When I worked for Best Buy, price matches were pretty much the bane of my existence. The rules were pretty clear, and we followed them. The customers never did, of course. Here's how it goes:
"Simply bring in proof of a local retail competitor's price on the same available brand and model, [excluding] competitors' free offers, limited quantity items, open-box, clearance or closeout products, mail-in incentives, financing or bundle offers."
So, what parts got ignored? Almost all of them.
"Bring in proof" -- Most people didn't. We'd usually work with them, and either call or look up pricing on their website, but don't expect it on a Saturday afternoon when there's 12 other people waiting impatiently.
"local" -- So, first off, that excludes every internet-only business (Amazon, NewEgg, etc), and internet-only prices. It also excludes store that aren't, well...local. I'm in central New Jersey. We're not going to match a price on a retailer in Manhattan. We wouldn't even match retailers an hour north of here -- there's another Best Buy that's closer, that location will match them.
"competitor" -- Retail stores don't, generally speaking, consider warehouse club membership stores to be competitors. So no, we won't match Costco. (We kept joking that, sure, we'd match the $30 difference, but there'll be a $45 'membership fee'.)
"same [...] brand and model" -- Yes, 6th Avenue has the Toshiba 46HM85 for $500 less. It's last year's model. We have the 46HM95 now, and we're not marking it down to last year's model's price. No, I don't care that the only discernable difference is the model number.
"available" -- If you can't buy it there for the advertised price, you can't buy it here at that price either. And yes, if the difference was significant enough, we'd call and check.
"free offers" and "limited quantity" -- Duh. (See also, "available")
"open-box, clearance, or closeout" -- Guaranteed to be a below-cost price. Besides, chances are we either have it on clearance too, or if we don't, it's because, well, it's not on clearance here. We'd have to be dumb to allow it, especially open-box pricing, which is only valid on that one specific individual item anyway.
"mail-in incentives" -- Usually, these are being offered by the individual manufacturer anyway. If it's not through our store, we can't just make up a slip for you to mail in.
"financing" -- Best Buy doesn't own its own bank, so we can't just ask them to "pretty please" change the financing offers just for you.
Seems like a long list, I know, but it's not so draconican. We'd match a whole lot more offers than we'd turn away, and the rules were pretty flexible too. If the internet-only price you found is $20 less on that $300 camera, we'll probably match it anway, and especially if you're buying other stuff with it.
Personally, I always thought (and still do think) that the rules are pretty reasonable. Yeah, some other retailers will match a price on nothing but a promise, but some businesses like to protect themselves a little.
"You never know what is allowed and what isn't. Sometimes you can use a coupon with a pricematch, sometimes you can't, sometimes the coupon price is subtracted from the pricematch, sometimes the after rebate price is used"
Official line is that coupons are not valid when combined with any other offer, which includes price matches. When coupons are used, the discount is taken off the price paid at the register. But again, it's up to management's discretion, and with every store having something like 10 managers, it's a toss-up.
First of all, as has been pointed out, the interest on $30 over 6 weeks is approximately nothing. If they raised the selling price of the item by $1, they'd make more than they do off the interest.
More importantly, though, this isn't the retailer's money anyway. Next time you're in a Best Buy, look at the rebates, and you'll find that pretty much all of the store rebates are instant -- they come off the price right at the register.
The manufacturer's rebates are paid for by the manufacturer, not the store. See, the idea here is that Best Buy already paid the manufacturer for the goods. Let's use a laptop computer as an example. If their normal selling price is $1149, Best Buy probably paid $1049 for it. So if the manufacturer wants them to go on sales for $899, they can't just nicely ask Best Buy to take a $150 loss on every unit, or deal with refunding Best Buy.
So, rebates. Best Buy doesn't have to deal with the extra accounting hassle, you get your laptop for less money, and the manufacturer gets to sell more units. And probably more importantly, they get to count the rebate checks in their marketing and promotions budget, meaning it doesn't hit their revenue numbers. Creative accounting at work.
"Depending on where you are and what stores are around, driving 50 miles out of your way might actually save you a lot of money [...]"
Fifty miles!? Holy shit, dude. You go right ahead and drive over an hour to get to the grocery store, and an hour back again. How much is your time worth?
I have an Aldi, PathMark, Stop & Shop, A&P, and ShopRite all within reasonable distance of me. Out of those, only the Aldi doesn't have a discount card, but they're a discount grocer. I get what I can there, but they close early, and don't carry everything. (Only last month did they start carrying non-frozen meat, for example.)
And if I really wanted to drive, the only other chains within reasonable distance are FoodTown (has a club card), Wegman's (has a club card, and is slightly more pricey than the others anyway), and Whole Foods, which is just more expensive regardless.
Actually, I've been using refilled ink cartridges in my HP printer (5550) for a while now. The printer does keep track of a serial number or something, so you can't just refill the same cart and use it again (the printer still thinks its empty). But a refilled cart that hasn't been in your printer yet is perfectly fine.
The owner of the store near me said, actually, that HP is one of the few companies to publicly state that they have no problem with companies that refill or remanufacture cartridges. Unlike Lexmark and others that are trying to actively shut down the market.
Why do driod have to talk amongst each other? They are ROBOTS, couldn't they, you know, wifi it or soemthing?
I could go into all sorts of reasons why it really is plausible, but honestly, it's a freakin' movie. If you're looking for that sort of accuracy, I suggest you stay away from SciFi (note that "Fi" is short for "Fiction" btw) and simply stick to documentaries.
A passport isn't required, but you do need to have a government-issued photo ID, and your birth certificate instead. However, over the next three years these requirements will be tightened, and by the end of 2007, even travel to Canada will require a valid passport.
It's *far* safer to get a plain ATM card, plus a credit card from the same bank.
You're absolutely right, of course. Some people seem to be irrationally afraid of credit cards, as if they're inherently evil. (I think these people really just believe they don't have the self control to stay fiscally responsible with one.) For these people, it's at least nice to know there are some protections with a check card.
You don't have to enter your PIN for check card purchases, it's processed -- from the store's point of view -- just like a credit card. Besides, do you really think punching in 4-6 digits on a keypad is less convenient than having to sign a credit slip?
Also, check cards (at least Visa ones) provide the same protections as any other credit card. The only difference is that funds are withdrawn from your checking account, instead of adding to a negative balance elsewhere, which you're only going to pay off with money from your checking account anyway.
If you buy the store-brand merchadise at Best Buy (all that 'Digital Research' shit, for instance)
I know it's not really relevant, but... just because you've never heard the name, doesn't mean it's a store brand. Digital Research products are sold at Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, and plenty of other retailers.
If you want to stay away from store brands (and in Best Buy's case, I reccomend it), watch out for Dynex and Basix.
So far it's perfect, but then, I just bought it a couple weeks ago, and haven't even gone through one set of ink carts yet. I work at a store that sells them, though, and even the ones there (which print a lot of sample pages, and have gone through numerous carts) still seem to be aligning properly.
Um, dude... the sentence you quoted a couple posts ago rather clearly states that the measuring apparatus is similar to the ones used for the WTC rubble. It does not say that the robot is what was used, or that it was an exact match.
...measuring apparatus on the robot, similar to those used to search for World Trade Center survivors, found the block was only 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) thick...
I work for a retailer -- Best Buy -- which sells a large volume of HP and Compaq products. I have long been a fan of Hewlett Packard, but some recent news is troubling me.
Kent Ferson's reaction to Phased's posting of the security vulnerability in Tru64 was nothing short of shockingly irresponsible.
Not only am I disturbed that there was no statement of any intent to fix the security hole, but I am shocked at the threat of a lawsuit under the DMCA. You should be grateful that the hole was brought to your attention before it became a widespread problem, not to mention that had you fixed it in a timely manner (as the hole was revealed to you by SnoSoft last year), this would never have been a problem.
This reaction tells me that not only is HP/Compaq concerned more with their image than with ensuring the quality of their products, but that "The New HP" would rather abuse copyright law by "shooting the messenger" than issue a responsible statement, and repair an error before it becomes a problem.
I'll be waiting in the next few days for a press release or some other statement denouncing Mr. Ferson's actions, and showing that HP has plans to repair the hole in Tru64. Until this happens, I'm not sure I'll be able to reccomend that anyone give their money to Hewlett Packard.
However, in many modern countries (perhaps yours excluded) power is generated using modern techniques that are impervious to all but the most severe weather, and the transmission lines are underground
Are you some kind of idiot or something? That's not a flame, that's a serious question.
You obviously have never been on the eastern side of the USA, where the power grids were built before anyone thought to put them underground, and since the cost to bury them would be prohibitive, the power companies don't bother.
However, even that isn't an excuse, as above ground power lines can even be seen in Seattle (evidence: 1, 2), Salem, Oregon (1, 2), and Los Angeles (1, 2).
(Note: Most of those links aren't direct evidence, however there would be no need to mention staying away from downed power lines if they're all buried.)
What's on your Intranet? I mean, is it stuff that relates to your job (like looking up product information for a customer)? I guess that could be pretty useful.
It's broken up into a few different sections/sites. RetailZone has quite a bit of product information, very useful for people who want to know weird things like the bus speed of the eMachine they're buying. (Anyone who knows what "bus speed" means shouldn't be buying an eMachine.) It also has a message board of sorts that's not too active, but sometimes you can find good ideas being traded around there. You can also look up other stores' inventory here.
TagZone has information relating more to the job than the products -- current trends in sales, planograms (the diagrams that show where all the products are supposed to go), that sort of stuff.
And in the past couple months, they computerized the Raincheck system, so that's in there too.
Those are the main sites, but there's also the Employee Self-Help site, for reviewing and changing personal information (if your address changes, or you choose a different health plan, etc), the e-Learning site for the lame computer-based training sessions they make us do, and they're phasing it out, but you can also get to the "green screen" from there (telnet session to a mainframe somewhere, no idea what OS it runs though, as it's not really "telnet"... the server interface is entirely custom). The Greenscreen's mostly used for looking up information on product availability.
Best Buy uses Windows NT 4 for ALL there POS systems in the company (over 500 US stores). Rarely do they experience problems.
Heh, you obviously don't work there. I once managed to crash a POS by swiping a customer's credit card through the reader on the keyboard when it should have been swiped through the one facing the customer (same pad you sign on). And it wasn't just a fluke, because I could recreate it.
So admittedly they don't crash often, but when they do, it's especially annoying because the P166's take about two minutes to boot, and then the POS application takes about five minutes to load. "Oops... sorry sir, the computer crashed. Let me take you over to the next register..."
Why on earth would anyone want office or 'net access on a POS system?
Well, at BestBuy (yeah, I work there) our POS systems (which definitely have a dual meaning there) also house the "employee toolkit" -- a collection of intranet web pages for employee use. (They run NT4, the POS software appears to be custom-made for BestBuy as I haven't seen anything like it anywhere else.)
Why not just find a real flight simulator instead of going to all that trouble?
Why build your own computer, when you can buy a perfectly good pre-assembled one? Why build your own book case, when you can go down to OfficeMax and buy one? Why bother restoring a junky car, why not buy one that works fine to begin with?
I'm getting really sick of the notion on slashdot that everything can be both cheap and perform spectacularly
Eh? Excuse me, but "cheap" and "cost-effective" are not the same...they're almost opposites. "Cheap" to me means "spend the least amount of money possible, usually sacrificing quality."
"Cost-effective," on the other hand... well, I can't think of how to shorten it into a similar quip (it's 3:30am, gimme a break). But to me, that means getting the best price/performance ratio. There does exist a point where purchasing a higher quality just doesn't matter, because the differences can't be heard or felt. So in this situation, the "cost effective" solution would be not what's cheapest, and not necessarily the highest quality on the market, but rather the solution that gets the job done for the least amount of money.
6. Good backups are essential. Sooner or later, some idiot will remove a key file at 6PM Friday, only to be noticed at 6AM Monday (or worse, not until the first of the month when you do a large monthly billing run.)
It's not always "some idiot" that removes files.
Where I work, we do our payroll in-house. A couple weeks ago, we were trying to transmit the direct-deposit info to the bank, and it wasn't working. Well, it's probably our fault for keeping this in what's supposed to be a "temporary" location (like a/tmp for this specific application), but it turns out that, when that area was cleaned out to free up some disk space, the file that contains our user/password for the bank's system was deleted. Fortunately, I was able to pull it off a backup tape.
And then a few days later, we couldn't change vendor information, because the latest update for our accounting software was missing that file.
Slashdot Mirror
When I worked for Best Buy, price matches were pretty much the bane of my existence. The rules were pretty clear, and we followed them. The customers never did, of course. Here's how it goes:
"Simply bring in proof of a local retail competitor's price on the same available brand and model, [excluding] competitors' free offers, limited quantity items, open-box, clearance or closeout products, mail-in incentives, financing or bundle offers."
So, what parts got ignored? Almost all of them.
Seems like a long list, I know, but it's not so draconican. We'd match a whole lot more offers than we'd turn away, and the rules were pretty flexible too. If the internet-only price you found is $20 less on that $300 camera, we'll probably match it anway, and especially if you're buying other stuff with it.
Personally, I always thought (and still do think) that the rules are pretty reasonable. Yeah, some other retailers will match a price on nothing but a promise, but some businesses like to protect themselves a little.
Official line is that coupons are not valid when combined with any other offer, which includes price matches. When coupons are used, the discount is taken off the price paid at the register. But again, it's up to management's discretion, and with every store having something like 10 managers, it's a toss-up.
First of all, as has been pointed out, the interest on $30 over 6 weeks is approximately nothing. If they raised the selling price of the item by $1, they'd make more than they do off the interest.
More importantly, though, this isn't the retailer's money anyway. Next time you're in a Best Buy, look at the rebates, and you'll find that pretty much all of the store rebates are instant -- they come off the price right at the register.
The manufacturer's rebates are paid for by the manufacturer, not the store. See, the idea here is that Best Buy already paid the manufacturer for the goods. Let's use a laptop computer as an example. If their normal selling price is $1149, Best Buy probably paid $1049 for it. So if the manufacturer wants them to go on sales for $899, they can't just nicely ask Best Buy to take a $150 loss on every unit, or deal with refunding Best Buy.
So, rebates. Best Buy doesn't have to deal with the extra accounting hassle, you get your laptop for less money, and the manufacturer gets to sell more units. And probably more importantly, they get to count the rebate checks in their marketing and promotions budget, meaning it doesn't hit their revenue numbers. Creative accounting at work.
Fifty miles!? Holy shit, dude. You go right ahead and drive over an hour to get to the grocery store, and an hour back again. How much is your time worth?
I have an Aldi, PathMark, Stop & Shop, A&P, and ShopRite all within reasonable distance of me. Out of those, only the Aldi doesn't have a discount card, but they're a discount grocer. I get what I can there, but they close early, and don't carry everything. (Only last month did they start carrying non-frozen meat, for example.)
And if I really wanted to drive, the only other chains within reasonable distance are FoodTown (has a club card), Wegman's (has a club card, and is slightly more pricey than the others anyway), and Whole Foods, which is just more expensive regardless.
Actually, I've been using refilled ink cartridges in my HP printer (5550) for a while now. The printer does keep track of a serial number or something, so you can't just refill the same cart and use it again (the printer still thinks its empty). But a refilled cart that hasn't been in your printer yet is perfectly fine.
http://www.cartridgeworldusa.com/
The owner of the store near me said, actually, that HP is one of the few companies to publicly state that they have no problem with companies that refill or remanufacture cartridges. Unlike Lexmark and others that are trying to actively shut down the market.
I could go into all sorts of reasons why it really is plausible, but honestly, it's a freakin' movie. If you're looking for that sort of accuracy, I suggest you stay away from SciFi (note that "Fi" is short for "Fiction" btw) and simply stick to documentaries.
A passport isn't required, but you do need to have a government-issued photo ID, and your birth certificate instead. However, over the next three years these requirements will be tightened, and by the end of 2007, even travel to Canada will require a valid passport.
You don't have to enter your PIN for check card purchases, it's processed -- from the store's point of view -- just like a credit card. Besides, do you really think punching in 4-6 digits on a keypad is less convenient than having to sign a credit slip?
Also, check cards (at least Visa ones) provide the same protections as any other credit card. The only difference is that funds are withdrawn from your checking account, instead of adding to a negative balance elsewhere, which you're only going to pay off with money from your checking account anyway.
I know it's not really relevant, but... just because you've never heard the name, doesn't mean it's a store brand. Digital Research products are sold at Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, and plenty of other retailers.
If you want to stay away from store brands (and in Best Buy's case, I reccomend it), watch out for Dynex and Basix.
Ahh, remembered to log in this time. Anyway.
So far it's perfect, but then, I just bought it a couple weeks ago, and haven't even gone through one set of ink carts yet. I work at a store that sells them, though, and even the ones there (which print a lot of sample pages, and have gone through numerous carts) still seem to be aligning properly.
- The Hank Files -- Playstation, the SNES CD-ROM
- Console Database has the full story, with pictures.
And there are many, many more sites out there in full agreement. My search terms, btw, were: snes playstation cd "add on"No... I don't. Those actions were the decision of management at that particular location, and in no way reflect any kind of company policy.
In fact, a couple kids came into my store a couple weeks ago looking for a GF4 for $129, and after a brief chat with a manager, they got it.
Mrs Fiorina,
I work for a retailer -- Best Buy -- which sells a large volume of HP and Compaq products. I have long been a fan of Hewlett Packard, but some recent news is troubling me.
Kent Ferson's reaction to Phased's posting of the security vulnerability in Tru64 was nothing short of shockingly irresponsible.
Not only am I disturbed that there was no statement of any intent to fix the security hole, but I am shocked at the threat of a lawsuit under the DMCA. You should be grateful that the hole was brought to your attention before it became a widespread problem, not to mention that had you fixed it in a timely manner (as the hole was revealed to you by SnoSoft last year), this would never have been a problem.
This reaction tells me that not only is HP/Compaq concerned more with their image than with ensuring the quality of their products, but that "The New HP" would rather abuse copyright law by "shooting the messenger" than issue a responsible statement, and repair an error before it becomes a problem.
I'll be waiting in the next few days for a press release or some other statement denouncing Mr. Ferson's actions, and showing that HP has plans to repair the hole in Tru64. Until this happens, I'm not sure I'll be able to reccomend that anyone give their money to Hewlett Packard.
Looking forward to your response.
[Name Removed]
Are you some kind of idiot or something? That's not a flame, that's a serious question.
You obviously have never been on the eastern side of the USA, where the power grids were built before anyone thought to put them underground, and since the cost to bury them would be prohibitive, the power companies don't bother.
However, even that isn't an excuse, as above ground power lines can even be seen in Seattle (evidence: 1, 2), Salem, Oregon (1, 2), and Los Angeles (1, 2).
(Note: Most of those links aren't direct evidence, however there would be no need to mention staying away from downed power lines if they're all buried.)
It's broken up into a few different sections/sites. RetailZone has quite a bit of product information, very useful for people who want to know weird things like the bus speed of the eMachine they're buying. (Anyone who knows what "bus speed" means shouldn't be buying an eMachine.) It also has a message board of sorts that's not too active, but sometimes you can find good ideas being traded around there. You can also look up other stores' inventory here.
TagZone has information relating more to the job than the products -- current trends in sales, planograms (the diagrams that show where all the products are supposed to go), that sort of stuff.
And in the past couple months, they computerized the Raincheck system, so that's in there too.
Those are the main sites, but there's also the Employee Self-Help site, for reviewing and changing personal information (if your address changes, or you choose a different health plan, etc), the e-Learning site for the lame computer-based training sessions they make us do, and they're phasing it out, but you can also get to the "green screen" from there (telnet session to a mainframe somewhere, no idea what OS it runs though, as it's not really "telnet"... the server interface is entirely custom). The Greenscreen's mostly used for looking up information on product availability.
So yeah, it's pretty useful.
Heh, you obviously don't work there. I once managed to crash a POS by swiping a customer's credit card through the reader on the keyboard when it should have been swiped through the one facing the customer (same pad you sign on). And it wasn't just a fluke, because I could recreate it.
So admittedly they don't crash often, but when they do, it's especially annoying because the P166's take about two minutes to boot, and then the POS application takes about five minutes to load. "Oops... sorry sir, the computer crashed. Let me take you over to the next register..."
Why build your own computer, when you can buy a perfectly good pre-assembled one? Why build your own book case, when you can go down to OfficeMax and buy one? Why bother restoring a junky car, why not buy one that works fine to begin with?
The answers are all roughly the same...
AOL offers usenet access, but it's defintely not NNTP. You need to use their crappy, built-in client to access usenet groups.
A little nit-picky, but accurate.
Eh? Excuse me, but "cheap" and "cost-effective" are not the same...they're almost opposites. "Cheap" to me means "spend the least amount of money possible, usually sacrificing quality."
"Cost-effective," on the other hand... well, I can't think of how to shorten it into a similar quip (it's 3:30am, gimme a break). But to me, that means getting the best price/performance ratio. There does exist a point where purchasing a higher quality just doesn't matter, because the differences can't be heard or felt. So in this situation, the "cost effective" solution would be not what's cheapest, and not necessarily the highest quality on the market, but rather the solution that gets the job done for the least amount of money.
Cost-effectiveness is a good thing.
It's not always "some idiot" that removes files.
Where I work, we do our payroll in-house. A couple weeks ago, we were trying to transmit the direct-deposit info to the bank, and it wasn't working. Well, it's probably our fault for keeping this in what's supposed to be a "temporary" location (like a /tmp for this specific application), but it turns out that, when that area was cleaned out to free up some disk space, the file that contains our user/password for the bank's system was deleted. Fortunately, I was able to pull it off a backup tape.
And then a few days later, we couldn't change vendor information, because the latest update for our accounting software was missing that file.
It's bad enough that I have to pay to send them back...as if Verizon couldn't afford return postage for their customers.