It’s all about buying local — if you can

As any homeowner knows, there’s always something wearing out, giving up or just ready to be replaced — light bulbs, furnace filters, herbs and spices. So, when it was time to change the water filter inside my Braun coffee maker, a stop by the local big-box purveyor of kitchen gadgets seemed in order. As long as I didn’t get sidetracked by potential gift items for the busy summer wedding/graduation/birthday season, I’d be home brewing a pot in a jiff.

Ha.

No Braun filters are available in this town, I am here to tell you after exploring every possible national chain and locally owned outlet. Some places don’t even have a place for them on the shelves, even though they sell the coffee makers themselves.

With gas flirting with $4/gallon, rather than a drive to Denver I was all about a visit to our friendly neighborhood Internet, with all due apologizes to David “Shop Local” May.

And here’s where the story takes a somewhat mysterious turn.

You can’t buy water filters directly from the Web site of Braun, a German manufacturer now part of  Cincinnati’s galactic household goods empire Proctor & Gamble.

The filters are made by Brita International, a family-owned global company also headquartered in Germany — but you can’t buy them there, either. A call to customer service starts with a recording assuring you that Brita pitchers are not made with polycarbonates or any other toxin du jour, and the kindly agent gives you the complete URL to the replacement-parts page buried deep on the Braun site — they must get this a lot.

Once there, I eagerly click the link to order, and get shuffled off to one of the myriad sites that pop up when you Google “Braun coffee water filters.” The price is right — $12 for two filters, or, special today, $35 for six with free shipping. Sign me up for a year’s supply. Click, zip out the credit card and — wait a mo. It’s on backorder for two to three weeks.

The lovely young man who answers the phone for the Pennsylvania retailer that supplies replacement parts for all P&G lines — and will sell you a bottle of Prilosec OTC or a tube of Fixodent if you’d like — assures me there’s only one kind of filter made for my coffee maker, and there’s no trouble with the supply chain. No factories have burned down or anything, it’s just that the items do such a good job improving coffee flavor, preventing calcification and significantly reducing chlorine they’re hard to keep on the shelves.

Right.

So how come over on Amazon.com the same two filters are selling for $68 and change, with $10 shipping? I only paid $70 for the whole machine, people.

But that was so last week. This morning, on Amazon, the filters are simply kaput — “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock soon.”

The supplier who was touting $68 for two through Amazon last week is now offering 12 for $55 —  backordered until the end of the month — while yet another outlet has two-packs in stock for $13.99 plus shipping. Or look over there, $19.99 plus $8.99 shipping!

Caveat Emptor.

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