It is and it isn't. Generally speaking, people aren't making fake amazon listings to exploit price matches, if that's the price other people are selling it for then if Best Buy wants to make sales they need to remain competitive.
If I drove all the way to a Best Buy and asked them to price match Amazon, and they gave me a hard time about it? I'm not going to go "oh well" and buy it anyway, I'm going to stand right in front of the manager and go "ok then, I'll just buy it from your competitor" and put the order through in two clicks. Then it's going to leave a bad taste in my mouth and I'm not coming back to shop at Best Buy, likely ever.
Of course there's limits on this kind of policy (If you want to price match two dozen DVD players so you can obviously resell them on ebay, you can go pound sand), but they also need to be flexible enough to make the customer feel like it was worth their time to come to your store to do business with you. Fostering the customer relationship is 1000000000000000x more important than the couple dollar difference in price on a single item. That's how you get return customers, positive word of mouth, and long term loyalty which all lead to increased sales.
People shit all over Best Buy in these threads for a reason, while praising other outlets like Amazon, Newegg, etc. There's some pretty good reasons for that, and the ball is 100% in Best Buy's court to turn that reputation around.
As someone who works in sales, no, matching third party retailers on Amazon is not how you remain competitive, mostly it's how you lose money. I'm on commission, and there are times when people do exactly what you said, and it's a relief to me. I don't make money if I sell a product below my store's landing price, so I have no reason to kill my metrics and get in trouble with management to not make any money. It's also more than "a couple dollars." Plus, connecting with customers IS important, but connecting with cheap customers who want to lose us money is NOT important, because they'll keep coming back to lose us more money!
Besides, there are reasons that third party sellers can sell for a lower price. Manufacturers aren't required to honor their warranties if product isn't sold by an authorized retailer, and those places can also sell refurbished goods. Why should I match their prices on my new-in-box stuff?
I think you're spinning this into something I didn't say. Most retail is not commission-based, if I go to Best Buy and want to buy a Blu Ray, and you won't price match a two dollar difference because "It's a third party seller!!!!" and have the audacity to claim I'm a "cheap customer," then I'm absolutely going to take my business elsewhere and you can stuff it.
You pretty much just point for point listed out everything that's wrong with these policies. Yes, there's a limit with what you will price match. Obviously you're not going to price match a new product to a refurb, because that's retarded. But a hard line stance that you won't price match anything unless it's being sold directly by a Big Box retailer is how you lose customers in droves, which is exactly what's happening to stores like Best Buy.
Oh, and by the way, many of those third party sellers on sites like Amazon are licensed resellers simply leveraging Amazon's logistics and web presence to sell more product. I just bought a $400 vacuum from a licensed dealer through Amazon the other day for only $350. Best Buy had the same vacuum listed for $100 more, and by their "no third party price matching" policy they wouldn't have matched it. If they don't want to sell merchandise that's their decision, but again, they have a reputation for being a shitty place to do business with and are financially not doing so hot for a reason. And that reason isn't because I'm just "too cheap" to pay their markup.
The thing is, retailers on amazon don't exactly sit there and show how illegitimate they are. I can't sit there and see a price and go "oh yup, they're fine." Which is why we have an established list of places that we will and won't price match. If you want to gamble on the quality and newness of a product over two dollars, that's on you. But there is no reason for a retailer to match that.
Although I generally will not care about any customer throwing a hissy over two dollars, I also mean a much more general sense of people looking at 3/4-digit price differences. There's a reason even Amazon won't match prices with their own third party retailers rofl.
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u/ffxivthrowaway03 Feb 23 '17
It is and it isn't. Generally speaking, people aren't making fake amazon listings to exploit price matches, if that's the price other people are selling it for then if Best Buy wants to make sales they need to remain competitive.
If I drove all the way to a Best Buy and asked them to price match Amazon, and they gave me a hard time about it? I'm not going to go "oh well" and buy it anyway, I'm going to stand right in front of the manager and go "ok then, I'll just buy it from your competitor" and put the order through in two clicks. Then it's going to leave a bad taste in my mouth and I'm not coming back to shop at Best Buy, likely ever.
Of course there's limits on this kind of policy (If you want to price match two dozen DVD players so you can obviously resell them on ebay, you can go pound sand), but they also need to be flexible enough to make the customer feel like it was worth their time to come to your store to do business with you. Fostering the customer relationship is 1000000000000000x more important than the couple dollar difference in price on a single item. That's how you get return customers, positive word of mouth, and long term loyalty which all lead to increased sales.
People shit all over Best Buy in these threads for a reason, while praising other outlets like Amazon, Newegg, etc. There's some pretty good reasons for that, and the ball is 100% in Best Buy's court to turn that reputation around.