After last week’s uproar and public shaming, over unsold clothing that was intentionally destroyed, then thrown in the trash behind the chain’s Herald Square location, clothing retailer H&M insists that the incident was against company policy and a fluke. Then TV station WPIX caught an employee throwing away a giant bag of shoes a few days later. [More]
Retail Services
Target To Sell $99 "Video Game Setup" Services
By 1.8.10
For a mere $99, Target will go to your house and set up your video game system for your dumb ass. Why? Margins on products are very thin. The margin on services, especially stupid ones, is very high. [via Kotaku]
RELATED: Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying Waste Of Money
Is Best Buy About To Ditch Optimization To Sell Crapware?
By 1.7.10
Best Buy is apparently dropping some of its “optimization” services, and will instead provide the “Best Buy Software Installer,” a new tool that the company says will “radically simplify how you set up and customize your new PC or upgrade an existing one.” Translation: Instead of you paying Best Buy to delete trialware from your new PC, Best Buy will get paid by software makers to try to get you to install it. [More]
When It Comes To Chocolate, Ain't No Recession
By 1.7.10
When the world goes into an economic downturn, it turns to chocolate. According to a report from London market research firm Mintel, chocolate sales rose in several countries, especially in China (18 percent) and the Ukraine (12 percent), as well as a more modest 2.6 percent in the U.S. [More]
H&M Store Cuts Up Unsold Clothing, Throws It Away
By 1.6.10
Some retailers donate unsold clothing to charity, or discount it by the palletful and sell it to thrift stores or closeout retailers. But the New York Times reports that the H&M at Herald Square in Manhattan gets rid of their unsold clothing by cutting holes in it to render it unwearable, then throwing it away. [More]
If You Actually Want What You Ordered, Maybe Best Buy Isn't For You
By 1.6.10
Reader Ryan and his wife tried to order several expensive things from Best Buy. They were not able to actually get any of them. [More]
$3 Billion CD Followup: Amazon Has No Procedures To Catch Erroneously High Prices
By 1.6.10
Amazon called up the man who successfully bought a nearly $3 billion CD-ROM on a lark. They made sure he got his cancellation email and were reportedly very nice. It turns out that while Amazon has several procedures in place to catch prices that are too low, they have nothing to catch prices that are too high. Thanks to this incident, they’ll be working on fixing that. [Network World] [More]
Amazon Slashes Prices On Xbox Live Subscription Cards
By 1.6.10
If you’re an Xbox 360 gamer who likes to play online, you’d do well to hit up Amazon for an Xbox Live subscription card or three. The 12-month subscriptions are $35 rather than $50, and you can stack one card on top of the other, ensuring your 360 and its red ring of death descendants will be online until John Cusack’s movie destroys the planet. [More]
Target Testing "Warehouse Club" Style Deals
By 1.5.10
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune says Target is testing out “warehouse” style deals in space usually used for seasonal merchandise. Examples mentioned include: “supersize jugs of laundry detergent “;”bulk-size packages of batteries”;”bins of $1 neon-colored flip flops,” and “packs of athletic socks for $7.” [More]
Shocking: Best Buy's "Mac Optimization" Sucks Also
By 1.5.10
We didn’t include Best Buy’s Apple optimization services in our investigation, but Heidi N. Moore of Slate.com took a look at the service and as she tells Consumerist in an email, “unscientifically came to the same conclusion.” [More]
Sears Epic Pricing Error Leaves Hundreds With Canceled Snowblower Orders
By 1.5.10
A too-good-to-be-true deal that turned out to be a Sears pricing error got posted to Slickdeals.net — and you can imagine the hilarity that ensued as hundreds of people tried to order snowblowers (sometimes 5 at a time, to resell on craigslist), only to be turned away when they tried to pick them up. According to the 1000-some comments on the slickdeals thread, some people did manage to pick up their item before Sears caught on, but reader BJ was not one of them. In fact, instead of being honest and explaining the error, BJ says Sears lied to him. [More]
Best Buy: We Won't Replace Your Broken Netbook, But We Will 'Service' It
By 1.5.10
UPDATE: Best Buy has replaced the laptop. [More]
Target Is Out Of Shampoo, So Just Dye Your Hair
By 1.4.10
These Target substitution cards are introducing an entirely new genre of in-store comedy into my otherwise sad and dull life. [More]
BoA Explains Fees With Pretty Lady On Talking Website
By 1.4.10
Bank of America launched a new sub-site to help explain their banking penalties to fee-curious customers. I always feel safer when my website talks to me and pretends to be alive so Bank of America has also included “Janet,” a walking talking video actor to help guide me through the process. I appreciate that she is wearing no belt. It sends the signal, “hey, we’re keeping it cas.” [More]
Man Buys $3 Billion CD-ROM On Amazon Just To See What Would Happen
By 1.4.10
To see what would happen, Brian Klug tried to buy a CD-ROM on Amazon of an instructional science program mispriced at $2,875,934,133.57 (plus shipping). What happened is that he bought it. Sounds like something similar as to what happened with those $23 quadrillion Visa errors where binary zeroes became hexadecimal spaces instead. [More]
Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying Waste Of Money
By 1.4.10
Over the past year, a number of you have been telling us that, due to “pre-optimization” of computers, it’s difficult — sometimes impossible — to walk into a Best Buy and leave with the advertised deal (in effect, you would be paying a $39.99 surcharge over the computer’s advertised price). We decided to look into your complaints. We sent the Consumer Reports secret shoppers to 18 different Best Buys in 11 states, and one of our shoppers was denied the price advertised for a specific model because only pre-optimized computers were available. When the Consumer Reports engineers compared three “optimized” computers to ones with default factory settings, there was no performance improvement. In one case, an optimized laptop actually performed 32% worse than the factory model. The results of our in-depth investigation, inside…
Target Gives Ellen's Zhu Zhu Pet-Loving Son His Job Back
By 1.4.10
Ellen wrote us last week that her son was one of the Target employees fired for buying Zhu Zhu Pets too early but wasn’t hired back. [More]
