Lowe’s is a popular home improvement retailer, but do you really need to visit a Lowe’s store today?
If the following factors apply to you, today might not be the best day to shop at a Lowe’s store.
1. You already bought everything you need
If you already bought everything you need for today or this week, then there’s no reason to shop at the store.
Advertisement
Why spend gas money to take the time to shop at Lowe’s, if there’s nothing you need to buy?
Shopping at Lowe’s when there’s nothing you need to buy is probably not going to be an effective use of your time.
2. There’s no Lowe’s store near you
If you’ve moved to or are working in an area where there aren’t any Lowe’s stores nearby, then that’s a good reason why you might not want to shop at Lowe’s today.
If the idea of shopping at Lowe’s still appeals to you, you might have to factor in the time and gas money it will cost you to shop there instead of someplace closer. If the closest Lowe’s is a bit too far away, it will be more convenient for you to shop at a closer home improvement retailer or hardware store.
3. You know they won’t have what you’re shopping for
Lowe’s has a wide selection of tools, hardware, and building materials, as well as appliances, home décor, lawn & garden products, and cleaning supplies.
But, they don’t carry everything.
Advertisement
If you’re shopping for something that Lowe’s doesn’t sell, it might be best to shop somewhere else.
For instance, Lowe’s doesn’t sell pillows (at least not in-store), Milwaukee power tools, car seats, apples, dress socks, breakfast cereal, digital cameras, or smartphones. If you’re shopping for these or many other types of products that Lowe’s doesn’t carry, then you should probably shop somewhere else.
No, This Isn’t a Real Article
A[nother] ridiculous article hit my news feed last night, with the headline being about 3 signs it’s time to cancel a wholesale club membership.
The article describes how you should probably cancel your wholesale club membership if 1) you rarely shop at the store, 2) you’re moving someplace where the store doesn’t have a local presence, and 3) you tend to overspend at the store.
How’s that an article?
I have been seeing more and more articles like this from household media names and nationwide organizations, and it boggles my mind.
An article titled How to Know if You’re Drinking Enough Water, might have 2-4 encyclopedic-like paragraphs about water, and then a short paragraph about how you’re not drinking enough water if you’re feeling thirsty.
There are too many tool articles like this too. The Best [Type of Tool], with a couple of generic “drills drill holes” and “saws cut things” paragraphs followed by a list of Amazon bestsellers.
In a recent How to Change a Drill Bit article that hit my news feed, they talked about “the trigger” and how it “controls the flow of energy from the battery to the motor.” If a cordless drill user manual doesn’t depict how to change drill bits clearly enough, confused users need simple instructions or visuals, not page-filler.
So, I decided to write a tongue-in-cheek post that subtly mocks recent trends. Hopefully I’m not the only one who has been frustrated at these highly-visible low-quality news stories.
In other news, the sky is blue, it’s dark at night, water is wet, ice is cold.
Clickbait has also gotten worse, and that’s something I try my best to avoid as well.
And, just to be clear, it’s perfectly okay to shop at Lowe’s – or anywhere else – even if you’re not shopping for anything specific.
Now that I’ve gotten these satirical words of protest off my chest, I’m off to work on a project.
Luke
The sad takeaway is that the “How to change a drill bit” article wasn’t created to help you change a drill bit – it was created to show you advertisements. The more filler on the page, the longer folks will scan around the page and see ads.
Rog
…I’m in the Lowe’s parking lot right now and feeling very conflicted, Stuart.
Stuart
Well, since you’re already there, there’s no better place to stretch your legs.
Sky
Well, now I’m on pins and needles. Did Rog go into Lowes?
Good points about click-bait.
Stuart
The world might never know!
TonyT
Toolguyd is the anti-clickbait, anti-YT influencer, anti-hyped up about everything site – maybe you’ll be leaving some money on the table in the short run, but in the long run, I think Toolguyd will be going strong after the influencers are forgetten, etc.
Click-bait articles and hyped up Youtube videos make me want to puke. Some hope for the future – my kids are starting to dislike click-bait and hype, too. (OK, the younger one still watches way too many idiotic YT videos, but he’s improving).
Stuart
There’s a headline that I saw yesterday and again just now by MSN. “This Appliance Sold at Lowe’s and Home Depot was Recalled after 37 Injuries.”
And then you click on it, and it doesn’t tell you anything until you find there are slideshows. Even then, there’s useless page-filler with the suggestion the problem is some kind of refrigerator. How is that useful to anyone?
With YouTube, clickbait and “shocked face” thumbnails work. Looking at who I subscribe to, almost everyone – big names and small – refrain from cheese titles and thumbnails. I tend to look past this, as long as they still produce quality content.
OAreaMan
> “shocked face” thumbnails work
Holy hell I hate these with the heat of a thousand suns. Plus the too-popular trend of removing the natural silences between sentences. You know.Like this.What’s the matter?Arrgh!
Stuart
I do too, but there’s some kind of psychological effect that encourages people to click and watch.
Speaking personally, I really don’t like doing videos because I’m terrible at it. I blunder, I freeze, I miss words, I use fillers. And then I retake a dozen or two times. Composing oneself and then continuing means fewer takes, but it requires some editing and phrase removal. I think some creators get carried away and try to remove pauses to keep the flow going.
But, as you mentioned, it’s also a trend, and one that some popular YouTubers recommend. I suppose many creators get carried away.
Munklepunk
I just saw an article comparing saws and black & decker makes the best. I have blocked an amazing amount of “news” sites in my feedbecause of stupid articles like the one you mentioned.
In the 80s/90s cartoons like He-Man were just commercials to sell the toy.
fred
When was the “saw” article published? Just kidding – but back in its time the B&D SuperSawcat with electronic brake was by most measures the absolute best sidewinder saw available. While today – we might give the nod to Mafell or some other favorite – the old Super Sawcat saw still hold up well.
Stuart
Maybe, but 80’s and 90’s cartoons were still enjoyable.
Munklepunk
Thundercats ho!
Stacey Jones
Are you blaspheming He-Man? I scheduled college classes around that show. I have the POWER!😂😂😂
Steve
I love the article. Hey, you still got #2 right though. I live in the fastest growing, practically the only growing, county in my state and Lowes is nowhere to be found. They closed their only store in the county in the last recession along with the closest one there after. We’re in a declining metro area, but still is a big one, and we have 131,000+ residents. So I don’t shop at Lowes much anyway.
Kevin Sowell
I’m glad someone said it. I spend more time looking for a good article than actually reading it.
Matt the Hoople
I second that. And… many of the review and “best” articles appear to be written by A.l. or by ESL students in foreign countries because the grammar is usually a little off as well as some of the features pointed out (I.e. “ the trigger controls the flow of energy….”)
MM
Nailed it.
I love it when it’s a “review” site that is comparing totally different classes of things, and then manages to recommend all of them highly. For example, the other day a “mower review for 2022” compared a gas ZTR, a diesel commercial multi-gang reel mower, a cordless electric robot mower, and a cordless electric walk-behind all in the same review. Each one was rated five stars. Of course there were affiliate links for each one. Every photo was a stock photo, and the text sounded like it was AI generated and just rehashing the specs.
Al
This isn’t a comment. But, you need some feedback to validate the ‘not and article’. So, +1 for the metrics.
Frank D
… ah yes the frustrations of CEO optimized content for your inbox and websites … where it is not about the quality, but having enough of the ” voodoo “.
Adam
I read the warehouse cancellation article too. They could have easily retitled it, “common sense reasons to not have a warehouse membership.”
It could also easily be an article for gyms too:
1) you have lifted all the weight possible
2) you moved to the wilderness
3) they only have weights, no smoothie bar, sauna, massage, or pool
Matty D
A friend told me that her dad owned a business that made products for Lowes….they owed him a couple of million in inventory and did not pay. This was during the recession. I guess it was hard times. I liked going to Lowes but dont right now…because you know….friends…
TomD
You’re friend’s dad’s not the only one: https://www.protoolreviews.com/news/milwaukee-sues-lowes-1-2-million/2778/
MattyD
Yeah thanks for the info. Sounds about the same time frame too. Miluakkee is a large brand….they also screw over small family businesses too I guess.
Avi
You had me scared there fora minute, I even scrolled back up to see who wrote the article, I almost checked the date as well.
Brad
The take away I got was, thank god I got over news feeds and social media long ago.
IronWood
This goes along with all the “review” or “best of” sites that are obviously just aggregating Amazon reviews and have no actual reviewer using anything. Fake articles, 3rd hand reviews, and slideshows now seem to make up most of the search results when I’m looking for something. I feel an “I can remember back in my day” episode coming on…
Also makes the few surviving independent/informational sites and forums (like Toolguyd!!) even more valuable.
Frank D
OMG … I hate all those doorway pages with a passion. And the same with all the TOP TEN of this for 2020 2021 2022 2023 …
Zero product use. Stock photos. Check the price at Amazon.
I really really really wish Google would de-rank a ton of them, because it is just a crap result. False promise really, lots of repetitive text, factory specs, lots of pages cross linking, … zero actual value to the viewer.
MFC
Yes, Google is useless for some things.
Roberto
Stuart, sorry to see you are on the Ace Hardware payroll. (Cheek in tongue)
JoeM
#4: You happen to be Me, in which case, you boycotted the store ages ago for moral objections. Problem solved.
Wherever possible, I shop online. There’s a myriad of reasons for this, but I have several USA-founded stores on my Boycott list, only exemptions being a lack of alternatives.
As to Clickbait… Yeah, I don’t like where the Marketing Chimps have taken the Internet either… There are several online retailers I’ve given ultimatums to, because they’ve overstepped their welcome, or they’ve created ads for clickbait use. I’d offer another solution, but people get very scared when I “Solve” a social problem such as this. I’m often the person people see, and grab their children WAY too close to them, and fearfully ask “What is Wrong with you??” and I will admit… That is my goal.
Jared
I was waiting for you to endorse this post JoeM. 😜
JoeM
You know, I considered it at first? Then I realized just how much I really hate the Influencer/Clickbait culture that has arisen along side the Anti-Factual Free-Speech arguments we get from Social Networking.
I dunno… I know the majority of people my age have grown up with it, and are just accepting the status quo… They have Jobs and Lives to lead, and they just don’t have the energy to fight it. Well… I have severe anxiety issues, and PTSD, I was put on the “Permanently Disabled” list back in 2014, and quite frankly my “youth” was spent working with the predecessors to these technologies, when there was a burgeoning eCommerce industry starting to grow. I had a future back then, before I was harmed. And now, years later, through my 30’s, just starting my 40’s, I’m sober, I’m trying to get things done, I’m trying to catch up to having a life… and it’s like all my work has been turned over to the abused chimpanzees at the zoo!
So, as much as I wish I had the sense of humour about the subject that Stuart does… I couldn’t bring myself to even entertain the entertainment factor of the subject. The reality is… I do take this too seriously, but it’s because I once had a hand in the infrastructure early in my life, late in the 90’s. I had a friend of our family see what I could do, and at age 16, I was offered a chance to either Move to New York and be a hacker apprentice to a very famous person who I will not name, with a starting yearly salary of nearly $900,000.00… at Age 16… Placing me smack dab in the center of the birth of the Cybersecurity industry that was freshly invented… Or… My Boss at the time offered to keep me on the payroll while I went to College for the field I was in, then return to a Commission for Sales plus a step up to $180/hr on, or off, site.
I gave up on all that to go to College, ran two companies, my own and one for my Mother and Sister (Where I was the business end, taking in income, billing clients, etc.) both of which folded because of family issues, and the fact that I got sued due to my Sister’s lie about guaranteed income from a project for her boss… Turns out there was no project, she was just high all the time, and dreamed it between hits…
My point? I’ve been fighting to get a life back since I was 19 years old, erase my bad credit because of the two businesses, and now I’m living in a time where I want to do one thing, honourably and honestly, but the world wants to go an entirely different route. All my friends and family are following the world’s path, while I actively fight to keep some level of integrity to my choices in life. One of them is a Moral Code that Lowes genuinely violates, and Clickbait/Filler Articles, Even TV Shows now, make that job impossible.
I’m 40, and living in a world that I don’t want to follow. I made mistakes that I can’t undo, and I’m late enough in my life that I am too injured and unhealthy from all the work I was once doing, to do anything I planned to do. Hell, I never got around to having a family, and now I’m the last of mine. As much as Stuart was “Taking The Piss” out of these dumb filler trends, and influencers… I have a genuine problem with them, joke or not. This is not the world I lost so much of my life trying to build. This may seem off-topic, or TMI… but… Genuinely, as “inconvenient” as these things Stuart is writing about may be to most people… In My Life? These same people have taken a lot of the work I’ve done in my life, and tossed it out a window. We have too much analytics, and not enough understanding. Ironic that the system providing the analytics was meant to share understanding with those who were denied it for the whole of human history. Now it’s about as useful as what chimps decide to fling at tourists they don’t like. It’s disgusting, and ultimately doing more damage than good.
Stuart, I trust, is at least standing with the likes of me, and trying his best to fight these trends by drawing a line in the sand, where only Facts remain. I know… Another one of my epic, wandering rants. I fully expect Stuart to send me an E-Mail telling me to quit doing this. I try, but… this is a really, really rough topic in my life.
Stuart
Humor? No. Immense sense of frustration? Yes.
The same Google algorithm that pushes garbage articles also pushes “best [type of tool] in 2022” articles to the top of search rankings just because an intern or affiliate manager hits the “update” button every week, and regardless of who writes those “buying guides” and whether they have any authority or not.
TomD
Get the jump on them! Start writing the best tools of 2023 *today*!
I can’t wait until they realize people search “term Reddit” to find Reddit discussions, so they start writing articles like “Reddit’s best tools of 2022”.
JoeM
Okay, I share the frustration part, obviously. But you had enough sense of humour to mock them. I didn’t even have that… I still don’t have that… I genuinely don’t like what they do, and I seek solace in places like ToolGuyd that are still going by the older standard. The standard that I actually worked with years ago, and had a business built around. The major difference is that you have access to new code environments that hadn’t been invented yet in my tenure working on this stuff.
I’m not even all that old, biologically. But I’ve “Aged Out” of everything used to run the environment of business these days. I feel like a 90 year old, stubbornly looking at all these younger people and saying “You didn’t earn that… I helped build that… You’re using a very powerful foundation as a playground, and I don’t appreciate that insult!”
Fyrfytr998
I literally just got home from Lowes and thought you were gonna drop some secret sale knowledge on me that was gonna kick off tomorrow.
MFC
I thought you lost your mind Stu. Glad to know you’re still rocking most of your marbles.
MT_Noob
I hate the diy or home improvement feeds that are just the same recycled “101 uses for vinegar” or other useless “life hack” links.
James
I’ve started running a home server. It’s pretty easy actually. One of the services I run is called pi-hole. You set it up with blocklists and it does an awesome job of preventing all kinds of ads from showing. For me it’s blocking like 60% of the queries that happen when using the internet. If you open some clickbait page like your talking about… it’s a much better experience. Plus if you see a webpage has a lot of blank space you know it was just trying to sell ad-space, not be useful. It’s for everyone on your network too not just one computer. Another thing families can do is use cloud flares dns service instead of the default dns ip that the isp gives you. Cloudflare has one that blocks a lot of non-family friendly content ; I think that one is 1.1.1.3 basically just set that as the dns provider on your home router. Another thing I’ve started doing is using a search engine aggregator called presearch as opposed to using google. It reduces censorship and ad-tracking by anonymizing your search requests. It takes a little effort to make these changes but it makes internet usage better while taking away some power of big tech with all the monetization of your attention on ads
Paul C
I hear that toolguyd won “THE Award for BEST Tool Site EVER!!!” …
as voted by your kids and family… who also happen to like chocolate.
On an unrelated note, I, I mean my kids, also like chocolate…
Ubet
There’re pillows for sale in the patio department. So there!
Stuart
Pillows or seat cushions? =)
Ubet
Honest to God pillows.
But with nice pictures in decorator colors and fancy braid embroidered around the sides. But, pillows none the less.
I like the ones with birds on them.
jim k.
Lowe’s customer service is severely lacking, so I wouldn’t shop there anyway.
They also are very resistant to honoring warranties; you need to waste time working the issue up the ‘chain of command’ in order for them to do what Sears would have done in the old days, just replace the item, no questions asked. So they no longer get my business.
I’ll stick to Home Depot. Not perfect, but so far they shine in comparison.
Bob Adkins
It’s true I have 1, 2, even 3 everything, but I also have a veterans discount that negates that.