In the last week, both Target and Best Buy have each announced they will match prices on Amazon and other online retailers at their bricks and mortar stores. While the goal is to woo customers into retail stores by taking away the attractive discounts seen online, some wonder if this will result in ticked-off customers standing in line. [More]
Retail Services
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Can Get You VHS Tapes And The Greatest Hits Of 2007
By 10.18.12 — Updated: 8.15.13
Our readers aren’t just ordinary blog tipsters: you’re retail archaeologists. Consumerists across the nation explore discount stores and sale racks, searching for gems of outdated technology. You are the finders of ancient digital junk. You are the Raiders of the Lost Walmart. [More]
Sears Offers Great Gas Grill Price Match That Goes Up In Flames After Pickup
By 10.18.12 — Updated: 9.18.14
It’s fall, which means that it’s time for apple cider donuts, driving around to peep at leaves, and summer merchandise on clearance. Paul’s dad caught a really great deal on gas grills, and bought one for him and one for himself. We wouldn’t expect this to be successful, but he managed to get Sears to price-match the sale price then at Kmart.com. Victory! But Sears being Sears, the promised refund disappeared, and Sears magically forgot that their employee had ever promised the price-match. [More]
Home Depot Employee Accused Of Making $26,000 Off Of Fake Returns
By 10.17.12
We’ve heard of shoplifters trying to “return” products they never actually purchased for cash. And we’ve heard of employees pretending to enter a return and then taking that returned item and fencing it. But this may be the first time we’ve heard of a retail employee using customer’s personal info to cook up fake returns for illicit profit. [More]
Analyst: Best Buy Employees Feel The Most Threatened By Amazon
By 10.17.12
With the holiday shopping season looming on the horizon, and retailers wondering just how much of their business will be lost to Amazon and other online retailers, an analyst for Topeka Capital recently visited some of these bigger stores and came away concerned that their attempts to adapt to online competition might be too little, too late. [More]
Target Follows Best Buy’s Lead, Will Match Online Prices For Holidays
By 10.17.12
Less than a week after Best Buy announced it would be price-matching online competitors this holiday season, the folks at Target declared “us too!” and dove headfirst into the price-matching pond. [More]
Amazon Makes A Push To Get Kindles Into A Very Lucrative Market — Schools
By 10.17.12
Let’s see… where is a place with a captive audience that will always involve reading books, paper or otherwise, that will also need to keep updating its tools as the years go by? Oh yes, schools. They’re quite an attractive market for the makers of tablet and e-readers, and now Amazon is making a big push to make sure Kindles are the technology of choice in schools. [More]
That Amazon Video You Bought? You May Not Actually Be Able To Watch It
By 10.16.12
Imagine if you bought a DVD of a movie and then one day when you go to play it, you get a message saying “Sorry, but the studio has decided you can’t watch this movie for the foreseeable future.” It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what can happen to customers who try to stream the movies they buy from Amazon. [More]
Amazon Says It’s Going To Add 50,000 Holiday Workers To Its Ranks This Season
By 10.16.12
This is the kind of Christmas Creep we can be down with: Although it’s still only mid-October, retailers have been announcing how many jobs they’ll be adding to the rolls this holiday season. And Amazon just dropped a doozy of a number, which should make plenty of people’s season’s bright — it says it will hire 50,000 workers this year as part of its seasonal hiring plan. [More]
Without Discount Passes, AMC’s Rewards Program Is A Lot Less Rewarding
By 10.16.12
Amy thought that the AMC Stubs rewards program was pretty great, back when the discount passes that she bought at Costco counted toward earning rewards. The Stubs program isn’t free (it costs $12 a year) and she was exchanging money for movie tickets and perhaps buying some snacks, after all. Then AMC suddenly stopped counting Gold and Silver passes toward the program. [More]
Target Decides Mid-October Is The Perfect Time To Start Airing Holiday Ads
By 10.15.12
While most major retailers usually wait until Nov. 1 to start clogging the airwaves with a blitz of red and green commercials — and this year, many are waiting until after the election — the folks at Target have apparently just decided to embrace Christmas Creep to its fullest, launching its first holiday-themed ad over the weekend. [More]
Amazon To Kindle Customers: If & When E-Book Settlement Is Approved, You Might Get A Refund
By 10.15.12
It sometimes feels like the price-fixing settlement between e-book publishers and the government has been stretching on for forever. But it now seems Amazon is prepping Kindle customers for a potential, partial refund if they bought e-books between April 2010 and May 2012. That is if the court approves the settlements in various states. [More]
5 Best Stores For Having Playdates While You Shop
By 10.15.12
To all the parents of young children out there who are constantly wrangled into making playdates for your kid(s). Just because you’ve scheduled a playdate for your little one(s), it doesn’t mean you can’t also get in some all-important shopping while the youngsters amuse each other for a few hours. [More]
Hey, Amazon, Your Marketplace Sellers Are Customers Too
By 10.15.12
When one individual buys an item from another individual through the Amazon marketplace, who is the vendor and who is the customer? From Amazon’s point of view, the buyer is the only one putting an item in their cart on Amazon.com and hitting “Check out.” Kyle complains that this means Amazon sellers, who might be individuals and loyal Amazon customers too, are shut out and automatically in the wrong when there’s a dispute. [More]
Data Shows Bank Of America Is Also Bad At Dealing With Credit Card Complaints
By 10.12.12
Earlier this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched a complaint portal for people with credit card-related issues. Banks and card companies are not obliged to provide a happy ending to the complainant, but they are obliged to reply in a timely manner. And even with the bar lowered that much, Bank of America still manages to disappoint. [More]
Does Amazon Actually Sell Its Kindles At Cost?
By 10.12.12
Since people first began dissecting Amazon’s Kindle e-readers, it’s been believed that the online giant isn’t making much of a profit of the devices. Now the company’s CEO has publicly stated that there is no profit margin on the Kindle. [More]
Best Buy To Price-Match Online Competitors
By 10.12.12
Best Buy has already said that it intends on dropping its prices on BestBuy.com to better compete against Amazon and other online retailers, but now comes word that the electronics chain plans on actually matching the prices of its online competitors at its bricks-and-mortar stores. [More]
Did Amazon Need To Pack My Order Of Bubble Wrap In Bubble Wrap?
By 10.12.12
When you place an order for a material that is itself used as packing material, you might be surprised to see that your order comes surrounding by other packing material. But there may be a method to this madness after all. [More]
