I will admit that I’m a hard nosed shopper of PC products, and will never buy something from Best Buy or Circuit City unless I know verifiably it’s an absolute kick ass deal. I also buy open box stuff, and I’m a no headache customer when it comes to buying PC stuff, as I don’t waste the salesperson’s time, and can usually figure out any configuration issues. In fact sometimes the salesmen will come to me to ask a technical question when I’m there.
And yes I am the rebate king. If there’s not a whopping rebate on a larger ticket item I will not purchase it in most cases. And yes the rebate is occasionally good enough that I can re-sell the item on Ebay and make a few dollars.
I thought this was just plain old competitive capitalism in action until I read the CEO of Best Buy and other retailers musing on this topic. Apparently I am a “value destroyer” for taking advange of their best deals.
Um, I didn’t get the impression they were talking about the behavior you mentioned. You said you don’t waste the salesperson’s time and they’re talking about people who do and don’t buy things. You said you take advantage of rebates and sometimes sell the items on Ebay, they’re talking about people who get the rebate and then RETURN the product to the store. You say you only buy if they have a great sale and that is one thing they mention, but I don’t see how you are the shopper they are referring to.
Yeah, An outfit like Best Buy’s relies on customers making non rational decisions. Impulse buying and that kind of crap. I won’t even go into the store. The noise level is too high. You can hardly hear yourself think… which is probably the idea. Just buy a bunch of crap that you don’t need and get the hell out. If all of their customers were making rational well thought out decisions, they would be out of business.
Any Best Buy employee who would process a full refund on a boz that has the proof pf purchase barcode removed (a requirement on mail-in rebates, AFAIK), is a freaking idiot. Alternatively, perhaps Brad Anderson is inventing the customers who successfully attempt this maneuver.
Astro, however, may or may not be destroying value on the items he resells on e-bay. Please enlighten me, astro; do you make it clear to your down-line purchasers that the manufacturers’ warranties on the products you sell to them are not valid? Such warranties are not typically transferrable from the original retail purchaser, you know.
Most items I keep, but a few I will keep in the sealed retail box and sell after I receive my rebate, and full notice is given in any eBay ad that the UPC sticker has been carefully removed for rebate purposes. Occasionally I also include the receipt. If I am selling a sealed box, how is the warranty not transferable? If this is the case a unit given as a gift has no warranty either.
You know, the company sets the policies. If people take advantage of said policies, they have no one to blame but themselves. You’re tired of people taking advantage of rebates or refunds? Hey, don’t offer them! Tired of people wasting the salespeoples’ time? Set a policy that they should dump customers who are taking too long, and deal with the consequences.
Don’t come crying to me complaining about how the mean ol’ customer is grumpily refusing to throw money at you. Boo freaking hoo.
If their salespeople talk to a prospective customer for a long time, and then can’t sell them anything maybe they better get better salespeople, no? And pay them a decent salary, or pay them on commission? If the store doesn’t have a reason why people should buy there instead of the web, they’ve got big problems.
But then any exec who complains about customers who buy only at sales is a total asswipe. The web means you can always find the best price. If that is news for this guy, he’s going the way of the buggywhip makers.
Can’t argue with what’s been written here. But just to maybe sugges that actual ire might be unwarranted: where did these people say these things? The article just says “a recent interview”. An interview with whom?
I suspect that the comments were made in interviews for a trade magazine in which discussion on how to maximize value per customer is par for the course. Indeed, such discussion would be the magazine’s very raison d’être. In such a case, it isn’t unreasonable for them to be making such suggestions.
Selden’s point (and Anderson’s) is that some customers make the company money, and some cost the company money. Best Buy, like any retailer, offers loss leaders during big sales to drive traffic. The idea is that someone will come in for the loss leader (the $49 DVD player or $2 turkey, whatever) and will buy other stuff while they are there. The customer who only shops during the big sale and only buys the stuff on sale is not a good customer.
It doesn’t mean you’re not a good person, it just means that the company doesn’t make money off you. If it’s any consolation, the “worst customers” group for a company like Best Buy also includes all of their own employees, who always shop at a discount. The point to Selden’s analysis is to get the company thinking about how it makes money from its customers, and how to optimize that situation.
Astro, I’m sure you’re a nice person, and I bet that you’re very little work for your local Best Buy or Circuit City to deal with. But they want to make money on their customers, and while you cost them little in staff time, you give them little margin on the products you buy. So they value you less than the customer who buys at full price. Why is this a problem?
Why does this seem to imply some higher-up saying, "Well, we’d like to run ads for big sales, but we don’t want anyone actually taking advantage of those sales! That would be less profitable! :smack:
Not really, the employees are essentially giving their wages back to Best Buy to purchase goods. At best, they’re turning BB a profit/recycling wage money and at worst, they’re increasing the volume of their purchases. I think that this is an excellent strategy for screwing your employees (or creating value for them, if that’s how you want to think of it).
As for warranties being nontransferrable, I believe there’s language in most warranty forms to that effect and that the items are to be returned to the place of purchase w/receipt in many cases. IME, the experience of returning things purchased on a credit card meant that I had to provide the credit card for verification, something that an ebay buyer wouldn’t necessarily do.
No idea how BestBuy identifies customers as people who “tie up a salesperson but never buy anything.”
Do they do video surveillance to detect these “value destroyers”? I admit it - there’ve been times when I “tied up” a salesperson (ordinary twine is not strong enough, I recommend stout hempen rope) asking questions about some big-ticket item, only to come back at a later time to make the purchase! Can’t have that, I know - only immediate sales will be tolerated.
Of course, the odds of a) finding a salesperson in the first place, and b) that person knowing much about the product in question are poor in the first place.
I guess I’ll just have to adjust to the fact that one day soon, Best Buy and its clones will install video ID systems to identify me as one who has committed Problem Behavior, and I will be forced to do my spending elsewhere.
Well, to be fair to Best Buy, even though I hate every single one of their pimply, obnoxious, know-nothing sales staff and managers (kidding, it’s the pit, I just don’t like the store), it is not as if they are asking for legislation to put an end to their victimization, nor are they suing people that never buy anything for lost sales staff time, they are just making a decision that they choose not to do business with some customers.
I have no idea how they hope to enforce it, but, hey, they can waste their time like that if they wish.
IANAL, so I’m unable to say how the subtleties you bring up would be handled under contract law. However, I can state with confidence that non-transferrability of warranties is pretty much standard practice.
However, if you are providing your downline customers with your original receipts from the store, good on you. You are smoothing the path to a successful resolution of their warranty claim, and that’s always good news.
As a former Best Buy indentured servant, I have a few words.
The reason the employees know nothing is that they are taught nothing, or incorrect information because it “sounds good” to the customer. Employees are often moved without notice or reason to a different department. Selling a computer package and a vcr is the same thing, right? I mean, if you can sell a big screen tv, you can obviously answer all the questions someone might have about a router or a cellphone plan, right?
Working at Best Buy sucks, by the way, but the discount was FANTASTIC.
I was a warehouse worker, so I was expected to know everything about every product in the store, from the range of each cordless phone to which songs were on which Norah Jones album. Even though I rarely worked past the open time of the store.
As for demon customers, this must be a new development, as we were told to spend as much time with each customer as possible, even if they didn’t make a sale. We were also told, practically in the same breath, that if we didn’t sell, we’d be fired. I hate that place.
