Buying Used at Wal-Mart
My family just moved into our first house, and the lawn is getting pretty overgrown. I don’t think the Realtor had it mowed after we looked at the house about 3 weeks ago, so the grass was well over two feet tall in some places. Unfortunately, the lawn is not in very good shape, so we will have to put a fair amount of work into getting it into a good condition over the next year or so.
Sine we hadn’t owned a home before, I’ve never owned a lawn mower. With all of the moving expenses, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of buying a new lawn mower. I did some initial research online and had decided one some featured that I needed. Mainly, I need a mower that mulches and bags (and the side-discharge option wouldn’t hurt). I looked at electric mowers, but the battery operated ones don’t last long enough to do our yard, and I don’t want to have to drag an electric cord around.
The mower I was looking at was $299 from Home Depot, with a $20 rebate. I still wasn’t prepared to spend that much on a mower, so I scoured craigslist to try and find a deal. I spent an evening calling various ones that looked promising, but the most affordable ones were all pretty old or didn’t do mulching like I need.
Eventually my wife talked me into going to Wal-Mart to see what options they had. They had about what I would expect with various options in varying price points. I settled on one for $184 that was the cheapest option that did everything that I wanted. However, I wasn’t able to find a box for the particular model that I was looking for. I asked a sales associate who couldn’t find any either, but pointed me to a few mowers outside that were returns.
Essentially, these were mowers that somebody had bought, used a few times, and then returned for whatever reason. Wal-Mart had sent them to a small engine repair shop who verified that they all worked and then put them back out for sale at half of their original price. There was only three mowers available, but one of them had everything that I was looking for. I could tell that it had been used because there was some obvious signs of grass stuck to the underside. But all of the original stickers were still on the outside, and they all looked brand new. The bag showed no signs of usage, and it generally appeared in good shape. The mower was originall $220, but they had it for $110, and I bought it right up, very excited to find what I was looking for at such a bargain.
I also picked up a gas container, and got a couple of gallons of gas on the way home. The mower worked perfectly for the entire 2+ hours it took to mow the lawn. It got a little clogged up at times, but that was expected with 2+ foot tall grass. I was also glad to have the side-discharge option, as the mulcher needs the gras to be fairly short, and I didn’t want to catch the grass and have to empty it every 10 feet.
