Sometimes It is Cheaper to Buy Stuff Online

An electric fan has become almost indispensable in the Philippines, particularly if you lack an air conditioner.

April's parents are using our old fan, which we received as a wedding gift. However, its quality has significantly deteriorated over time. With several parts missing although it remains functional, the airflow it produces is weaker compared to a new one.

The thought of repairing it crosses our minds, but the cost of replacement parts such as blades and the motor is substantial. When factoring in the labor costs, it makes more financial sense to purchase a new fan instead.

Initially, we planned to buy an electric fan online, but we were hesitant due to uncertainty about the product's quality. This lack of trust in online purchases often discourages people from buying. We prefer to be hands-on consumers, relying on personal experience to gauge product quality.

Therefore, earlier this morning, we decided to explore San Pablo and visit some stores to assess our options before making a purchase.

First on our list is Novo San Pablo

When we entered the premises, electric fans were already displayed in front of the store. The cheapest that we saw was a desk fan at 667 PHP. This was on sale as the original price was 850 PHP around $14.86. There are also wall fans and industrial fans available but the budget that we have is not enough for those. We are eyeing to at least get an industrial fan at the cost of 1000PHP or less. The desk fan hit the budget requirement, however, we considered Dyn-dyn as she always picks the fans playing the buttons.

Then we moved to a hardware nearby

Same with Novo, the fans are displayed outside. We were discussing and looking for the fan's price and the lowest that they got was 1100 PHP. These are not the famous brands thus we are not so sure about the quality.

We passed the hardware shop and finally ended up in Imart Shopping Center.

There we were able to find some industrial fans which cost less than 1000 PHP, there's a brand named Astron which our family had tried already and told April that we might consider it. She said that she would think about it first and look for others as the main endorser is Coco Martin. She doesn't like the endorser thus if there's any option not to buy it then we go from there.

There's also Centrix a new brand to which we are not familiar with, it cost 900+ which is less than our budget. But then April realized that she saw some TikTok live stream showing the same brand. hence, what we did is just inspect the physical product that we are seeing now and check TikTok again for the price. There's a flash sale ongoing with the official shop that sells the electric fan and got the price at 609 PHP including the shipping fee. Agreeing that it was already a steal, we checked out and decided to just buy something different at the store since we stayed for quite a long.

One thing that we realized about this experience was checking the price thoroughly and comparing everything. I don't consider that much back then as I tend to buy things in the store once I set my mind to it. Canvassing is new to me and with the limited patience that I have back then waiting doesn't work.

We left the premises and now we are just waiting for the store to ship the item. Earlier it reflected that the courier is in the process of picking up the fan and hopefully within tomorrow or the day after we will have it in our home.