Great Thread and great comments. This is why I never listen to the Sales people (no offense to any sales people here). I like to research on my own find the best dollar value and have a local store like Tweeter price match my item and buy from someone I know will stand by their product.
I am not trying to be mean here, but him purchasing that dollar amount in cables from someone else is the salesperson's fault. If the customer would have been qualified more extensively, the salesperson may have been able to sell him a $900 TV and a $220 dvd player and an additional $90 in cables and peripherals (which would have made a much bigger difference than the cables he was sold, which were sold to do that purpose). The customer would have been more satisfied with your store and received better equipment in the end. Customers, and people in general, will spend more money than what they tell you they are willing to spend. IF they can be shown the benefits of the superior product and why they may be necessary.
They really would rather sell more $$ in cables. The markup on theTV and DVD player are barely there. The markup on cables is tremendous.
Back "in the day" when I sold (before botique cables), we made most of our money on phono cartridges. We could afford to cut our margins on the other stuff knowing full well that we could make it up on the cartridge. Also, using their low whosale cost to our advantage, we could offer a cartridge "for only one cent" and mark up the other stuff and still offer an attractive, no haggle system price.
It's all about profit margin and nowadays cables are where it's at.
I guess you are right in that respect Mark. Cables do help out with margins, but $610 worth is quite overboard. I guess you could call me old fashioned but I like to see my customers happy, with better equipment, without selling them a bunch of B.S. I have always taken the no nonsense sales approach, as I cannot willingly tell a customer that they will see huge performance advantages from cables. So far it has been pretty rewarding.
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Do you Believe the Truth or Seek it.
Annunaki
I have always taken the no nonsense sales approach, as I cannot willingly tell a customer that they will see huge performance advantages from cables. So far it has been pretty rewarding.
Best Buy employees don't have that luxury. What they willingly do, is not the same as what they are told to do. Just curious what you do tell your customers about the low end cables you sell, certainly you're not unhappy with expensive peripheral sales should they occur. How do you handle the subject of cables with your customers?
Basically, most of my cable sales are the $30/meter variety. Not too expensive but not too cheap either. And no B.S. marketing and sales tactics. If a customer wants a $100/meter cable I can get that for them. If they want the $6/meter cables I can get them that too. By going with a cable in the $30/meter range one is pretty assured of good construction and oxygen free copper (though even at $6/meter on would be pretty sure of getting an ofc cable, but not the same durable construction of the $30/meter). Some very cheap cables do not employ ofc and over time the copper oxidizes. When the copper oxidizes it can have adverse effects on sound by raising the impedence and inductance of the cable. That is usually how I can steer people into a little better cable. Simply give it to them straight. As far as the high end cables go, if a customer has already bought into the crap, I will give them my opinion and they can still buy the $100/meter cable if they want. It won't bother me.
__________________
Do you Believe the Truth or Seek it.
Annunaki
Think about it this way, even though a cable may cost 5 cents and is sold for $50 they didn't neccesarily make a profit of 49.95 as a store because they have huge operating costs that aren't always apparent to the consumer. The best example I can't think of is how the Cleveland Clinic was so proud that in one year they made a profit of $100 million. Upon further questioning it came out that this was for an operating cost of $10 Billion.
If you like having a store that is fairly well stocked with a diverse number of items and a reasonable return policy then you shouldn't feel so bad about paying a little bit more for some items as opposed to others.
there used to be a website dedicated to bringing down futureshop and best buy. It seems to be down or taken out.
heres the url just incase it pops up again www.futureshopexposed.com
This post wasn't designed to prevent you from shopping from Best Buy or any other electronics store. It was intended to inform people of what to expect, and to provide essential information for avoiding snake oil. So let's not turn this into the steam vent.
Here is a portion of an interview that ecoustics held with Gene. It highlights what I was refering to with regards to the profits made by Best Buy and other cable vendors.
Q:
Why aren’t hardware vendors who design the electronics more vocal about cables?
A:
This is a rather complicated subject that I will try to answer as eloquently as possible without offending anyone. Many of the reputable hardware vendors I have spoken with feel exactly as I do about cables, at least privately. I suspect they aren’t publicly vocal about it because they don’t want to undercut their dealerships. Believe it or not, most dealer’s bread and butter result from cable sales. Cables offer some of the highest profit margins in the industry. It is not uncommon for a dealer to do in excess of $100K/month in revenues for cable sales where they would be lucky to do 1/4th of that in sales and maybe 1/8th in profit margins of say loudspeakers.
You're best bet if buying something over $100 is to look for a real slacker. Just like anywhere, some BB employees are pretty "gung ho" to follow the party line, but others are lazy/laid back kids that just go thru the motions. "No" once works fine for the slackers- they look like they're trying, at least a bit.
My local BB isn't nearly so bad as some must be. Although a few years ago, my brother bought a 55" projection set from them and was hounded about the warranty to the point that he just went off. Something to the effect of "Are you gonna sell me this f**kin' TV or am I gonna drive over to Ultimate Electronics?" According to what I've read, some store managers would rather you not even buy the TV than to get out the door without getting jacked for the gravy (it messes up their "ratio", I hear).
Lastly, I think BB is near criminal in their many techniques developed to screw you out of getting the service you paid for on your PSP. Several times in the past I've taken something in for service repeatedly only to have it returned to me STILL NON-FUNCTIONAL, and eventually had them claim I abused the item when they couldn't figure out how to fix it. The end result is that under no circumstance that I can think of would I ever buy anything electronic from them that I could buy elsewhere (with the exception perhaps of a printer or game console).
That said, I do spend a couple grand per year at BB, mostly on software (movies, games & music). You gotta watch your arse.
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You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. - Naguib Mahfouz
By Peter Finn Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, February 28, 1997;
Page A01
There are comparison shoppers.
And then there's Ronald Kahlow.
Kahlow, 54, wanted a TV set. So he created a program on his laptop
computer that would let him record the model number and price of every
television in a string of stores near his Reston home.
First stop: Best Buy.
And that's where things started to get, um, bizarre. Kahlow, a computer
jock who owns a small software company, was arrested twice and led away
in handcuffs when he refused to stop recording TV prices. In court, he
read a poem by Robert F. Kennedy to the judge, who declared him not
guilty of trespass. The judge, Donald P. McDonough, compared Kahlow to
the civil rights demonstrators of the 1960s.
Now Kahlow is suing Best Buy for $90,000.
All for a good deal on a TV.
Best Buy officials said the company, which is based in Minneapolis, has
an unwritten policy not to allow anyone to record prices in its
stores.
"For competitive reasons, we ask that pricing not be written down,"
said spokeswoman Laurie Bauer. "It's a disruption of other customers.
[The policy is] so other customers will not feel threatened or
disrupted."
Bauer declined to discuss either the trespassing case brought against
Kahlow or his civil suit.
It all started in July. Looking like a gunslinger with a laptop, Kahlow
sauntered into Best Buy in Reston with his computer strapped around his
waist. He said he was leaning toward a big screen model but was
pricing everything. Kahlow said he was keying in the information when
store employees asked him to stop. Kahlow said he explained what he was
doing and refused to stop.
According to court testimony, Best Buy employees stood in front of
Kahlow and pulled the tags off every television he had not yet priced.
The store also called the police, who asked Kahlow to leave. He refused
and was arrested on a trespassing charge.
The next day, Kahlow came backarmed with pad and paper.
He started taking down prices again. The police were called again.
Kahlow was arrested again.
"I felt very intimidated," Kahlow said. "Each step of the way, I felt
more and more furious. I mean, come on, I'm a consumer. I was totally
in the right. When something is plumb wrong, you have to stand up."
Retail analyst Ken Gassman, who secretly records prices all the time to
compare different companies, said some stores do throw out professional
shoppersif they can detect them. But, Gassman said, Best Buy's
competitors and price analysts such as him never would be as obvious as
Kahlow.
"Is Best Buy out of its mind?" asked Gassman, of Davenport and Co., a
brokerage house in Richmond. "This is so anti-consumer, it's
unbelievable. And it raises the question about whether they are the
lowest priced. . . . If you call yourself Best Buy and you are the best
buy, then why would you worry about comparison shopping?"
One of Best Buy's main competitors said it doesn't proscribe comparison
shopping. "As long as someone is not disruptive, we have no policy"
against it, said Morgan Stewart, a spokesman for Richmond-based Circuit
City.
It isn't the only one. "Customers can come in and take down any price
they want," said Brian Dowling, a spokesman for Safeway Stores Inc.
"In fact, it's something our customers and our competitors do all the
time."
"Someone wants to price, we tell them to enjoy themselves," said Barry
Scher, a spokesman for Giant Food Inc.
After his arrest, Kahlow said he priced TVs at several other
electronics retailers, including Circuit City. In each instance, he
said, he was asked what he was doing but was allowed to continue when
he explained he was comparing prices before deciding where to buy a
TV.
A month after his misadventure at Best Buy, Kahlow stood before
McDonough in Fairfax County General District Court.
Best Buy argued that Kahlow was interrupting other sales.
A story regarding a Best Buy pricing snafu has been circling the Web for several weeks now. Usually stories like this equate to some irate individuals with a loud voice getting wide attention. However, this time it's different. Some Best Buy managers are now having people arrested when they show up to claim their Internet order. We covered the original story in February, and since that time there have been new developments.
To review, in February a price listed on Best Buy's website and on many in-store price tags read "VisionTek GeForce4 Ti4600 for Special Pre-Order Price of $129.00 ... the savings is a $200.00 Value". More than 2,000 consumers placed orders at that price on Best Buy's website. Originally, the number was estimated to be around 1,400; it is now confirmed that more than 2,000 people have valid orders, some with more than one card per receipt.
Many consumers are showing up at Best Buy these days to inquire about their order and find out why it was never filled and why they never received it. When they do so, some of them are being arrested for criminal fraud. It has come to pass in recent days that several Best Buy managers are having people arrested when they show up to claim their order. Even individuals holding valid receipts with legitimate grievances are being escorted away by police.
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