Why do my stores suck?

gpgorbosjr

gpgorbosjr

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I have 2 Targets, 2 Kmarts and a Walmart very close to my house.

At the Targets stuff used to go on clearance. Then they re-arranged the store and NOTHING goes on clearance. Nor does it go on clearance at the other stores.

At my Targets they take the games that you guys see on sale and put them on an end cap in the plastic case for normal price. (Example: someone saw Fear 3 for $xx.xx sale, at my Target it is sitting on an end cap for $19.99).

At my Walmart they have a section for "budget" games (many I see you guys get cheap) and nothing is cheaper than $19.99.

At one Kmart they have NOTHING. At the other all the old games they can't sell should be clearance are put on some random shelf for $14.99-$19.99 but never lower.



What the hell is the deal? I'm in NJ. I was getting ticked before I signed up at this site at Target, but now that I see all the deals you guys get I'm really ticked at all of them!
 
I'm not sure why Target wouldn't have the same deals at each store. I know clearance levels can vary from store to store (it could be 50% off at one Target and 70% off at another Target) but a game on clearance at one Target should be on clearance at almost every Target.

Walmart clearance is generally on a store by store basis and very rarely are clearance prices national. My local Walmart never has clearance deals I see posted here, they sell old games for MSRP or in some cases over MSRP. It's not just for games either, for seasonal merchandise they don't go to 90% off like other Walmarts either and stay at 75% off. I don't go to Walmart that often anyway but most of the time when I do go there, I don't even bother looking at the game department because it is so overpriced.
 
Ha... that's exactly what my stores are like. No clearances at Target except the worst shit that nobody would ever buy and my Sears doesn't carry games. WM and BBY's clearances are way too YMMV (seems like they're based on manager's decisions) and their clearances are also shit for us.

Circuit City was my goldmine but they went bankrupt. Kmart and TRU were two decent stores for me but TRU stopped doing clearances a while ago (over a year, I think?) and I can never find any clearance games at Kmart (I think they recently stopped too).

I haven't found a clearance game since RE5 CE dropped to $30 a TRU years ago.:whistle2:(
 
My Target is horrible, but they used to be very good for clearance, now NOTHING goes on clearance that is on clearance at a price I am willing to pay. I blame the Wii and Xbox as now people are just buying the video games before they even make it to clearance. Before the Wii came out I was able to get tons of stuff. Now I am lucky if I get 1-2 good clearance deals a year in the games department. This goes for every department as well, I used to get lipsticks for like 25 cents, sneakers for $5, now they just don't clearance it as far as they used to. Holiday stuff is only getting 30% off the day after the holiday, it used to be 50%-75% first day after. The original prices on general non gaming merchandise is also very expensive ($31 for a HDMI cable for example), so by the time it gets down to a price that I actually want to pay there is nothing left or it just disappears!

Walmart is pretty bad for clearance because they clearance by department and the electronics department never gets any decent clearance. Though I have to say that the walmart here is a little better for clearance for the other departments than some of the other walmart's I have been in which were just disasters almost worse than Kmart.

Kmart and Sears are consistently good, however its rare that things get cheap enough where I will actually buy them, but it happens more often than the other stores. The thing about Kmart is you have to scan stuff, I suggest price checking everything you want to buy, since you never know what has dropped past the price on the tag. I have recently found tons of cheap, unmarked items in the toy department at Kmart. My advice is to fill a basket with what you want and hit the scanner.

We don't have Goodwill in my area unless I want to drive 45 min to an hour to visit a goodwill that is parked right next to an independent game stores... so its not like I would be able to snag the Target castoffs from there like other people have been able to.
 
^ I hate that 30% off for seasonal clearance at Target. Now the bagged candy doesn't make it past 70% at all. It doesn't seem to stop people since the stuff is selling at 30% off now.

The 70% instead of 75% also is bad. I know it's only a few dollars but adds up, with a game that was $59.99 originally, it's an extra $3 you are paying now.

[quote name='Vinny']
Circuit City was my goldmine but they went bankrupt. Kmart and TRU were two decent stores for me but TRU stopped doing clearances a while ago (over a year, I think?) and I can never find any clearance games at Kmart (I think they recently stopped too).
([/QUOTE]

Yeah Circuit City was awesome, stuff was never tagged correctly so it was somewhat easy to get clearance games for next to nothing. I wish TRU would have something like the Green Tag sale again when all Green Tag games got to 90% off and games were $0.50 - $5. Their current clearance games are horribly overpriced and they don't drop in price anymore. Prices have been the same for over a year now on some games.
 
OP,
1. You scan the stuff or relying on the tag? Sales tags may not be updated.
2. Do you know the clearance schedule? Are horders beating you to the goods?
3. Are you aware of your comp? Maybe people in the area just buy stuff as soon as it hit the clearance and don't wait for the drop.
4. Clearance stuff hidden or not moved to the clearance area/unmarked (best pssible case scenario)?
 
[quote name='gpgorbosjr']I have 2 Targets, 2 Kmarts and a Walmart very close to my house.

At the Targets stuff used to go on clearance. Then they re-arranged the store and NOTHING goes on clearance. Nor does it go on clearance at the other stores.

At my Targets they take the games that you guys see on sale and put them on an end cap in the plastic case for normal price. (Example: someone saw Fear 3 for $xx.xx sale, at my Target it is sitting on an end cap for $19.99).

At my Walmart they have a section for "budget" games (many I see you guys get cheap) and nothing is cheaper than $19.99.

At one Kmart they have NOTHING. At the other all the old games they can't sell should be clearance are put on some random shelf for $14.99-$19.99 but never lower.



What the hell is the deal? I'm in NJ. I was getting ticked before I signed up at this site at Target, but now that I see all the deals you guys get I'm really ticked at all of them![/QUOTE]
Maybe it just the area where these stores are located(people with high income). Its the same where I live. People just buy stuff at retail price, clearence games never go below $15 here. I only take advantage of the nationwide deals posted here on CAG. I have 1 kmart, 3 gamestops, 1 costco, 1 best buy, 1 super target all within the same area.
 
Think about it this way folks - why would an store mark something down 75% when they know it will sell at say 20-30% off? Yeah I love getting clearance stuff for real cheap as much as the rest of you but there's a good reason why Circuit City went out of business. One of those reasons is dropping games down to absurd clearance prices. You can't sustain an business if you are selling stuff constantly at $4.96 that used to be $59.99.

(Of course I could go into an long multi part blog on what drove CC out of business but that's for another time and another day all together)
 
[quote name='YoshiFan1']I'm not sure why Target wouldn't have the same deals at each store. I know clearance levels can vary from store to store (it could be 50% off at one Target and 70% off at another Target) but a game on clearance at one Target should be on clearance at almost every Target.[/QUOTE]
Not really. Our local Target stores here sometimes take weeks(months in some cases) to put the same games/items I've seen on clearance in Target stores out of the area on clearance here.

Even then, they don't last to 70% off or whatever the top discount is anymore.
 
Trying to reply to as many as I can generally....


I scan at Target. Games that are clearance at other Targets are $19.99-$39.99.

Walmart I don't bother asking because I asked once and the prices were the same.

KMart there is never anyone around to ask and I haven't noticed any self scanners.

Don't live in the worst area but neither the best. I get the why mark down to 70% when people buy at 30% but this games just clutter up an end cap at my Target for months.
 
There should be scanners in every Kmart, but they might not be in places you expect them to be, so look around the whole store. If you can't find a scanner make an employee price check everything you want to buy, lol.

I scan at Target too but I never find anything that is deeply discounted beyond the sticker price. The sticker prices at my Target are much higher than what everyone posts. I actually stopped reading those threads, and I just go by what is on store shelves now. Perhaps Target marks down less on the east coast, I noticed you are in NJ and I am in NY...

I just think for my area its basically people just buying the stuff before it ever gets to a deep clearance, they see a red clearance sticker and they automatically think oooo its a good deal, so they buy it anyways. I live in a dirt poor area too, the money people have to spend on luxury goods, they get from the government. But these people generally don't actively seek out deals, they use their government funds to buy things when they want to, not when something goes on sale or clearance. Its possible there could be a hoarder as well but I would laugh if there was because the prices aren't even close to cheap enough to be profitable for the hoarder.

At Kmart and Sears you HAVE to scan, there are scanners in both stores, and yes they still do mark stuff down to cheap levels because I got some 9.99 toys just a week or 2 ago at Kmart for $1.99 each. I also got some universal remotes for $2 each that were originally 9.99. So I know Kmart's system is still allowing deep markdowns. Probably not worth scanning at Walmart, as again I have never found price discrepancies there.

Newegg is comparable to Circuit City for me, they have lots of games for 15.99 and 14.99, which is comparable or better to CC's 16.99 games that they used to have. I never got much that dropped past 16.99 in CC, but I did get some pretty good games for that price.
 
[quote name='SaraAB']There should be scanners in every Kmart, but they might not be in places you expect them to be, so look around the whole store. If you can't find a scanner make an employee price check everything you want to buy, lol.

I scan at Target too but I never find anything that is deeply discounted beyond the sticker price. The sticker prices at my Target are much higher than what everyone posts. I actually stopped reading those threads, and I just go by what is on store shelves now. Perhaps Target marks down less on the east coast, I noticed you are in NJ and I am in NY...

I just think for my area its basically people just buying the stuff before it ever gets to a deep clearance, they see a red clearance sticker and they automatically think oooo its a good deal, so they buy it anyways. I live in a dirt poor area too, the money people have to spend on luxury goods, they get from the government. But these people generally don't actively seek out deals, they use their government funds to buy things when they want to, not when something goes on sale or clearance. Its possible there could be a hoarder as well but I would laugh if there was because the prices aren't even close to cheap enough to be profitable for the hoarder.

At Kmart and Sears you HAVE to scan, there are scanners in both stores, and yes they still do mark stuff down to cheap levels because I got some 9.99 toys just a week or 2 ago at Kmart for $1.99 each. I also got some universal remotes for $2 each that were originally 9.99. So I know Kmart's system is still allowing deep markdowns. Probably not worth scanning at Walmart, as again I have never found price discrepancies there.

Newegg is comparable to Circuit City for me, they have lots of games for 15.99 and 14.99, which is comparable or better to CC's 16.99 games that they used to have. I never got much that dropped past 16.99 in CC, but I did get some pretty good games for that price.[/QUOTE]

I'll check KMart for the scanners.......

A Target near me actually JUST recently had SOMETHING for clearance. But it was Red Faction: Armageddon for $29.99 (got it at Amazon for like $12) and 30 copies of Madden 11 for $11.68 then $7.88.
 
[quote name='SaraAB'] Perhaps Target marks down less on the east coast, I noticed you are in NJ and I am in NY...

I just think for my area its basically people just buying the stuff before it ever gets to a deep clearance, they see a red clearance sticker and they automatically think oooo its a good deal, so they buy it anyways. [/QUOTE]

Having lived in both upstate NY and northern and central VA, it's not the East Coast, it's that people buy the stuff sooner.

Think about this from Target's point of view, though. The stores with fewer clearance items are better managed because they are selling the items at a higher price.
 
Target and Walmart here have extremely high traffic, the items get taken because they are properly marked. The items in Kmart are possible to find because most people are too lazy to scan items, or they don't know that Kmart never marks the items properly. Sears doesn't get enough traffic, and when people go there they are coming for kids clothing or tools, and they are not interested in going for the video games and electronics.

So the key here to moving old inventory is to properly tag the items and have a decent inventory system, aka Target. Target is the store with the best inventory system, Walmart is equivalent with Kmart when it comes to moving old merchandise, unless they move the merchandise to another store to get it out of the clean store. But unlike Kmart, walmart doesn't have those unmarked markdowns, or random markdowns, things just hang around forever until they sell at the same price. Items can remain the same price for years and just sit on the shelves. In retrospect, its actually worse than Kmart, where things get marked down in the system, but not on the tags. Target NEVER has old inventory hanging around.
 
The only things I have noticed about Target Stores is that everything seems to go Clearance on the East coast first, then it starts to trickle to the west.
 
[quote name='gpgorbosjr']At my Walmart they have a section for "budget" games (many I see you guys get cheap) and nothing is cheaper than $19.99.[/QUOTE]

Mine are like this, too. One of my Walmarts has a budget rack and the other has a budget rack and a giant bargain bin that's full of quality titles but they're all at retail, so I don't know what the point of it is. I don't know why you'd move current-gen games out of the case when you've still got PS2 games in it. They still have Wolfenstein locked in the case for $59.99.

I went through the bargain rack of DS games that were mostly shovelware, the one thing I found that I was interested in was WarioWare DIY which rang up $34.99.
 
The Walmart budget racks here are 8.00 fixed price games, never seen anything worth buying on them. Never seen any games priced lower than $8 in a few years at Walmart. They also have the usual 19.99 games which you can usually get cheaper elsewhere. I went to a different store that had $10 and $15 budget games but again nothing worthwhile, but I can only imagine how fast these games sell to moms looking to pick up a quick fix for their kids.
 
Target did a reset of the electronics section back in January and eliminated the clearance endcaps we used to see. I haven't paid much attention since, have they returned, or is it more YMMV now?
 
There are still clearance endcaps here in target, its just that they have a lot of high priced merchandise on them aka 15% off regular price clearance.
 
Just means that the stores near you have good managers; probably not surprising if you are in a relatively affluent and highly populated area. Good managers don't get stuck with a lot of unsold inventory, and when they do have to clearance stuff they know how to shift it at the minimum loss.
 
yea i barely post here but im starting to lurk around a lot more.

anyway i had to move away for college and what really sucks is where i was from. freakin wal mart and target would discount stuff ridiculously low. i found sin and punishment on the wii for like 10 bucks 2 years ago(50 dollars at wal mart here *sigh*). legends of wrestlemania was 10 bucks 3 months after release. these people were awesome. WWE all stars was 20 dollars this christmas when i went home. its still 50 dollars here.

i move and what i do i see? call of duty 4 is still 20 bucks at wal mart. target doesnt even have a clearance rack. and the cheapest game i got at wal mart around me was morphx for 10 dollars. im not even sure why that was 10 dollars since the cheapest any other game is 15 dollars and that is extreme shovel ware i mean the bottom of the barrel shovel ware.

best buy though isnt too terrible. though honestly nothing like back home. freakin halo 2 on xbox is 20 dollars here so there is still quite a bit of stupidity. was 10 dollars years ago at best buy back home....and still is last time i saw it when i went home for christmas. might of been 5 bucks actually.

i feel sad. i left an area of tons of 10 dollar games that werent all bad. to an area where 20 bucks is the norm. LA Noire is a good example. here at wal mart its out of the case for 30 dollars. back in my home city out of the case meant 5-20 dollars.

yea i feel your pain TC even more so leaving the gold mines to come here. argh. i think some cities just dont discount stuff. i think its i live in a college city so people just buy this crap up regardless or perhaps more idiots work here and dont put stuff on clearance.
 
[quote name='donkeydrop']Just means that the stores near you have good managers; probably not surprising if you are in a relatively affluent and highly populated area. Good managers don't get stuck with a lot of unsold inventory, and when they do have to clearance stuff they know how to shift it at the minimum loss.[/QUOTE]

I am in Welfare city here so definitely NOT an affluent neighborhood... not sure how good the managers are though. But everything here is like 15% off, when as I said before a few years ago I used to get incredible deals. We are talking about the same store here. Now I have to work a lot harder to get a real deal at a bargain basement price from a retail store.

The only places to get real bargains here is yard sales, because yard sales don't take EBT cards, you have to pay with cash, which no one around here has. Thrift stores are out because the ones here are overpriced, again there is just too much traffic at them, and things sell for high prices so why mark them lower. For the 1-2 bargains you will find per year at a thrift its just not worth going all the time.

Now if i lived within walking distance of these stores you better believe I would be trolling them every single day for new bargains, but unfortunately that is not the case. For me to go shopping every single day just to score bargains would be a huge waste of gas and wear and tear on my car especially since well. I really wouldn't be saving that much money and I would probably be buying a ton of stuff that I don't really need.

Also, for what its worth I can save enough money by just shopping online for cheaper prices if I really want something.
 
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