thread bump about buying
appliances - despite Avocado's constant fear-mongering, here in Mendoza it is getting warm, and brazilian/chilean/local Argentine tourists are booking hotels and driving and spending all over the place. regular, young and old people both, are sitting in front of Kiosks drinking liter beers and smoking like life is good. i think people can feel the economy; i know i can - prices for fresh milk liter bags have been 1000-1300 Pesos since i was in Cordoba province, and tuna 170g cans are still 1700-2200 Pesos now. gas prices at my local YPF are still 1052 Pesos/liter for the lowest price (forget its name - i don't have a car).
though some cucaracha K charts try to show salaries declining post-Milei (i saw them this morning on X/twitter), they don't use the correct
Blue Dollar calculation (typical commie lies), and are mostly just charts that show how Peronists print money and pay their
Ñoquis higher every month, inflating the money supply and adding more and more welfare dependence and national bureaucracy. but in real-spending Dollar terms, and although impossible to calculate with how cash-dollarized and
negra everything is, it looks like the poverty started to hit rock-bottom in 2021 (
kukas will assure you it had nothing to do with massive government pet projects, locking down for a simple Flu, and massive-printing of Pesos).
BUT, with so many screaming deals earlier in this thread (end of Aug2024), i wanted to check back and see what deals there are, to compare Mendoza to Buenos Aires. i am scheduled to sign my
Boleto next week, although this whole house purchase thing is just a clusterf### as in the USA, and i was wondering if you oldschoolers can share some guidance on how far off track i am for getting a good deal on some bigger things.
@Vince @Betsy Ross @earlyretirement and whoever else has bought this stuff historically and recently. i remember buying a mattress in the Midwest mid-2021 was horrible, where you had to pay in advance and then wait 3 months for delivery...if it didn't get delayed or cancelled completely. but my local Carrefour Hypermarket seems to have a decent stock of all the big stuff, every time i go. when i click:
Hogar & Electro on
...and i click on a 160,000 Pesos "semi-automatic" washer:
https://www.carrefour.com.ar/lavarropas-semiautomatico-codini-6-prog-10-kg-silent-4052/p
it's only 5% off, and the delivery section says "
Todavía no contamos con envío a esta ubicación." - even though i'm close to this hypermarket, and have received deliveries from a few companies already.
a few questions for buying some stuff from Carrefour Supermarket, since this thread is related:
1. is
Carrefour even the best for this stuff? free delivery would be convenient since i don't have a Hilux (looking to slowly buy a Washer, Dryer, Dishwasher, 2 Split A/C units, a bed frame and mattress, a ceiling or standing fan, a hose, some furniture/kitchen/house stuff as one does for a new permanent place).
2. are there
reward points with MiCarrefour? i've tried to ask a few times, and people get confused. in the US, loyalty programs like gasoline and groceries are linked to your phone number, and you get gift cards or discounts when you reach a certain spend/points. is this a thing with Carrefour or Cencosud/Jumbo/Disco/Easy/Vea? sometimes i put my MiCarrefour number in, and there is no different discount from just checking-out with no loyalty number, and a fake "DNI" of 99999999. i'd like to do a write-up of how to get the best deals, with no DNI and once someone gets their first
Temporaria DNI (one year or less), but i JUST got to this point and am not sure where to start.
3. can you
combine discounts at the big Carrefour stores? for instance, if i use a 15% off Carrefour credit/prepaid card, and there is an existing discount, and i have a 10k off 40k coupon, do these stack? in the US, it's usually "no" but sometimes you can do some nice deals (like at Kohl's). is Easy the store any better? Libertad? Carrefour Maxi, whatever that is? "
mayorista" places? buy used from locals? MercadoLibre for everything?
4. i know there are discounts for stuff like Cumple Carrefour that just happened, but it also seems like there are sales more often than in the USA (labor day, memorial day, black friday, etc.).
https://www.ambito.com/informacion-...os-espectaculos-y-actividades-gaming-n5834151
that being said, the price for that heat fan was 33k Pesos and now it's 44k Pesos, so it was for sure a good discount. i can't find the same fridge. but the mixing bowl was 118k Pesos and now is 198k Pesos, so there for sure were some good deals up to 70% two months ago,
@Sonja
5. do any Expats even use
Cuotas? i know argies are obsessed with "
pagos" when it comes to everything; kiosks, groceries, cars, whatever ("
en un solo pago???") - but from the USA, i'm completely uninterested in
cuotas but from what i understand, you can get prices in Pesos, pay a few installments automatically on a card, and keep liquidating your physical/digital Dollars to basically pay less and less overall (i suspect this has changed A LOT since prices in Pesos are becoming much more stable for most goods). it also seems HARD TO TRACK; imagine if you had 10 purchases a month with cuotas for many months...are people actually looking at their statements and calculating everything to make sure they are getting a deal? or do people just swipe their card and hope for the best? it would be silly to try to save with cuotas/installments when a store might over-charge you (and you don't catch it), and then you're paying an overall higher price. i've been here almost 11 months and the cuotas thing is still quite a mystery.
6. finally, my girlfriend now has a Temporary DNI card, a US Dollar account with one of the big/nice bank chains, and is pretty set-up with making life easier for us (finally), so overall i was just hoping to make a rough guide about
Okay, I have a DNI number now...what can I do? (that type of thing). anyone got any top-10 things, or any guidance for what is most important? our lifestyle here is already becoming much more enjoyable and thrifty, with way more 'doors' open with this temp DNI card. but i want to make sure i'm not missing any big stuff that i can start saving on (already have a postpaid phone plan, applying for Carrefour and Cencosud credit cards for their big discount days, MercadoPago/MercadoLibre, got a USD account with easy instructions to wire Dollars with only a 60 USD fee for up to 24k USD using the 0.25% fee and probably a 40 USD fee to send it from a US account over the span of a business week).
thanks and happy weekend!
www.iprofesional.com
