Reader Christopher decided that it was time to buy a new dryer, largely because Best Buy had a great sale and offers free delivery for appliances. It sounds like that might be, indeed, the best buy. Only when he put all of the needed parts in his virtual cart, he noticed something strange. He had to pay an extra delivery charge…for the power cord.

“Turns out, that free delivery only applies to the dryer itself,” he wrote to Consumerist. “They charge you $69.99 to deliver the power cord along with the dryer.”

Wait…isn’t the delivery truck coming to your house anyway? Isn’t the power cord sort of an important part if you want to make sure that an appliance works before

“Dryers don’t come with power cords,” Christopher points out. “They must be purchased separately because there are two types.” Right, though if you already have a dryer, the cord for your existing one might still be in good working condition and could work for the new one. Could.

It makes sense to charge a fee to deliver a relatively inexpensive item like a power cord, but it seems that they could instead make the power cord an add-on item for the appliance, without its own shipping charge. (They could just charge $30 more and include the cord, but that would make too much sense.)

The obvious solution is to have the dryer delivered, and go pick up the power cord at your nearest Best Buy store. Sure, it’s an extra bit of inconvenience, but seventy bucks is seventy bucks. This system does make sense if you were shopping in person and could pick up the cord before leaving the store, but that’s about it.

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