Exporting your personal belongings vs. buying everything in Abu Dhabi - part 3 : buying kitchen appliances and electronics
Friday, July 6, 2012 Category : buy, Carrefour, Delivery, Dubizzle, kitchen appliance, LuLu 28
You will see it by yourself when you will start looking for apartments (for example on Dubizzle), a lot of properties for rent don't have kitchen appliances. It can be quite unsettling because usually empty apartments for rent in Europe and the U.S. have an equipped kitchen : they're not literally empty :-D
So you will have three main options for your appliances and home electronics: Carrefour, Lulu, or your now best friend Dubizzle!
So you will have three main options for your appliances and home electronics: Carrefour, Lulu, or your now best friend Dubizzle!
- Carrefour is a French supermarket company that sells food and also things for the house. They're kind of like the French Walmart. They have a great choice of appliances and electronics (TVs, home cinema, phones, cameras, computers and IT stuff). They have most of the brands that you would find in your home country. I'm not sure for electronics because I didn't buy anything there, but as far as the kitchen appliances are concerned, delivery and installation is free! The Carrefour store is located in Marina Mall, one of Abu Dhabi's main malls. To get an idea of the prices of all these items, you can check Carrefour's webstore IC4UAE. Carrefour sales staff is very knowledgeable about the products, and they have excellent after sale service.
- Lulu is a Middle Eastern supermarket chain. They sell food in Lulu Supermarkets and all sorts of appliances and electronics either in the supermarket or in Lulu Department stores. These stores are usually located into important malls, so they're easy to access and to park to. Based on the Lulu stores I visited, they have a little less choice than Carrefour, but they seemed a little cheaper. They offer free delivery and installation of the kitchen appliances as well.
- Dubizzle is a cheap way to equip your home, but you'll have to install and deliver the items to yourself, so it might be a little bit of a hassle especially for kitchen appliances. As mentioned earlier in the post about furniture, lots of expats move away from the U.A.E. all the time and are willing to sell all of their stuff at once. Talking directly to someone is this situation might be more convenient for you than buying the appliances to different people.
A few tips :
- If you decide to buy a gas stove (here they call it "cooker"), figure out the type of gas which is supplied in your building. It is important because if your building is equipped with natural gas access (like mine!), your cooker will need to have a specific "nozzle". If you don't have the right nozzle installed, your cooker won't work and you'll have to pay for technicians to come (at your own expense), or even sometimes you might have to return the cooker all together. Don't hesitate to tell your salesman several times about the type of gas your building gets.
- Deliveries of appliances by Carrefour (and probably Lulu too) are operated by local companies, not by the store. Each of the little delivery companies takes care of one or two brands, so if you bought appliances from different brands, you will get several deliveries.
- Delivery and installation are free, but it doesn't mean that you will get both services on the same day :-D When I got my cooker delivery, the guys didn't install it. The cooker just stayed like that in the middle of the kitchen for days! The delivery guys gave me a phone number of a technician to schedule an installation. Supposedly, from what I was told, in this kind of situation, if you give 50 dirhams to the delivery guys, they will install it for you. I had no idea, so I went to my Carrefour store and told my salesmen what happened. They were really mad, and scheduled the installation for me. In case you don't get your installation, don't give the delivery receipt to the delivery guys. It will be harder for you to prove your point when you go complain at the store.
- Sometimes, delivery/installation people just don't show up. It gets really frustrating, but stay calm. In case that happens, go back to the store and let the sales persons know. It happened to me several times (fridge delivery people never came, cooker installation person didn't come despite the appointment that was taken). Maybe I'm very unlucky, or maybe I'm in the average. Some friends got problems with furniture deliveries too, so unfortunately, I don't think I'm an isolated case. Just get ready for a level of service that isn't really what you're used too. Having someone at home helps a lot, unless your boss is really cool and lets you take several days off on a last minute notice.
- It's pretty obvious, but check with your realtor/landlord if your apartment has electricity and gas already. My landlord made sure I had electricity when I moved in, but I didn't have gas. The gas connexion had to be set up by my building management, which took a while to happen, as these people are very busy and take forever to return your phone calls...
