High-Street Blues
Dec. 30th, 2011 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerI was reading Charlie Stross' post on the impending collapse of the doomed High Street and it reminded me of the ridiculous situation I had buying a PS3 controller just before Christmas.
I wanted a new one, because we only have one, and Little Big Planet looks like it will be fun two-player. So I looked around, discovered that they were £50 in-store in Game, £45 in Amazon, but only £40 in the Game online store. A bit silly, I thought, having to buy it online from the same company, but I ordered it from Game and discovered that they would deliver it to the local store for me. Fantastic, I thought - I can order online and then just drop in and pick it up!
Except that it really _was_ a delivery service, where you have to wait for them to post out a controller to your local shop that's exactly the same as the ones that are already in-store, and then go in and queue along with everyone else, and then the harrassed staff go and root through the back room until they find the parcel that was sent through. Pretty much the opposite of joined-up thinking.
Today, of course, Amazon has it for £5 cheaper than that again, at only £35. And Julie's been ill since she got back, so we haven't actually managed to use it yet anyway.
There's a lesson there somewhere, but I can't quite work out what it is...
I wanted a new one, because we only have one, and Little Big Planet looks like it will be fun two-player. So I looked around, discovered that they were £50 in-store in Game, £45 in Amazon, but only £40 in the Game online store. A bit silly, I thought, having to buy it online from the same company, but I ordered it from Game and discovered that they would deliver it to the local store for me. Fantastic, I thought - I can order online and then just drop in and pick it up!
Except that it really _was_ a delivery service, where you have to wait for them to post out a controller to your local shop that's exactly the same as the ones that are already in-store, and then go in and queue along with everyone else, and then the harrassed staff go and root through the back room until they find the parcel that was sent through. Pretty much the opposite of joined-up thinking.
Today, of course, Amazon has it for £5 cheaper than that again, at only £35. And Julie's been ill since she got back, so we haven't actually managed to use it yet anyway.
There's a lesson there somewhere, but I can't quite work out what it is...
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 02:03 pm (UTC)
Date: 2011-12-30 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 02:53 pm (UTC)(Extreme TLDR: demonstration, tactility, senses other than hearing and sight, 3D, recommendation, learning modes, scale).
I'll try to write the post in the next few days!
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Date: 2011-12-30 02:53 pm (UTC)The one thing I do currently buy that way is specs - Tesco Opticians are handy for me to drop by, and at £10 a pop they're cheaper than any online provider I've found.
Date: 2011-12-30 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 03:17 pm (UTC)I wonder if (say) a bookshop would make more or less money if it offered a hole-in-the-wall where you pop the book, get the barcode scanned, log in to amazon and order right there. They get a referral fee from amazon, you get your real-life browsing experience and the cheap deal.
Do lost physical sales balance it? It maybe just me (or a small number of people) that browses physical stores but almost always decides to buy later.
Browsing on amazon is a bit hopeless... there's no serendipity to it... it just dumbly presents you with a list of best-sellers or "like you already bought".
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Date: 2011-12-30 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 03:51 pm (UTC)I used to buy a lot online, although this was back when I was 19 and what I bought consisted mainly of DVDs, CDs and games. Now, I'm more likely to find myself buying something because I've wandered into town and remembered that 'the item I want' is finally out.
Most of this has been down to the abysmal service that delivery companies currently offer. Having stayed in three locations across Edinburgh (pretty widely spaced) I've found that the only guaranteed method for actually getting something on the day you expect is to have it delivered to your place of work. Indeed I suspected that the fact that I used to work at The Scotsman did mean that a lot of delivery times were kept by the fact that they were a well known (and vocal) company.
One of the things that I really started to try and remember, is how much of my life has changed in the last 10 or 20 years. It's the thing that's stopping me being too worried about the future if remembering that back in 2002 this was the future.
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Date: 2011-12-30 03:56 pm (UTC)I really like Amazon's recommendations. If nothing else the "People who liked this also bought..." items have some very amusing suggestions from time to time.
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Date: 2011-12-30 04:06 pm (UTC)Amazon'sn recommendations are great but for me they get stuck in a rut. I read a fair bit, buy more than i read and all through amazon. Its recommendations are excellent if i never want to think something i have not thought already. :-)
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Date: 2011-12-30 04:09 pm (UTC)Julie says that her Kindle allows her to download small chunks of books to give them a try, but I haven't played with that myself.
Edit: Oh, and I don't tend to browse much nowadays. I have far too many recommendations for good books from numerous other sources to ever get to the "wandering randomly around shops" stage.
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Date: 2011-12-30 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 04:32 pm (UTC)With this being the most recent example:
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2603787.html?thread=20281355
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Date: 2011-12-30 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 05:52 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2011-12-30 05:55 pm (UTC)A company that can only deliver 9-5 weekdays is no use to me, since I'm at work at that point. Allowing me to change my delivery date to.... another weekday... is no help, and since I don't have a car and work during the week, I can't get to most of the courier company offices either to pick up stuff. While Yodel (the company that used to be Home Delivery Network) are terrible, at least they now deliver in the evenings when I can be in to get stuff.
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Date: 2011-12-30 05:55 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2011-12-30 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 05:58 pm (UTC)If I really wanted a book and saw it in WH Smith or Waterstones when I was browsing (okay, I wouldn't actually be browsing in WH Smith since they're a bookshop in the sense that they sell a few popular things and a whole lot of chick-lit/misery memoir/pop history books) I would happily pay a small amount over the standard Amazon price to get it right there right on my kindle after browsing a chapter in-store, since my Kindle isn't a 3g one. As it is though, everyone loses out since I'll forget about the book by the time I get home, so Amazon won't get my money and the bookshop won't get any "referral" money from me.
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Date: 2011-12-30 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 06:00 pm (UTC)