

Ask YC: Reasonably Priced Office Chairs? - tx

Gentleman, during my years as a full time software engineer I always suspected that chairs I used to sit on were not cheap.<p>However, after having shopped around I still refuse to believe that decent ergonomic chairs go for about $500. Used ones seem to be only 20% cheaper (on average).<p>Can anybody suggest a decent place to buy? (online or in central Texas area).
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rms
If you cruise the hot deals forums, sub-$100 and sub-$50 office chairs come up
all the time. They don't compare to Aerons, but they're really cheap.

Try browsing/searching www.fatwallet.com and
[http://forums.anandtech.com/categories.aspx?catid=40&for...](http://forums.anandtech.com/categories.aspx?catid=40&forumid=1)

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thingsilearned
Craigslist, though it may take a little while. I spent our first to weeks in
CA in a wood chair at a very tall kitchen table. But we soon found a guy
getting rid of 40 chairs and we got 4 for $6 a piece.

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cperciva
Don't you have better things to do with your time than to hunt for $6 chairs
on craigslist?

Being frugal is one thing. Assigning an absurdly low valuation to your time is
quite another.

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kul
office depot, we got designated 'heavy use' (8 hours a day) chairs for about
$120-$140.

Well worth it.

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SwellJoe
Those only last about 6 months. At least for me, I began having horrible back
pain from mine. After a couple of tries at those chairs, I replaced it with a
used Aeron ($460 at the Arthur Anderson auction...I wanted to bid on
shredders, too, but my dad wisely noted that the ones at Arthur Anderson were
"all used up"), which I've had for years and the only thing that's any
different about it is the lumbar support bar has split some. Still pretty
comfortable, and I don't have any back problems with it, despite hours sitting
every day (though I do break it up with at least a few walks a day...one for
lunch, one for the dog, and one for some random trip to the library or Asian
market or bubble tea shop).

Interestingly, at the same time, I also bought a Keilhauer chair for $30 in
"dirty" condition. A good cleaning, and it's a really comfortable $750 chair
for practically nothing. Everybody was focused on the Aerons, so all of the
other office chairs went really cheap.

I know used furniture stores are a lot less likely to let things go cheap than
an auction (and Arthur Anderson only goes out of business once), but it's
worth noting that if I'd had to buy a new Office Depot chair every year, I
would have spent more than even a new low end Aeron by now and my back would
probably be in worse shape (and I can't buy a new one of those). That's not to
say Aeron is the be all, end all. Steelcase Leap is a great chair, too. And
the afore-mentioned Keilhauer makes really good chairs that hold up for years,
and because they're less well-known and don't look as impressive you might be
able to find a bargain.

