The spouse and I went to Macy’s for their Labor Day sale because we needed some new luggage. We found a couple of bags we liked and that were on sale. They were in stock, so we prepared to pay for them and take them home. However, the saleswoman told us that we could save an additional 25% on our purchase if we waited two weeks to pick them up.
Remember: the bags were in stock. They didn’t have to order them, or even get them from another store. They were right there in front of us. But we didn’t need them right away and didn’t want to miss out on the 25% savings, so we said sure, we’ll wait.
My question is, though: why? I asked them about it and they said something about sitting on our money (maybe she was joking), but that doesn’t make sense: they’d still have our money if they let us take the bags right away, and it’s not like they’re going to sell them to somebody else. She told us that those very bags would go back into their storage, where they’d be waiting for us when we came to get them.
Yeah, I guess that makes sense, though I do recall that the saleswoman told us that they were going to take the exact two bags and put them in storage for us. So either she was lying to us or there’s some other reason.
Buying an anniversary present from Macy’s they told me I could get it the next day at a sale price. However my anniversary was that day*. A manager was called and he approved the sale price a day early. He probably wouldn’t have done that two weeks ahead of time.
*When else would I be shopping for an anniversary present?
I think they were just doing you a favor. The clerk doesn’t have authorization to give the discount beforehand, and the store doesn’t want you getting pissed off when you discover that the item you just bought went on sale.
There is also the possibility that they have to move a certain amount to meet a quota, and they had already met that quota for this period. By pushing your actual purchase out, even if sold at a discount, the sale would come under a different quota period.
I’d suspect this. If you didn’t insist that you were going to get the very set you were having put on layaway, then I’d think it might have to do with stock flow, not having enough to cover the current sale, and not wanting to give out rain checks (because it looks like bait and switch, even if it is an honest running out of something), so they were getting as many people as they could to wait, with the promise of an additional discount.
There’s a third possibility, though, which is that a lot of businesses have been advertising their layaway services on TV and in-store, maybe as a way to get more impulse business, because it’s their main edge over the internet, and places that didn’t have layaway have been adding the service, while other places have been streamlining it, or making it more user-friendly. Perhaps stores are trying to get people to used it now, with the promise of a discount, just to plant the idea that it exists in people’s heads, so they’ll think about it when they do holiday shopping.
Certainly that’s possible, but I doubt it for something like a department store. One sale like that is small potatoes to a Macy’s. I’m still going with the fact that the store’s computers won’t process the sale price until that date is reached.
They were out of stock, weren’t going to get more - if they were selling the display items, they were out of stock.
I’d go back and look at the area during the 2 weeks: are they still on display? If so: they wanted the items for display - it is hard to sell something the buyer (especially at high price stores) can’t see and touch.
Yes, it would be worth 25% to have those on display during the sales event
That’s the thing, though–they weren’t going to sell us the display items. The saleslady actually went to the back and found that they had them in stock, and brought them out to show us.
I’m thinking the quota thing sounds the most plausible, though they were already having a big sale for Labor Day weekend…why would they have another (additional) sale two weeks later? We not only got the Labor Day Weekend sale price, but an additional 25% off tacked on for waiting two weeks.
This is one gimmick of Macy’s that I just hate: the presale. The idea is that they will sell the stuff, but the sale doesn’t start until (two days, two weeks) later, but you can buy it now, on the sale price, so you can be sure they have it, and then come back and get it on the appropriate date. So fun.
I think this idea is demented. As a Macy’s sales person I know I’ve had people walk out after they hear the sale price is only good if you buy it now and pick it up days later. I’ll bet they went somewhere else and bought it.
As a buyer, that is exactly what I always did. Even when I was a Macy’s employee (and hence got an even further discount) it was always possible to find what I wanted someplace else, same price (even with employee discount–same price) and take it right home. The exception was the makeup (I could find it, but no discount).
Also as a sales associate I find these things a nightmare even when people buy–and they do buy, make no mistake. A lot of people walk away, but a lot of them go crazy. “Oh, 25%, all right!” And then you bag all the stuff up and label it so you can find it two weeks later when they come back for it and then you stack it up in the appropriate stockroom, which probably doesn’t have all that much space to begin with and now that there are presales going on in various departments, it’s really cramped. But hey, at least you made your sales goal for the day. So when they come back two weeks later, and it takes you 15 minutes to find the right bag, and then they decide they don’t want half the stuff now they’ve had time to think about it–okay, well, that day you will not make your sales goal.
They do this all the time. Year-round. But it’s particularly bad starting around October when they cram tons of new merchandise all over the store and it becomes a real challenge to wedge yourself into the stockroom let alone actually find stuff. (And god help you if you were looking for something else in that stockroom, like…uh, stock, because it’s buried behind all the presale packages.)
Oh, somebody once told me a theory, which is this: In order to say an item is now XX% off it has to be offered for sale at the full price for a certain number of weeks. The whole presale game might be to offer the item at the full price for a long enough time to make the discounted price legit, because during the presale the item is actually full price if you buy it right now and only on sale once the sale starts, a day or a week or two in the future.
Considering the presales generate a whole shitload of paperwork (putting in the right presale code, making sure the code actually includes the discount, printing three copies of the receipt so you can put one on the inside of the bag, one on the outside of the bag, and give one to the customer, writing it all down in a book including the customer’s name and phone number, then going back to the book when they come back later, with their receipt of course [because nobody ever loses a receipt, right?] so you can cross the name off, calling up the people who forgot they had bought stuff) along with the people who find something better in the meantime or just get buyer’s remorse, I have to wonder how much good this presale stuff is actually doing for the store. But Macy’s stays in business when so many others have fallen so I guess it works out okay.