay
from the elect. supply. Of course the most general complaint in the
biz is that they are doing this in an attempt to simply doop people
with a lower price in the isle. The 200's are not out on a pallet with
any signag, they are in the pallet rack where 250's would be. Of
course the drone had no idea why they had 200's vs. 250's other than
"thats what came in".

Now, in their defense, the VP at the elect. supply gave me some info
that this has happened in the past but with HD instead of Lowes. He
said it was an utter disaster and they wound up stuck with a lot of
wire waiting for it to sell retail as no one in the trade wanted it.
He said that no one ever got a clear answer as to wether it was an
attempt at trickery or perhaps they got a deal on a bunch of odd cuts
or something though it was pretty much agreed that with them all being
packaged 200's it just didnt seem like it was a batch of odd lots.

I was not under any dillusion that there would be some clear answer it
is/was just another indicator (for me) that these guys have no
interest in playing by the rules, customer service, serving the
industry, and so on. One plus around here at least is that the big
boxes have pretty much given up persuing contractors. Many of them
have dropped all their outside sales taking on the mentality that why
should they pay to get business when contractors should just come to
them. Their margins are higher on retail, though that business has
slowed drastically for them here.

Time will tell...
Mark