A brief rant here.

I needed a particular cable.  None of my local merchants carry it (I’m big on supporting local business), and I was in the middle of a project so I needed it right away.

I decided to check national merchants who had nearby locations by going to their websites, which is pretty easy.  (Shameless plug: NetBooks subscribers will have this capability for their businesses within a few weeks.)

I found a merchant that was relatively close, and had the product in stock at a reasonable price.  So I hopped in the car.

But when I got there, I discovered that the price was more than double what they’d shown online.  A clerk checked and the posted price was accurate.

For them, this was a double loss:  (a) I didn’t buy the product, so they lost the sale, and (b) it left me feeling like this merchant was trying to “game” me - much like what the airlines tend to do with variable seat pricing.

Is there any way this is smart business?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.