The Appliance Shed

Admittedly, my expectations of the Appliance Shed were pretty low — partially influenced by the reviews by fellow Unilocalers :-), but also that i’m not that fond of yellow or companies that espouse that they are cheaper and more bargain friendly than others.
However, as I needed a number of big appliances (oven, stovetop, dishwasher etc) for my renovated flat, and as I was also recommended by a friend of mine who works in insurance, I decided to give them a go.
The first thing I noticed was the price tags of «first» and «second». Firsts being products that have come directly from the manufacturers, such as Fisher and Paykel. Seconds being items that either have a small defect on either the product, or merely the packaging of the product. Seconds are always slightly cheaper than firsts, even though it’s sometimes not immediately obvious why the product is a second in the first place. Even though I hadn’t shopped around much at that stage, I immediately was struck at the good prices of the products.
I was then approached by a very friendly shop assistant Pam, who guided me through each of the products that I was interested in buying — again, with very low expectations of the customer service that I was going to receive. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by her product knowledge and the friendly service. Once I had decided on the items that I wished to buy, she then went away and came back to me with discounted prices on all of the products — adding on discounts of between $ 50-​$ 100 for each of the appliances.
With my recent experience, I just cannot fault– whatsoever– the service received, the excellent prices, the range of well known brands, and the lack of feeling «pressured» by the staff to purchase their products (as I often feel when I go into other mainstream stores).
I can ABSOLUTELY recommend these guys!!!

This place sucks. There is nothing good in here and I’m pretty sure I know more about electronics and appliances than the staff who unwillingly work there. We bought an iPod dock from here for $ 89, the staff member telling us it’d be the cheapest one around and they were the only place that was selling it at that discounted price, and it was a Phillips, so it was really good quality. Bollocks. Total bollocks. A trip to Dick Smith at the mall a few minutes later, we see the very same Phillips iPod dock for the exact same price. What savings were we getting? Anyway, so we took the dock home and the quality was awful. The sound was so bad. There were so many buttons on the stupid thing it was really hard to use. So we went to take it back because we wanted to get a different dock, and even though we bought the day before we were returning it, we could only get store credit; they wouldn’t refund us, even though what they told us about the item was completely false. We held onto our store credit for nearly the entire year it was valid because we couldn’t find anything worthwhile in the entire shop that we wanted to buy. Don’t go there. They aren’t cheaper than anywhere else. The staff are dicks. The store is messy and cold. Stay away.

Well, what can I say, it sells appliances as the name clearly states, they are at great prices — they offer seconds or ‘perfection’. I was recommended to go here for my food processor hunt, and it was a good suggestion, they were the cheapest I had found by far — making the kitchen goddess in me very happy indeed; I love to cook, and soups are a staple in our house, a food processor is a necessity in my world. So, very happy with my purchase, and will gladly go back there again when in need of a new appliance. Unusual as it is for me, I only went in to the store for the one purpose, so I didn’t look at anything else they were selling, but I do recall it being quite a big place — so lots of stuff, go check them out.

The Appliance Shed is a huge bright yellow building that boasts heavily discounted prices on factory seconds and showroom demo’s, but half the stock was missing prices. The other half you could find new in another appliance store at the same price, if you shopped around. This may not always be true but none of the staff spoke to or acknowledged me to disprove this fact. Perhaps their garish yellow uniforms had caused some sort of irreparable blindness or corneal damage.
Two staff members obliviously strolled past while another popped bubble wrap 5 meters from where I puzzled over my purchase. Because I was using the company card, I offered the bubble-​popper a chance to up-​sell me, taking the cheapest product and the one I was considering to the counter and asking what the difference was. And here again I would like to mention the uniforms. Perhaps it was supposed I had also suffered some sort of temporal blindness from the bright yellow shirts because the staff member obtusely replied «They’re different brands».
It carried on from there in this manner for some time before I gave up but lets just say that I’m glad I wasn’t looking for any helpful service or an appliance bigger than a desk phone.