Sail into one of these Columbus Day sales

Oct 8, 2010 3:44 PM

Retailers relish holiday weekends and we noticed that over this long weekend many are rolling down prices on some of our top-rated appliances, home and yard equipment, and other gear. To help you out, we took a look at the websites, online circulars and social media sites of retailers that did well in our shopping surveys and found good buys on some proven performers, many of which are featured as our "Best products of the year."

Not everything we found "on sale" was a deal. In fact, some retailers are offering prices that aren’t much lower than the prices listed in our Ratings. We also found some discounts on poorer performers—so be sure to check before getting out your checkbook. Among some online retailers, high shipping charges were enough to shipwreck any Columbus day shopping expedition.

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Refrigerators. Lowe’s and P.C. Richard & Son are offering 10 percent appliance discounts that brought the price of the side-by-side GE GSH25JFX[WW] down to just $899. We also spotted our CR Best Buy Whirlpool Gold GS5VHAXW[Q] side-by-side refrigerator marked down 20 percent with free shipping at online retailer plessers.com. At Sears, a 10 percent discount includes our recommended Whirlpool Gold GX5FHTXV[Q] French-door refrigerator down to $1,314. Lowe’s and Best Buy are lowering prices on Samsung refrigerators by 20 percent, so the Samsung RFG298AAWP French-door model that impressed in our tests is now only $1,919 at Lowe’s. Best Buy is selling Samsung’s slightly smaller RF293HARS for $1,399.

Induction cooking and ranges. Retailer Best Buy has deals on some of our CR Best Buy cooktops and ranges that use the hot new induction technology. With Best Buy’s 20 percent discount the price of the Frigidaire Professional FPEC3085KS cooktop was just $712, and that of the Samsung FTQ307NWGX 30-inch standalone range with induction burners was $1,499. Both performed as well as models costing nearly $1,000 more in our tests of ranges, and cooktops and wall ovens.

Among smoothtop ranges, the GE JB700DN (a CR Best Buy) is on sale at Best Buy for $639, well below its $750 street price. Among wall ovens, the Kenmore Pro 4100 was marked down from $2,300 to $1,955 at Sears.

Small appliances. Several retailers have discounted our top-rated coffeemaker, the $99 Cuisinart Brew Central DCC-1200. Retailer hhgregg.com cut the price to $79.99 and amazon.com is offering it for $68.50 as part of a 30 percent off sale on kitchen products. We were also warmed to see our top-rated slow cooker, the All-Clad 99005, marked down to $180 at Bloomingdale’s. Many less expensive models of slow cookers that did well in our tests are on sale at K-Mart.

Washers and dryers. The GE WFW9050XW front-loading washer, which ranked high in our washing machine Ratings, is on sale for $494 at Lowe’s and $519 at Sears. Sears’ 10 percent discount also brings down the price of the CR Best Buy Kenmore 6982 dryer to $515. Another excellent performer in our dryer Ratings, the GE Profile DPSE810EG[WT], $600, can be had for less than $500 from online retailers Appliances Connection.com, Home Everything.com, and Buyer’s Edge.

Hybrid heat pump water heaters. Lowe’s and Home Depot are discounting models that our tests have shown can save you almost 60 percent on your water heating bill. Lowe’s is discounting the General Electric GeoSpring model to $1,439 until Monday evening, while Home Depot is offering the comparable Rheem EcoSense for $1,498. Both are eligible for a 30 percent federal tax credit, and in 10 states they're eligible for cash for appliance rebates.

Blowers and mowers. Lowe’s is featuring 15 percent off Troy-Bilt snow blowers and 10 percent off John Deere gas-powered lawn mowers. The Troy-Bilt blowers are very similar to models that have performed well in our snow-blower tests, according to our in-house expert. (Our testers rated other mowers better than John Deere). Sears has discounted several of its Craftsman self-propelled mowers.

Backup generators. Sears has cut the price of the Briggs & Stratton Elite Series 30242 to $899 from its list price of $1,100. It topped our Ratings of medium-sized portable generators.

If you find a product you like at a price you don't, try to negotiate a price you can pay. “What a lot of people don’t know is that we belong to a buying group that pays the same price as the big-box chains,” say Don Vallone, manager of Malkins Appliances in Baldwin, N.Y. “We do have the ability and willingness to match prices."