I never buy proprietary accessories. What I mean by that is when I buy something – at a good price – I do not allow the salespersons to entice me into buying the accessories without first comparing prices.
It is like buying a car and getting one with a great stereo in it. However, you pay a huge amount of money – and interest – for that stereo. My husband always installed our stereo systems in our vehicles and it ended up we saved money but had the best stereo system around.
I know, what a pain to do all that. What about personal satisfaction for a job well done? Where has that gone to? To me there is nothing better than having a few friends over and telling them that I mounted my flat screen television, by myself and saved hundreds of dollars in the process.
So I bought a Sony LCD Flat Screen Television. I got a good price on it and the salesman wanted me to buy a wall mount for it. I looked at it, checked the specifications (which you should always do first) and then after I passed out from seeing the price (almost $200), I told him I would just make do with the stand that comes with the television.
Of course, that is not what I had in mind, so I really lied. I went home and began searching the internet for the best price and best quality wall mount I could find. Sure, there were some mounts that looked like they could hold up the TV in Times Square but I didn’t need one like that.
As I searched, I looked at the Sony wall mounts. First I saw the stands that they sell and the cheapest one was $199. Then I looked at the wall mounts. They had some really nice wall mounts from Chief and Sanus but the prices were over $200 for 99% of them. The cheapest one was over $100 and its weight capacity was only 60lbs.
This went on and on for a bit and I Googled for wall mounts and found this site called Readealmounts.com. They had the perfect wall mount for me for under $30!! Its weight capacity is 165lbs and met all of my specifications.
Never buy proprietary because there is so much mark-up on the product. It is worth the extra time finding the right product at the right price. My search only took me 1 hour and in that one hour I saved approximately $170 – which is a great hourly rate if I must say so !