05-06-2008, 04:20 PM
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#5 of 50 
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Brian
Member
Location: Burlington, MA
Join Date: Jun 2006
Local Time: 08:38 PM
Local Date: 10-12-2008
Posts: 433
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Re: Silly Best Buy price match "Policy"?
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Originally Posted by troy evans
Customer service is becoming a dinosaur sadly. It's not surprising internet business and downloads are taking off.
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I think you have that backwards: Customer service became a dinosaur because of Internet businesses taking off. Back when B&M electronics stores could count on getting the sale they help foster by having the electronic device available for sale, to see how it will work, etc., they had a vested interest in providing decent service. Then, when more and more people would go into the store, look at the electronic device, extract whatever insights they could out of the (then still) expert and helpful sales staff, only to make the purchase for X% less online, it drove the B&M business to reduce its costs to remain as profitable as possible. So the customer behavior I alluded to drove the B&M stores to provide lesser service (at lesser cost), so now we have uniformly inexpert and unhelpful sales staff.
With regard to CDs, I don't doubt that it is easier for them (or perhaps more uniformly legal nationwide) to have one price match policy, rather than separate policies for CDs and for everything else. Indeed, I suppose (assuming it was legal) they could have a separate price match policy for lower priced items, but that would simply open the door to NOT price matching lower priced items. What's the advantage, in terms of actual profit, from price matching CDs? I bet diddly-squat, and they only do so because they have a uniform policy.
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