New Gear

In preparation for hiking Mount San Jacinto tomorrow, I went out and purchased some much needed gear. The Camelbak Asymetrix 30 and Merrell Chameleon Stretch shoes. I based my product selection on recommendations and advice from friends. I went with the Asymetrix 30 because it has a 3 liter water reservoir (you can never have too much water) and 1800 cubic inches of storage space (Aaron Rapp and Jonathan recommended to get a backpack version of the Camelbak and the more storage the better). The Merrell hiking shoes come highly recommended by Aaron Matthews plus the high tech lacing system totally appealed to the geek in me, just pull the elastic loop to "lace up". How great is that?! And I must say, they are soooo comfortable, better than my day to day shoes, they're like a second skin.
Now normally for purchases over $50 I will go online and find the lowest price via PriceGrabber or Google Products (formerly Froogle) and purchase it from an online merchant. But there was a slight problem in this case, I found out about the hike on Friday and the hike itself was Sunday, with time of the essence I needed to make my purchase from a retail store. Therefore I decided to "take it to the limit" and visit Sport Chalet.


Since I knew I would end up paying retail I figured I would just ask to see if they did price matching. The girl at the register told me they did, so I pulled up the same Camelbak at Amazon.com on my phone. The manager came over to verify the price match but when he found out it was an online store he told me they don't do online stores because they can't compete. Luckily out of curiosity he asked what Amazon's price was, it was 97.95 vs 109.00, since the difference wasn't that big he gave me the discount anyways, awesome! The Merrells were on sale 79.99 vs 99.99. All together I saved about 15% off retail, not bad for the convenience and instant gratification of shopping a retail store.

Moral of the story, it's free to ask, so do it!