So the failed purchase of the synths in GA kind of got me thinking. After breaking my heart telling me all his synths were sold just the other day, the guy said, in consolation, it shouldn’t be hard to find a K2000 or a Quasar. And you know what, he’s right. And he’s smart, too. For many, many of my purchases, I’m spending so much more to buy the devices because of my time, my gas, wear on the car, in extreme cases, lodging costs. Like driving 8 hrs one way and $200 on a hotel room to spend $500 on a keyboard? It’s now an $800 dollar keyboard and you can get them for cheaper than that shipped to your house! And I’ve been thinking about that and I have my answer. Why do I do this?
The reason is because buying a new device online is too easy. Seriously, it’s the easiest thing you can do – spend money and wait. And when it arrives, it’s like, eh, it’s here, what else can I buy now? My in-person purchases are limited availability items, in both time and distance (granted my distance threshold is much higher than normal people’s). But, the REAL reason is that it takes effort to make these purchases. I am committing to driving 18 hours for 3 devices. Just today, I drove 6 hours for a $450 device. Tomorrow I’m driving 4 hours for a $75 device. It sounds insane, doesn’t it?
But when you expend the effort, you have equity in the device. You have a stronger connection to it and it means more to you because of it. That sounds dumb – why would you ever want to "care" about a product? It’s just a product, you can get it anywhere. And that’s the trap in which modern convenience and consumerism has gotten people. They aren’t attached to their purchases, they don’t mean anything, so there’s no desire to keep them, cherish them, maintain them, or even use them with purpose. It’s just stuff – entirely disposable stuff.
You know, it wasn’t always like that and I’m refusing to let it be like that for me, at least when it comes to my collectable items.
Just as a side story on the effort that went into today’s purchase, this device was the same as one that I missed out on in GA, and it was $50 cheaper to boot. It was listed on a weekend and damn it if I didn’t see the listing under Monday. I messaged the guy and said I would like to buy this, but I wouldn’t be able to come up until the next weekend. He said he wouldn’t hold it for me and I agreed he shouldn’t. But he did say he would be coming by my area over the next weekend which would work out awesome in that he could practically deliver it to me (if it didn’t sell by then). I anxiously waited and the device hadn’t sold by Thursday. I messaged the seller and said I was still interested. No response. I messaged twice on Friday. No response. Oh well. That sucked.
Today I wake up and see the seller replied at 10:30 the previous night. He had a buyer who no-showed, but he was also not coming to my area now. I immediately replied and said I’d come get it. No response. GAHHH! I start doing other work in the house and he finally responds at like 1:30pm saying, sure, I can come up. Man, I did not want to deal with afternoon/evening traffic. I wanted to get started first thing in the morning, but fine. As I’m travelling, I’m giving him updates and I swear he didn’t believe I was coming. He would take so long to reply. Luckily I had 3 hours to get his actual home address.
Once there, the deal was completed and he was a cool guy, but the drive home was a lot more stressful than it should have been. At least I got a good dinner in Orlando out of it. And luckily, my house didn’t flood in my 7 hour absence (that’s a story for another blog).
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