Direct Buy is a membership club. Last I heard it cost about 5K to join. In return, you get to go through catalouges of reputable companies (for cabs, appliances, faucets, whatever) and order at a discount. Personally, I don't see how it could possibly be worth it. The discount percentage is calculated on retail. I'm sure there may be others out there with a different view then me.

You can think of it as the timeshare version of furniture stores. Same hard sell pitch, same high buy-in, and generally, same buyer's remorse the following week.

Rip-off. You can get better pricing on just about anything by surfing the 'net. And you will never make back that upfront joiner's fee. Steer clear of DirectBuy.

I did a little research on it. Was not able to find any satisfied customers in our region. Costs thousands to join. Prices are apparently good, but you have to pay to have things shipped to your home. Shipping single units of anything is extremely expensive.

Thanks, guys. It sounds fishy to me, but then again, they seem to be making enough money to run near-constant TV advertising, so maybe there are some happy customers out there somewhere...

I have some friends who used DirectBuy. His parents joined, and between then they completely gutted, renovated, and redecorated two houses. So I think it was worth it to them. But they said to never join unless you planned on doing an entire house. I think it would be worth it if you planned to build from scratch and then buy all the furnishings new.

A waste of time and money. I have seen cabinet quotes for exact apples to apples design and brand in which DB was higher even before you factored in the membership fee. Margins are relatively thin in the building materials market that everyone charges about the same thing. The only way to save real $$$ is to get a distressed sale, discontinued, or misordered product. And getting that stuff is cannot be accomplished on a short timetable, or if you have to fill a specific shopping list.

You must also factor that no one that works there is a specialist. The cabinet guy might be selling a sofa next week, and carpet the next.

One interesting aspect is that you need an invitation or appointment to visit at a specific time, supposedly to keep prospective customers isolated from word-of-mouth from actual customers. Suppose you went into a department store and they told you that to gain the privilege of shopping with them you had to prepay a predetermined share of their overhead and profit. And then, whatever you would purchase was yours, and non-returnable. If you had any problems you had to appeal "directly" to the manufacturer, as the store would have nothing further to do with it. Would you want to give a store like that your custom?
Casey

They are also *quite* persistent in trying to get you to sign up. As someone else mentioned, it's a hard-sell, time-share condo type of deal.

My mom saw the commercial and made an appointment for me (before she told me <: and initially i was open to checking it out. then did a web search read up on the dissatisfied customer postings recall consumer reports bit more wary. talk their salespeople few times mention that they are persistent called me repeatedly try get come for an appointment even after canceled.>They won't tell you what their membership fee IS, and it varies by individual showroom and area of the country. I tried to get at least a rough, ballpark figure out of them, which took several requests, but they finally said it might range from *a few hundred* up to $3000 (online reports say $7000 or so). In all fairness, it depends on how long you agree to pay for the membership -- I think they have one-month, three-month, and year-long memberships.

They won't tell you what brands they carry before you go to the appointment either. It was about an hour's drive for me and gas was still pretty high, so I tried to find out as much as possible before going to the appointment -- which I ended up canceling. I'm *not* sure (can anyone else verify this?) if they will tell you before you pay, I presume they will. But if they don't have the brand of cabinets or whatever items that you want, you're out of luck. And no doubt, once you've paid for the membership, you're probably going to feel that much more obligated to go with whatever brands/styles that they're offering, since you'll want to get your money's worth out of the membership.

Oh, and one other sales tactic -- they insist that you *must* sign up AT THE APPOINTMENT or you are not *eligible* (eyes rolling) to sign up later. I much prefer to be able to go home and think about a purchase rather than making one on the spot, even for much less expensive items. For an obligation of several thousand dollars? Nope, really NOT likely to decide in favor of THAT without thinking it over first, well away from the sales location and sales pressure. It's quite possible that they simply use that stipulation as another pressure tactic and will be quite happy to take your money if you call up a few days later and tell them that you've changed your mind, I don't know, but, it leaves a seriously bad taste in my mouth that they go to those extremes to begin with.

Personally, while I did not go to their presentation, the hard-sell tactics turned me off before I even got there. If they have such great products and it's such a wonderful deal for their customers, why would they *need* such blatant pressure tactics?

An expensive SCAM.

If you're thinking of joining Direct Buy, please read the threads about it in the link I've posted below. A few people have had a good experience with it, but many more feel that they were scammed.

Here is a link that might be useful: Direct Buy threads

I think it's a huge scam and rip-off. It's a real PITA to go through all the catalogues to find what you're looking for, and the discount is not that significant after, the handling fee, and the tax. BEWARE!!