Amazon has great prices, but their rate of delivery defects is I think too high and with such a large, big-ticket item, it’s risky.

Costco is better because you can order online return to the store no questions asked or just pick it up in the store and return to store if you aren’t satisfied.

To figure out the best time to pull the trigger, Decide.com is a fantastic website and now app to monitor the probability of price drops in electronics.

What many people do is gather the model numbers available at Costco, then use Amazon reviews to narrow down your choices and then use Costco for the actual purchase. This is less risky until Amazon can improve the damage rate on big-ticket electronics deliveries.

Downside of sticking with Costco is that they only have certain models. But you have to do your research because usually the end-cap TVs are not the best ones.