At The Original Flame, we have a newly redeveloped Cash and Carry program; we’d like to introduce it a bit more to you and see if it is a good fit for you. This will help you decide if you would be a good candidate for cash and carrying fireplace equipment, or utilizing our turnkey fireplace installation options.
How a cash and carry works is a discount is given based on the assumption that you as a client or the folks who work for you have the competence, transportation and skill level to pick up, deliver, place, vent, flash, seal and cap your typical fireplace installation.
If this describes you, the biggest advantage to a cash and carry is that you’re getting a break on the price of the actual fireplace equipment. The downside of it is that you’re also managing troubleshooting, diagnosis, tech support – and our role in that is to manage any warranty claims (for example, if the fireplace company wants pictures and part numbers to get a warranty claim going, your responsibility would be to provide us the photos and the part numbers found in the user manual, and we would get the parts on order for you). You would then come to the store, pick up the part, and self-install.
Warranty policies can be affected by cash & carry also. Typically, manufacturers will not cover labour or shipping in the standard warranty period. Some actually extend the warranty time if you use factory trained technicians.
For many of our clients, this isn’t daunting – they’re in the industry, they’re licensed and competent, and they’re comfortable with tech support, diagnosis and troubleshooting and after service support.
Most of our clients, most of the time, stand to benefit a great deal from our preferred installation plan – you see a fireplace that you like in our showroom, we as sales staff come out to your home, chat with you about goals and parameters for your fireplace, get all the right things on order, hand them to our installation crew, who then go ahead and do a fireplace installation for you keeping your preferences for finishing in mind (i.e. how much to have the fireplace “stick out” proud of its platform for an stone finish, etc.)
After we install the fireplace, you have a few options of what you can do next – a turnkey stone finish from the masons we work with, a wood cabinet or mantel finish (think crown mouldings, mantels and trims), or even a primed, paint ready drywall finish. Again, this is work that you can choose to do yourself, carefully noting the clearances to combustibles, the mantel clearances, any differences between fuel types (propane and natural can have different parameters for example) – or you can leave this up to us.
As far as whether or not a cash and carry is a good option for you, we leave this in your hands – but please remember that we are factory trained on the products we sell and install, and provide beautiful finishes around your fireplace – and sometimes, it’s worth paying a little bit extra to take advantage of our expertise.
Heating & Cooling Systems