Friday, 30 October 2009

PC World and more sharp practice ...

Perhaps I ought to setup a different blog for these posts, illustrating how large companies are running sharp practices to get traffic and customers. I recently won a battle at a Tesco store advertising £9 wine for £3 - I blugeoned the staff into giving me another £9 wine for £3 (you didn't think they would actually have any of the £9 wine in did you? Get real).

However, today I've just heard from PC World that they are still advertising an excellent MP3 player at around half it's retail price - however, yes, you've guessed - they don't have any stock - what a surprise!? Not today, not yesterday, not the day before either - yet the listing is still on their site. I've suggested they give me any version of that player for £14.99, or even if that's not available the larger version, but I'm not holding my breath ...
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3 comments:

Ken said...

An interesting post, it will be fascinating to see what response you get from PC World. I’ve also experienced this tactic from both PC World and Tesco. A few years ago PC World were advertising an excellent deal on laptop computers; great price with a great spec. Not wanting to miss out on such a great deal I went along to the local store and lo and behold, they had none in stock, although they were more than happy to offer me a similar unit, albeit at a higher price!!

Tesco have used this tactic of increasing customer visits to their store recently with the sale of the new FIFA football game. Advertising the great price of £25, a saving of £20 over other retailers, I hurried along to the store and once again found I was disappointed with the lack of stock, being told they had sold the last copy just ten minutes before I arrived. Although initially disappointed, I was surprised to find ten copies of the game located in the storage drawer underneath the display stand… yep, they had ten copies just sitting underneath the display stand ready to be purchased. Discussing this with another member of staff, it turns out they are instructed to only sell a limited number of copies at the reduced price, and then shelve the other copies once the price has risen. Tip: Check the storage located underneath the display stands, these copies are on the shop floor and are available for sale, so if there doesn’t appear to be any copies left, it may be worth a look!!

30 October 2009 at 07:30
David Callaghan said...

And someone's just sent me this about Tesco ...

"I once saw some guy in Tesco, busting a gut at the CS counter cos he had been told the offer was such and such a day, rang to chweck, no such offer, but place where offer was 'ostenswbily' located was replete with tesco's own dog food brand, at a higher price than the purported top brand one that they were discounting. Only slight snag was tha it didn't exist."

30 October 2009 at 09:36
David Callaghan said...

Here is the bit of PC World's response explaining why the advert is still there:
"End of line products normally remains on the website for around 1 month and is used by Customer Services for reference purposes."

I wonder if this washes with the greater public?

1 November 2009 at 06:56

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