commerce

[cellio]

I needed a fairly long ethernet cable to run to the TV room, and we failed at making our own so I decided to just buy one. Amazon has 50' cables for $6-10, but I wanted it today (new TiVo, for which "wireless" on the feature list apparently really meant "wireless-capable, if you get a peripheral", fooey).

I went to Best Buy, where their price was $36. We had roughly the following conversation:

Me: You price-match, right?
Rep 1: Yup.
Me: (shows Amazon listing for exact same cable)
Rep 1: This doesn't ship directly from Amazon; that doesn't count.

Me: I'm prepared to pay a little more to get it locally today, but I can't really bring myself to pay more than three times their price. Is there anything you can do for me?

Rep 1: Nope.
Rep 2: (walking by) Um, let me see what I can do. (I follow Rep 2 to a different desk.)

He gave it to me for $10.

It occurs to me to wonder now if I'm part of the problem for brick-and-mortar stores. On the other hand, if their price had been $15 (a 50% markup) I probably would have just paid it.

Comments

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

Monoprice is a good option for that stuff. It's direct, and they may price match.

For us, with baby stuff, if the local store is close we use local. When it was 36 vs 24 on amazon, wel... Amazon won..

[cellio]

Haven't heard of Monoprice. Thanks for the tip.