Category: Business

Recently I bought a Canon camera from Costco. (It’s an Elph 110 HS, and so far I’m quite happy with it.) I bought the Canon after buying and returning a Nikon to the store; I didn’t like the Nikon’s video abilities.

After my experience with the return, I thought I’d try to avoid that with the second purchase. Returns are costly for me (as I have to box up the item and drive it back), costly for the store (which at a minimum has to process the return), and costly for the producer, which has to repackage or perhaps eat the item.

So I asked the Costco team to unhook the display camera from the board to which it had been wired (for security), give me the battery and flash card, and let me play around with it for a while. The staff was happy (or at least willing) to accommodate my strange request.

So I shot some stills, took some video, then uploaded that content to my laptop (which I’d brought along for the purpose) to check out the results. I bought the camera much more confident I’d be happy with it. (It has only a 5x zoom, but, while I’d wanted more, I’d also read numerous reviews claiming that longer zooms tend to have problems with sticking.)

This got me thinking. While in my youth it seemed like catalog buying would become a thing of the past, today it is back in a serious way, with Amazon leading the way. I buy a lot of stuff online simply because I can’t find it locally—or because the local prices are significantly higher.

But internet buying creates a problem for brick-and-mortar stores: people come into the stores to try out products, but then they buy the products online—often on their mobile devices in the store itself.

So I thought to myself, why doesn’t somebody try separating out the service of letting customers try stuff out from the service of delivering the product?

What I envision is a “Tester Store.” It’s a large, warehouse-type “store,” filled with display models of loads of products, only the “store” doesn’t actually sell any of the products. You just try stuff out, then buy the stuff online.

Why would anybody do such a thing? Where’s the profit? When I mentioned this idea to a friend, he pointed out that such store could potentially become the world’s largest Amazon affiliate. (I mean, not in Colorado at this time, because our idiot legislators imposed an “Amazon tax,” but in other parts of the country where the legislators aren’t quite so painfully stupid and destructive.) The whole point of the “store” would be to actively encourage shoppers to order stuff online.

There is a range of products for which this would be useful. Obviously books are out, because you can just read previews digitally. But anything you want to handle before you buy it, such as cameras, clothing, air conditioners, cookware, etcetera. The whole point would be to make the stuff easy for people to check out, try on, put through the wringer.

I envision something like an Ikea, someplace with food, that’s sort of like a playground for adults (and kids, too).

Other than the “Amazon affiliate” strategy, there are a variety of ways such a store could make money. Perhaps many or all manufacturers would provide free floor samples to keep costs down. The store could sell old floor models, or not, depending on their condition and on agreements with manufacturers.

Think of how much better this would be than today’s typical model. Often I’ll look at products online at various stores (Walmart, Home Depot, Costco), but the local store won’t cary something. So I have no ability to try out that stuff before I buy it. Instead, why don’t stores just carry one or two copies of an item for people to check out, then ship from a central location?

Obviously this eliminates the “instant gratification” of real-store shopping. But usually I don’t want something right now; I want something I know will work for me. (Here’s another idea: the store could sell limited items at a premium to those who have got to have it now.)

I don’t know whether this idea would work (and I certainly don’t want to spend the effort to try it out). But it seemed interesting enough to me to blog about. If somebody else wants to run with it, be my guest.

I’ve used Consumer Reports exactly once in my life, several years ago when researching used cars. It’s too bad I haven’t used it more often—the organization features reviews of several products I’ve recently purchased, including cameras and air conditioners.

So what’s the problem? The unfortunate fact is that Consumer Reports makes it too hard for me to pay money to read the research relevant to me. It’s especially ironic that Consumer Reports sucks at making its material available to consumers, given that helping consumers is supposed to be what the organization is all about.

Let’s take the example of air conditioners. To get the relevant information, I’m told that I need to “Subscribe now” at a rate of $30 per year or $6.95 per month.

Well, screw that. I’m not going to sign up for a long-term subscription that I then have to think about and manage just to spend five minutes to learn about air conditioners.

What I did instead is just rely on whatever free reviews I could scrounge up through Google searches and from Amazon customers.

It would be extremely easy for Consumer Reports to get money from me in exchange for research. Just sell me individual reports in pdf format for a few dollars. I would have happily paid five bucks for the latest Consumer Reports information on cameras and air conditioners. But apparently Consumer Reports thinks its more important to unsuccessfully attempt to bilk me out of $30 per year than to actually get $10 right now for specific reports. That’s just bad business.

I really want to pay you my hard-earned money, Consumer Reports! You need merely make it easy for me to do that.

Update: On July 9, Keith from Hewlett-Packard contacted me through Twitter and provided me with his number. I did have to provide additional details about my printer model, but Keith promptly facilitated the exchange and restored my faith in Hewlett-Packard’s commitment to its customers.

Dear Ms. Broussard of Hewlett-Packard Company’s ISB Team,

I have been a loyal HP customer since the early ’90s, when I purchased my first serious printer (my actual first was a dot-matrix), a glorious HP laser printer. I ran many thousands of pieces of paper through that workhorse.

It saddened me, then, to read the many news stories all indicating that your once-glorious company has been heading down the toilet. For example, just today the Los Angeles Times refers to HP’s “faltering business.”

Your letter to me dated June 27 hints to me why your company is faltering. You obviously don’t take any pride whatsoever in your products, nor do you care anything about making your customers happy. Instead, you harangue me for daring to politely ask HP to replace a faulty HP product that I paid good money to purchase.

On June 4, I drafted the following letter to Hewlett-Packard. I sent the letter with a defective ink cartridge to the company, hoping for a timely and satisfactory reply:

Hewlett-Packard Company
3000 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA
94304-1185

Ari Armstrong
9975 Wadsworth Pkwy. #K2-111
Westminster, CO 80021

Dear HP,

We purchased the enclosed Color 61 ink cartridge, but unfortunately it is defective. (Our printer gave us an error message, and the next cartridge we tried worked fine.)

I request a replacement cartridge or a certificate for the same.

Thanks,
Ari Armstrong

P.S. I tried your customer service phone line, but after an absurdly long hold time I gave up.

Rather than send me a timely and satisfactory reply—with a replacement cartridge—you instead sent me the following huffy note asking me for information a) that I had already provided to Hewlett-Packard or b) that was entirely irrelevant to the company for replacing the defective cartridge:

So please allow me to take this opportunity to reply to your letter.

First, I was shocked to read that HP does not normally replace defective products, that you deign to “make a one time exception” in my case to do right by your customers.

So let the buyer beware: Hewlett-Packard does not stand behind its products, judging by Broussard’s reply.

Second, I found it ludicrous that you requested my “valid shipping address” in the very letter that contains a copy of my valid shipping address. Obviously you are not seriously attempting to get the relevant information from me to make a good-faith effort to replace your defective product; instead, you are merely hassling me.

I therefore take this opportunity to beg your forgiveness for purchasing HP products.

Finally, no, I will not provide you with my telephone number, my printer model number, or my printer serial number in order to process the replacement. Perhaps in your ineptitude you missed this detail, but I sent you the defective cartridge. That provides quite sufficient information, I think, for you to send me a replacement! (Moreover, it seems to me your crack “ISB Team”—whatever that is—should have embraced the opportunity to check out the defective cartridge in an attempt to avoid such manufacturing defects in the future.)

It seems to me that the obviously right move in your position would have been to promptly and cheerfully send me the replacement cartridge. That’s what good companies do, companies that do not wish to suffer “faltering business.” Well, obviously you blew your first chance. Please consider this your second.

Sincerely,
Ari Armstrong