Tis the season... To piss off your customers

Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday. I wanted to get her a Zen Vision M 30 gig MP3 player. I went to a couple of stores including Best Buy and Ultimate Electronics. The set price on these is $249.00

Then at the last minute I got on line and checked Froogle.com, Google’s price shopping network. Still, everything was $249.00 On a whim, I checked Wal-Mart. They had it for only $199.00.

I'm not real big on shopping at the Worlds largest big box to buy anything but this was a great deal. $50.00 off and I could just run to the store to get it in time for the dinner/gift presentation in a couple of hours.

I jumped in the car and ran to the local Wally World. After searching around for a while I found a woman in the electronics department. She advised me that they did not have the player in the preferred pink. Ah so what. It’s not a car so my daughter won't mind.

But guess what.  I could not get the $50.00 lower price because it was only available on line for that price. You have got to be kidding.

The woman explained that it is because they make up for it in shipping. She opened a browser and we went to Wally world online and there it was. $199.00 available in Pink and $5.71 shipping to the store where I would have to return to pick it up.

At this point the store clerk said “well that’s ridicules” and went to find the store manager. Five minutes later she returned only to tell me that the manager said it is against policy to price match with themselves. If I found it at another store they would price match but not against their own site.

This is a classic way to piss off a customer and to loose them from shopping online or off line. I don’t go to Wal-Mart more than once or twice a year and that may have just ended.