I wonder how many tools Old Guy has bought online or over the phone or
mail order without ever handling or seeing them in person. Or seeing
and handling them in person from a local retailer and then purchasing
them online at a lower price. For specialty activities, like
recreational home woodworking, online/catalog/mail order/phone
purchasing probably consumes a considerable amount of the sales
revenue. I would guess almost all of the Grizzly machine owners on
this forum never saw their machines before they were delivered.




On May 1, 7:12*am, "Mike Marlow" wrote:
"Old Guy" wrote in message

...





Well, the folks we love to hate have done it again.

The LOML and I went to *Home Depot, and I got my errands done before
she did, so I went to drool over the stationary power tools while I
waited. *Couldn't do it. *No display. *Pation Furniture was there
instead.

The person at the Contractor desk said that Corporate had decided that
the tool display wasn't bringing in enough sales, so they still had
the tools, in the box, and they could show me pictures of what they
looked like, but that was it.

I suggested that I never bought things like that from pictures, and he
agreed, but said no one at the decision level wanted to hear concerns
from the front lines. *I look to see big iron tools dropped from their
stores pretty soon, cause they don't sell any without working display
models. *Watch for the closeouts, might be able to score a gloat or
two.

Yeah - it's true that people who make decisions make those decisions based
on what they observe and someone "on the front lines" is always going to be
upset. *But - in the world of retail, leaving hunks of iron or any other
product out on the floor, just because you or I like to drool over it
without purchasing, is quite foolish. *That floor space is needed for the
things that will turn cash. *Like it or not - this time of year, they are
going to turn cash with patio stuff. *I'd be willing to bet that if you were
seriously looking to buy, someone would have opened up all the boxes you
wanted to see. *But you weren't - and you're commenting about them providing
for the most of their customers (as indicated by the floor sales), because
like the rest of us, you just wanted to drool over the tools. *For all the
bitching that goes on around here about every retailer out there, one would
think that people would find it agreeable that a major retailer would
dedicate their floor space to the products that the consumers are really
after at any given time of year.

As for never buying things from pictures - good for you. *I do buy some
things just from pictures. *I just bought a new spray gun just from a
picture on a web site. *Didn't need to handle it or anything else, to know
what I was going to get. *In your case, you weren't even going to buy, so
what's the big deal?

Sorry - this is just my personal campaign against all of the posts that
populate this forum that bitch about what the big retailers do, regardless
of how practical those decisions may really be in light of the population
they serve, or the realities of business.

--

-Mike-
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