Discovering savings and benefits you never considered

Now that unpacking is mostly done, we've been doing some work around the house.

Last week we had an electrician come by and upgrade a lot of our writing so it's grounded.

The quotes we received for a rewire were a bit too high for us so we opted to put in GFI outlets instead. They work differently than a true ground but are still safe and meet the code, though the long-term cost would be higher (replacing the outlets every few years).

Our hope was to have them buy us time to save up for a full rewire.

But to our and our electrician's amazement, the entire house already had ground wires in every outlet.

They just weren't ever used.

In other words, the past owner paid to have their entire house rewired but then skipped the final step of putting in grounded outlets.

It's like spending $6,000 to rewire a house and then not spend the $300 to replace the outlets.

In the end we "got" our rewire and don't have to deal with GFI outlets everywhere. The savings let us get a bunch of other electrical work done too. (It was also great because the electrician is a local company that's been hit hard by the covid crisis)

You never know what hidden benefits might be there hiding in plain sight.

I often have Repeat Customer Insights customers asking for features that it includes already, like the Customer Export.

Though in the app's case, it's my fault for not making the features well-known (it's a hard balance to strike between instructional and easy to understand).

Next time you use an app or are in a new area of Shopify, take a look around and ask questions. You might be surprised and find a ground wire feature you never noticed that will help your store.

Eric Davis