[quote name='sirhansirhan']Here are some things you don't seem to understand:
1) A store about to file for bankruptcy is not going to be well-staffed. I hear you about how there were other employees in the store and how they were ringing before and blah blah blah, but did it occur to you that you had to fetch an employee from a register to get your blu-ray? Why didn't you bitch that there weren't enough staff members on the floor? They're spread too thin, because they don't have the payroll, because they're about bankrupt. This is pretty simple. Some further extrapolation dictates that those employees who were there are very likely overworked. (As for the five-minute conversation, there's no excuse for that assuming you're not exaggerating, but that's just one employee and not the company.)[/QUOTE]
And here's the part that you don't seem to understand: Even with the staff having gone to help customers, there could easily have been two cashiers at those registers at the very least once the employee was done helping me to get my blu-ray. When he was done with me, he didn't get pulled away by another customer. He saw that there was a line forming and that the guy who was left there was falling behind, and yet instead of getting back behind the register, he set down my blu-ray behind the counter next to the cashier that was still there and just walked away. It was pretty clear that the guy who was left there needed help from the moment we got back there, but apparently he just didn't care.
And here's the thing -- while I'd be willing to write this one incident, both the guy who walked away and the guy who was having a conversation, off to poor individual employees, this has been representative of my experiences as a customer at Borders for a long time now. Let me give you a few examples:
1. This first one happened about a year and a half or so ago (so, before the point where things were quite as bad as they are now). Over one weekend, I got an email with an ad for a "huge" sale starting on Monday -- claiming big discounts on books, CDs, DVDs, etc. Hey, great, I always used to like it when Borders had sales like this in the past -- since my taste in music in particular tends to be a bit less mainstream, I can often find things that I like in the stuff they're discounting to clear out (Borders used to be one of my go-to places for a lot of things that other local stores didn't carry, until they cut way back on their music section).
So on Monday evening, after I got out of work, I decided to make the rounds of a few local Borders stores. The first store that I went to told me that they "hadn't gotten around to setting up the sale yet" (mind you, this sale was supposed to start at opening that morning, and it was now about 7pm), and told me to come back "in a couple of days" (I did actually stop by a couple of days later because I was in the area again, and they still didn't have the sale set up). At the second store that I went to, they hadn't even heard of the sale yet. When I pulled up the ad on my phone, it was the first that anyone there, including the manager, had even seen it. They said they'd "look into it". The third store didn't have any sale items out either, but there were also hardly any employees in the store to even ask about it -- the only ones that I could find in the whole store were a couple at the register, and they had a long line. I decided not to even bother and just left.
Oh, and the kicker? I sent Borders corporate customer service an email telling them about my experience. I was polite, but firm in my disappointment that I had wasted an entire evening pursuing a sale that didn't actually exist in any of the stores I went to. I thought they'd probably like to know when their stores were dropping the ball so badly. You know what they did? They didn't thank me for the info, they didn't apologize -- hell, they didn't even respond. What they did do was remove me from their email mailing list (though only for actual Borders email, I still continued to get the "Perks" spam that I never wanted in the first place).
2. The past three times that I've tried to use their "reserve in store" option on the website, I haven't actually gotten the item that I've reserved:
The first time, the item was apparently never in the store in the first place, despite being listed online as "likely in store". Ok, that happens. Not a big deal if it's only once. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
The second time, I wanted a new release CD that I knew they'd only probably get a few copies of at most, so I did a reserve request first thing in the morning when I got in to work (so probably about 9am). By 7pm that evening, I still hadn't heard from them, but since I was going to be near the store anyway, I just stopped in. No one had even looked at the reserve request yet. Ten hours later. And as a kicker, the cashier that I spoke to about it remembered having sold what was apparently the last copy about an hour earlier.
The third time was when they were running one of their 50% off blu-ray coupons, and there was a blu-ray that I wanted which only one store in a reasonable driving distance had in stock. I put in the reserve request on the website at midnight (so, after the store was closed). The next day, when I hadn't heard from them by 1:30pm (so they'd been open for three and a half hours at that point, when the email confirming that the request had been received said that I should expect to hear from them within two hours), I called. Again, no one had even looked at the request yet. And again, they had already sold the item earlier that morning. The manager asked me if I wouldn't mind taking the DVD version instead (yes, I would mind, thank you very much).
Needless to say, I've stopped bothering with their "reserve in store" option -- I don't know why they even offer it, if they can't be bothered to hold up their end of the deal.
Edit: I should also note that these weren't all at one store, so it's not like there's just one bad apple in the bunch. These were at three different stores (Tysons Corner, VA, Sterling, VA, and Manassas, VA, in that order, if anyone's counting). Far as I can tell, it's a chain-wide problem.
3. This one was the most recent, only a couple of weeks ago. I ordered a blu-ray online using their "ship to store" option to get free shipping. They sent me a tracking number, but told me to wait until I heard from the store to go in and pick the item up. Well, according to the tracking info, the parcel was delivered on Friday afternoon. I didn't hear from them, but I was too busy that day anyway to make it there, so I let it go. Over the weekend when I still hadn't heard from them, I called them to ask whether they had it (I'd had them just not bother calling me in the past). I was told that the mail "gets delivered to another building" which they "can't get into over the weekend" and that I'd have to call back on Monday. What the hell? So, ok, no choice, whatever. Monday comes, and by 2:30pm, I still haven't heard from them. So I call, and it turns out that they still haven't checked their mail -- from Friday! The guy that I talk to tells me he'll go check it and call me back. A few minutes later, he calls -- sure enough, it's there. I can't help but wonder how many more days it would have taken them to check their mail if I hadn't called.
So no, the understaffed store this past weekend has not (by far) been my only negative customer experience with Borders. I keep having bad experiences with them, again and again, nearly every time I try to shop there. And I know a number of other people with similar stories. I know that I'm shopping at Borders a lot less these days than I used to, specifically because of these experiences. I can only imagine that others are doing the same.
[quote name='sirhansirhan']2) Your previous fearmongering about how you should spend your giftcards this weekend because they are soon to be worthless is asinine. It is admittedly a possibility, but even if it did happen, this weekend would not be the last opportunity to use them.[/QUOTE]
You're right, it's probably not going to be instant. But here's the point (and here's how bankruptcy works): Once bankruptcy is declared, the bankruptcy court will make a plan for Borders to pay off what debts they can, picking and choosing who gets paid first and how much. As far as the court is concerned, gift cards are just another debt on the pile. Quite often, when the financial state of the company is bad enough that not everyone can get paid, the court will decide that other creditors (who are owed much larger sums of money than individual gift card holders) get priority over gift cards, and gift cards cannot be honored until (and unless) those other debts get paid. Will it happen? Hard to say, as every bankruptcy plan is individual to the company and situation. If it does happen, when will it happen? Again, hard to say -- but it could be at any point after bankruptcy is declared (sometimes it takes months for a plan to be developed and approved, sometimes it gets fast tracked), and there will be no warning when it does. To my mind, it's better to just get those gift cards out of the way before it's even a risk. If you want to take a chance, more power to you, but people should be aware that the risk exists.
[quote name='sirhansirhan']I can't say definitively, but I'm thinking that these very coupons are a lot of which led Borders to be in this situation in the first place.[/QUOTE]
I absolutely agree with you on that point. I've wondered for a long time now how they make any money with those coupons. Honestly, from what I know of the profit margins on CDs, anyway (I had a good friend who managed a local record store in college, so I got a lot of the inside scoop on that market), I'd be surprised if their markup on those is even close to 50%. One has to presume that there was a plan behind these coupons in which they would somehow still profit off of the deal, but I suspect that said plan worked better on paper than it did in reality. I keep expecting them to stop doing the coupons, or at least cut them back, and yet the coupons keep coming. I'm honestly kind of baffled by it.
On thing that B&N has been a lot smarter about has been the coupons. Most of their coupons are in the 10%, 15%, or at most 20% range, and other than maybe the new member coupons, I've never seen one come out at more than 30%. Even with the discount, they're probably still making at least a small profit off of them. And the coupons aren't continuous -- they're maybe once or twice a month, if that.
The other thing that B&N has been a lot smarter about -- their members program. By charging a $25/year membership fee, they're doing a few things. First, you're not getting a 10% discount on the first $250 worth of items that you purchase from them, you're just pre-paying that portion of your purchases. By the time they're giving you a discount at all, they've already made some money off of you. Secondly, by charging for membership, they're essentially making customers buy their own customer loyalty. When you've got that card in your wallet that you paid $25 for, you feel inclined to "get your money's worth" out of it. How? By buying more stuff, of course. With a free card, that incentive isn't really there. Borders caught onto this too little, too late. To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure they actually get it (if they did, they wouldn't be stacking the discount on top of 40 and 50% off coupons on a regular basis); it seems more like at this point they're just desperately trying something that appears to be working for the other guy.
[quote name='sirhansirhan']Being good to your employees is worth a lot, and good to support. If you think the economy and job market are bad now, just wait and see what it's like when our only shopping options are places like Wal-Mart or online retailers.[/QUOTE]
No argument there either. I'm not pleased to see Borders go so far downhill. They used to be one of my favorite stores to shop at, and now I can barely even stand to go in there.
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