I'd push like Hell, Ron: The worst you can do is be where you are right now. When we bought our stove at Home Depot, they were supposed to install it, but gave us some song and dance that it would need additional work. I ended up forking out a small amount of change on the sly to the kid who delivered it, who did the installation. He did it as a "favor," for a discounted price. The whole thing smelled a little fishy to me, and I'm not talking poached. That was five years ago, so the details are in soft focus now. We had just moved in and really needed a stove (and we use the stove a lot.)

Sometimes if you raise Hell, people cave in just because they don't want anyone to think that they're ripping people off. We ended up buying our next two appliances at an independent Appliance store, got great service and didn't pay that much more. It was worth it, just be treated with some level of professional respect.

I've just gone through a doube exchange of DVD players, by the way. I bought a new one at BJs and after it worked fine for a few days, suddenly it didn't work. I took it back and got a credit, with no complaint. I bought a different brand of DVD player and brought it home. After two hours of trying to get the stupid thing to work, including side trips down to Radio Shack to see if it was the connections, I took it back. I paid $79.99 for it, and it's reduced now to $49.99. They gave me the full refund with no problem, so I don't have any complaint about their service or policies. I do believe that the "Big Box" stores often carry models that are being discontinued by their manufacturer, for a variety of reasons. I never know whether it's because they've had too many problems with them. No sense recalling them like cars... just unload the inventory on the Big Box stores and people will be pleased to think that they got such a great bargain.

Problem is, if you want to buy certain things, you may not have a choice of a smaller, independent store. Eventually, there's just going to be one Store, called Store. Pray for mercy.

Jerry