Against my better judgement, I went to Fry’s Electronics in Palo Alto yesterday to pick up an external hard drive.
1. The store is filthy.
2. The interior hasn’t been refreshed since they opened 30 years ago
3. They cut their shelf heights by half a couple years ago
4. A lot of product spots,on shelves and racks are devoid of product. Not restocking inventory is always a sign of trouble in retail
I found a Harmony universal remote I wanted as well as a $50 1TB drive. The Harmony remote didn’t have a price tag and there was no price on the shelf, but I knew it was being sold for $50 off the normal price online of $350.
A nice young guy on the store floor took the product, entered it into the computer and gave me a big sheet of paper which indicates he gets the commission. That approach is so outdated — printing paper, giving it to the customer, and making him wait.
Got to checkout. There are about 40 checkout stations these days, but only 2 or 3 are open. The Harmony rang up at full price, $350. I told her it should be $300 as it is everywhere else. They have an Internet price match policy and I found a store online selling it for $272. She said “No, we don’t match them. We only match this list.” which had Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart. She couldn’t look up the price — I was supposed to do that for her on my phone. I said “Forget it, I don’t want the Harmony. I’ll just take the drive.”
Her response was “You can’t do that. The salesman already printed the paper for his commission You should have told him about the discount first before he printed the paper. You cannot take that product off your purchase.”
At this point I was boiling mad, said “Forget it! I’m going to Amazon where I should have started!” and walked out with nothing.
Moral: brick & mortar deserves to die.
Amazon is eating everybody. I keep thinking retail will do something to arrest the decline, but it just gets worse and worse each passing year.
Hah you’re as bad as me. Awhile back my DVD player on our boat stopped working so the granddaughter, a friend, and I took off to Walmart. Picked up a cheap DVD player and a few movies that were on sale. Got to the register and one of the movies wouldn’t ring up. The gal actually looked at me and said.....there’s no price on this so I can’t sell it to you. I said.....are you really too lazy to call someone to do a price check? Instead you just tell me you can’t sell it? Then I don’t want any of it.......and we walked out.
Fry’s was always 1 step above flea market... even in its heyday.