Archive for: retail
- December 18, 2010 2:37 pm
In a move that will hopefully spread to other retailers, Best Buy quietly announced today via their website that their will no longer be any restocking fees, save for special orders:
Best Buy continually listens to our customers, and they told us they want to give confidently this holiday season and every other day of the year — and with that comes easier returns. Effective Saturday, December 18, Best Buy is improving its return policy by removing restocking fees for all products except special orders.
However, the website Consumerist was able to snag a copy of the email being distributed to Best Buy stores nation wide, detailing the new restocking fee changes as well as touching on refunds for users who were charged restocking fees between November 17th-December17th:
Effective Saturday, Dec. 18, the 15 percent restocking fee will no longer apply to computers (including notebooks, tablets and iPads), projectors, camcorders, digital cameras, radar detectors, GPS navigation, in-car video systems, DJ equipment and lighting, or Pro-Audio equipment. The 10 percent restocking fee will no longer apply to iPhones. Restocking fees shouldn’t be charged for any returns of these products going forward.
This policy change is being made because we want to be the best destination for gifts and technology. To do that we need to make it easy for our customers to return product when they need to, which will give them one more reason to love Best Buy.
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If customers who were charged a restocking fee between Nov. 17 and Dec. 17 come into the store for a refund, process a return transaction for the restocking fee amount.
With online shopping becoming more prevalent year after year, big box retailers are having to take drastic measures to keep people away from the world wide web and walking in their physical doors.
Will such a move work on you?
- November 12, 2010 12:49 am
The next time you walk into a GameStop store, double check and make sure it’s not being robbed at that particular point in time. Unfortunately for one Mr. Adrian Tyrone Snow, he picked the worst of times to go game shopping. As he walked through the door, the two armed robbers whom already tied up the store employees proceeded to tie up Mr. Snow, whom went on to resist the robbers’ advances. Sadly, the robbers shot Mr. Snow twice. He later died at the hospital from his wounds.
The pair of suspects — Giovannte Maddox and Demarkus Williams — are believed to be the same suspects that robbed several other surrounding GameStop stores in recent days. Unfortunately for Mr. Snow, the local law enforcement didn’t catch them soon enough.
Now is a good time to remind everyone that if you’re feeling violent, put the game down, take a walk, take a nap — something.
The next time you stop by the newest Apple store in downtown Chicago, be sure to check out the first ever “Apple Stop”. Currently, it’s the North/Clybourn station on the city’s Red Line train. But tomorrow after the Apple Store officially opens its doors for the first time, the name will *unofficially* change.
If you think Apple is merely “taking over” a nearby city service, slapping an ad it, and calling it their own, you’re sorely mistaken. During the construction process for the new store, Apple sunk some $4 million into the train stop — polishing/scrubbing bricks, cleaning grime off handrails, touching up paint, and other general TLC. The once nasty, disgusting stop is now a much nicer, less repulsive place to walk through.
Looking past the hubub of a new Apple Store, it’s pretty neat to see how Apple also takes into consideration the immediate surroundings, and if it isn’t up to their standards, they make it so. Now ask yourself: how many other companies do you know that actually tend to the surrounding areas (that they don’t own) around their property on their own dollar?
- September 30, 2010 3:13 pm
‘Tis a bad day to be an iPhone 4 scalper in Beijing. Apparently, the Apple store in said city relaxed restrictions on the number of iPhone 4′s any one person could by. As you can imagine, scalpers and re-sellers swarmed down on the location like a colony of flies on a nice, fresh animal carcass. Unfortunately for the scalpers (or flies if you prefer), the mad rush caused so much commotion that the store was closed by security. Once reopened, the per-person restriction was back in place at (1) iPhone 4 per human body.
How bad was it? Apparently, the scalpers were buying 20-30 at a time and then marking them up considerably (above the already high contract-free price of $800 USD) and reselling them within the same mall. From the reports I’ve seen around the web, it was literal chaos. It’s pretty nuts that some people will get so riled up over something as simple as a phone. Was it worth it guys?
The HTC Evo 4G is one helluva phone. Through and through, it’s got a lot going for it. Though one thing that bothers some people, particularly the more “hipster” crowd, is that boring black garb that seems to encase oh so many electronics. From time to time, phone manufacturers switch it up a bit by offering different case colors for consumers to choose. In the case of the HTC Evo 4G, it’s black or….black. Until now.
A new tip from an Engadget reader has HTC releasing a white HTC Evo 4G on July 11th exclusively through BestBuy. According to this same tipster, the white Evo 4G will remain a BB exclusive until August 8th at which point it will branch out to Radio Shack and Sprint retails stores en mass. I have to say, the white paint job does look pretty cool on the Evo’s larger than life casing.
If you really can’t wait, word is you can go on ahead and put in your pre-order status at BestBuy starting today. So if it’s a white Evo 4G you crave, now is the time to act.
Anyone diggin’ the new color?
Contrary to verbiage from Microsoft indicating otherwise, at least GameStop has figured out what makes customers happy. more storage, specifically 250GB worth of storage as the popular used game retailer has a stand alone 250GB Xbox 360 drive marked for release on 3/23 online.
Microsoft as of late has pushed out several special edition Xbox 360 console bundles that usually feature some nifty paint job and larger hard drive. In the case of the Modern Warfare 2 bundle, a larger 250GB was included. More bundles of similar and probably even larger sizes will come later on down the pipeline. But what about people who simply want the larger drive for their current 360?
No beans says Microsoft. Obviously they’d rather have you spend $400 more on a new system just for that drive if it really matters to you. Meanwhile, they pass it off as “keeping these special edition Xbox units…*special*”. A valid reasoning for sure, but no less frustrating and stupid for consumers.
The drives show as $129.99 with a lack of any supporting details. Then again, there’s still a good three weeks before these are set to be available for actual sale so I’m sure more will follow, In the meantime, we’ll have to sit and wonder exactly where or how GameStop is getting special dibs/ripping 250GB drives off of returned “special” bundles…
CrunchGear > Destructoid
Londoners who made it a habit to routinely stop by their flagship Nokia store to try and and play with all of the Finish companies latest and greatest will have to find a new playground. Seeing as how Nokia’s market share and profits have been tanking in a downward spiral for the last several quarters, it’s no surprise retail outlets are getting the ax. All of that concrete and bodies to sustain said concrete cost money — money that Nokia doesn’t have. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of it though. Nokia’s got some good stuff in the pipeline, now it’s just actually producing hits and getting to that finish line. For geek’s sake everywhere, I hope Nokia gets control of their ailing company and fast.
IntoMobile
{Image Source
Playing with fire and behind enemy lines are two ways to objectify Apple’s dependence on WindowsCE based mobile POS stations up until this point. Said machines are old, bulky, and downright pieces of digital *insert expletive here*. Apple who loves to keep it close to home has been working for some time now on retrofitting 3G iPod Touches running OS 3.0 with various pieces of accessory add-ons in able to move towards a mobile POS system that does away with the antiquated WindowsCE junk. Looking at the picture above, while not as svelte as your traditional Apple product, this retro-fitted mobile workhouse has quite a few things packed under the hood of this new two-piece case. The extra size is needed to accommodate a magstrip swiper located on the back of the device, a bar-code scanner on the top of the case, and an extra battery built into the case itself to provide considerable more runtime than stock iPod Touch units.
Most transactions are fully mobile with exceptions for transactions using multiple cards, travelers checks, and processing returns for cash. For those such instances, customers will have to revert back to the standard POS at the front (or back depending on how you look at it) of the store. Debit transactions on the other hand are not fully mobile either as customers who start such a transaction on an iPod POS will have to navigate back to the register to complete their purchase and then back again to the iPod variant to match the order. I’m not exactly sure how that is very intuitive, but we’ll see how it plays out in person. Finally, signing for credit/debit purchases takes a slightly different approach than has been seen so far on Apple’s mobile platform. The new change includes a stylus for signing names to complete purchases. Really, I can’t blame them. Apple has done a tremendous job on the multi-touch/stylus free front. But signing your name on a digital screen with a finger is anything but graceful or good looking with the resulting signatures often appearing as chicken scratch. The specially designed stylus will give customers some peace of mind when met with these mobile stations. It’s worth mentioning that while there isn’t any external branding on this new accessory, I would hedge on Incase as the provider as this particular case looks awfully similar their Power Slider case available for iPhones. Anyone see the same?
This change was a long time coming. Using the enemies technology and products day in and day out was a slap in the face to Apple and their customers. Let’s just hope Apple did their homework as a national pandemic of crippled stores due to faulty iPod Touch POS stations won’t exactly look favorably on the platforms ability to scale. Just sayin’…
AppleInsider
Purchasing your computer at any retail location or online is hardly the same PC once you actually get a working model back to your house. When booting up your new PC for the first time, you go through normal set up with accounts and such. But one thing that has been a pain for years is the pile of crapware that comes pre-installed on your PC. Anything and everything you can think of has at some point taken the role of crapware. Such junk is called crapware because the only thing it excels at his slowing down your computer all around as well as adding a million extra steps in removing each piece of software.
Microsoft however has a rather nice surprise up their sleeve. All PC’s resold through through their Microsoft Stores will come void of any such junk. 99% honest to goodness, **clean PC’s. These new “Signature PC’s” as they’re labeled are a high point of Microsoft’s retail strategy as I would easily pass up on buying PC sold by any number retailers and save myself the time and headache and instead purchase a crapfree version directly from Microsoft.
**I’m going to have to backtrack just a bit. You see, they won’t be exactly 100% clean. But pretty darn close. Microsoft’s Signiture PC’s will in fact come with some form of pre-installed software. I know you’re thinking “Oh great, there goes that bit of happy info”. But wait! It isn’t what your’re thinking. Turn that frown upside down because Microsoft’s in-house software installs will be full featured software, meaning you can actually use the software on your computer further setting it apart from the trial versions from hell/crapware that plagues most PC’s for sale to date. Not to mention, Microsoft isn’t just going to slap any piece of crappily coded junk on their Signiture PC’s. In case you’re little noodle is interested, the list of Microsoft approved, pre-installed software includes (per Ars Technica):
Microsoft Security Essentials, Bing 3D Maps, Zune 4.0, Playready PC Runtime (for WMC), Adobe Flash Player for IE, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Windows Live Sync, and Windows Live Essentials (which includes Windows Live versions of Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Family Safety, Toolbar, as well as the Office Live Add-In and Silverlight).
See, it’s not so bad now is it? Anyone thinking that a trip to the Microsoft Stores is looking a fair bit better?
Ars Technica > Image Source}
