I visited the Trafford Centre yesterday. The main reason for doing so was to allow both my wife and I to visit the Apple store. We both have AppleCare Insurance on our iPhones and they had both been affected by a problem with the plastic casing; a small crack starting at the docking port and making its way up the back of the handset.
We got these replaced with no problems whatsoever – fantastic customer service and we decided to have a wander around whilst we were there.
I bought Sue a Sony Reader for Christmas. It’s a Mills & Boon special edition (pink) PRS-300. I’d had my eye on one for a while – long before I’d bought one for Sue, e-ink was something that looked fantastic. There was a Sony Style shop at the Trafford Centre so I decided to go and have a look at the other model they have on offer – the touch (PRS-600). I’d read a number of conflicting reviews – a lot of the negativity was aimed at the screen. Due to the surface required for a touch screen interface, the screen was more reflective than the matte finish of the PRS-300. I confirmed this almost immediately when I was unable to read the text on screen from a number of angles due to the florescent lighting in the store.
Up to this week I had been waiting for the announcement of the Apple iPad – it was pointless buying an E-book Reader as well as a tablet, I’d end up with having too many devices to carry around. After disappointment with the press conference and knowing that I wasn’t going to be picking up the iPad (at least not the 1st generation) I’d decided I wanted the PRS-300.
There were a number of options available to me at this point. I knew that I could get the reader online from WH Smith for £139. I knew that Sony were selling it online for £149.99 and I knew that the prices other retailers were selling it for varied from £150-£199. I decided to see if I could regain my faith in the high street; I’d have a go at bartering like my dad used to do (when we used to bother going to physical shops and not just buying things online). I remember one occasion he was buying a Camcorder. Currys and Comet were both situated within a few hundred meters of each other so we went to-and-fro playing them off one another. One shop would throw in a bag, the other a bag and some tapes, back to the first and they’d throw in a spare battery along with the bag and tapes. It was great fun and you could end up with a real bargain. This was all before the Internet really took off.
I decided that since we were out, wanting to have a wander around anyway that I’d set myself a little challenge and try to get hold of a Sony Reader cheaper than I could online. I want to make it clear that I didn’t set out to waste the time of any of the stores involved, I wasn’t trying to defraud them or con them into selling me something cheaper than they should have been doing, I was trying to satisfy my own personal curiousity about whether or not high street shopping could still be competitive when compared against the Internet.
Here’s an account of how it went.
Sony Style
They had the PRS-300 at 149.99 – matching their online store price. I thought this was more than reasonable considering a lot of places tend to treat the businesses as two completely separate entities. Also they had the readers on display, both (PRS-300 and PRS-600) were turned on, had books available to read and were on the display stands that allow you to pull the unit away from the stand to feel it in your hands properly. I decided the price was pretty good but that I’d go and have a wander around the other shops to see what they were offering.
WH Smith
They didn’t have the readers on display but once we tracked down a member of staff they checked in the back and confirmed that they had one in stock at £149.99. I asked them why they were selling it for more than it cost from their website and they attempted to explain it in terms of delivery costs – it costs them more for them to have stock delivered to the store. (They sell it online for £139 including free delivery to either store or customer).
Waterstones
Had a nice display cabinet next to the tills – you couldn’t hold one but you could see them behind glass. They had an offer on this weekend where they were giving away a free £10 e-book voucher for their online store with all e-book readers purchases. Price of the PRS-300 was £179.99. The store was busy and I struggled to get hold of anyone – we decided to leave and come back a little later.
Sony Style
Back in the Sony shop I decided to try something out. I didn’t lie as such but I asked an assistant if there was any room for maneuverability on the price as I’d seen it elsewhere. He told me that if I bought one today I could have it for £134.95 as they were having a sale. I asked him which colours they had in stock. He replied “none”. They’d have to order one in. Sneaky! They’d order it in and I’d have to pick it up from the store, they weren’t willing to ship to my home address. I’d have had to go back to Manchester from Bradford, negating any saving we’d have made.
John Lewis
Managed to find the Sony Readers in the electrical department on display stands which you could lift them from to read. Some helpful soul had decided to delete all of the books on them, you could look at the menu but not a lot else. Price was £179.99. It took us ages to grab an assistant, even though there were a number of them hovering around – they seemed more interested in talking to one another than helping with customer enquiries. We found one and asked him if they were willing to price match the other stores. He told me their policy allowed for two options – either we bought the Reader at £179.99 and their price match department would verify the lower cost, send us a letter which would allow us to go back into store for a refund, or we could do it in reverse – wait for a letter which would allow us to purchase the reader at the lower price. Again both options meant a return trip back to Manchester.
Waterstones
I decided to go back to Waterstones and it was a little quieter, managed to grab someone and ask them if they’d be willing to price match. They got a manager who said unfortunately not. They then tried to sell me an Elonex E-book Reader (I didn’t even know Elonex were still in business) and told me it was only £130 and it was better than the Sony because it read more types of PDF. I decided to let this go and we left. Again.
Currys.Digital
We decided to see if Currys had any in the shop. They had the unit retailing at £179.99, we were going to leave but I noticed they had a sign up by the tills which mentioned their price promise. If you find it elsewhere within 15 miles/however many days they refund the difference + up to 10%. I grabbed someone (again they were all for gathering in groups and ignoring the customer) and asked them if they’d price match a cheaper store I’d been in that day. He went to get a manager who came over, got a reader out of the cabinet, printed off a label and took me to the till. “That’ll be £179.99 please sir.” “Oh, I said. I was wanting to have it price matched with another store”. I told him that Sony were selling them for £134.95 – he asked me if they had any in stock (drat) and I told him that they had them ready to order in 1/2 days. He looked at me smugly and said “We won’t be price matching them then”. I replied with “WH Smith are selling it for £149.99″ He asked me if it was the same model and the same colour, I told him it was. He asked me if I’d told the shop assistant this, I said I had, he looked unhappy, went to find him and told him to check out the price at the other store.
The guy who I originally grabbed must have been late for lunch because he palmed me off onto someone else who went onto the net to have a look at the WH Smith Price. They had the slowest Internet connection I’ve ever seen and it took a long time to sort out. She saw that it was £139 online, she eventually phoned the store, got through, managed to get a price and was told £150 (price had gone up a penny!). She checked with another manager who said that they would match the in-store price but not the web price. I would be able to get it for £149.99 (£150) – 10% of the difference; in this case £30 so £3 off and a retail price of £147. I asked if that was the best she could do – I told her I could order one from WH Smith today and have it delivered to my house for free on Monday/Tuesday. I realised that it was only £8 difference but £8 is £8. She agreed that every penny counts at the moment and said the only thing she might be able to do was offer some discount on the monthly payment protection plan for three years. I told her I wouldn’t have the reader in three years but was going to buy it on my credit card so it would be protected that way. I didn’t bother going into home contents insurance and things too but it’d covered under that as well. I told her that I was very grateful for her time and thanked her but I was going to leave it. I did feel a little bad about having wasted her time. If they’d done me a price at less than £140 I would have bought it there and then. They’d have made a sale of £140 and I might have given them another go in the future.
As it happens, I left the Trafford Centre without a Sony Reader.
I had a good look when I got home at the WH Smith website, using Quidco I can get the reader for around £134 – 50p cheaper than the Sony shop were offering me it for. This is an extremely good price (Sue’s reader at Christmas cost me £160) but at the moment I can’t really afford to buy it. I could but I’d have no money left to spend on myself for the rest of the month. In a month where you have Bioshock 2 and AvP coming out you need to save the pennies up!
I’m in no immediate rush to get hold of a Reader, as long as I have one before I go on holiday later in the year I’ll be fine.
It’s not all bad news for the high street, the Skechers shop got £120 out of Sue (after I’d run some price checks online to make sure you couldn’t buy them cheaper) and I bought a couple of iPhone cases from the Apple store spending around £60 (including £20 for a new case for Sue’s new iPhone) so we did do our part yesterday to help the retail industry.
To sum up – I think my own consumer habits have changed. I can’t speak for the rest of the world or the rest of my generation but 9/10 I cannot bring myself to buy something from a shop if I know that I can order it online cheaper.
I understand that high street stores have overheads that online stores might not; more staff – certainly more customer facing shop staff, more costs regarding electricity, taxes, etc. I just thought that with the economy being the way it is at the moment (even though we’re now out of the recession) that high streets might try to be a little more competitive.
I also realise that without the Sony Style high street store I wouldn’t have been able to hold the PRS-600 in my hands and confirm that the screen was unusable in bright light (making it a non-viable purchase for holiday sunbed reading). With this case there would have been enough scope for me to build an opinion based on reviews from the web but its no match to holding the thing in your hand.
The thing that bugs me the most is that the online counterparts of the high street shops (GAME being the most prominent example) are treated like a seperate entity. To me, there is no reason why an Xbox 360 copy of Left4Dead2 might be £34.99 online at www.game.co.uk and £42.99 on the high street. I can use my reward card to collect (and redeem) points on purchases both online and in store. I can return an item I’m not happy with that I bought from the website to a GAME store. It’s silly. With the two arms of the business being as conjoined as they are in that respect – why not do it with prices across the board? I know it would make it more likely for me to buy a game whilst I’m in town on my lunch break. As it stands at the moment I’ll buy it from the cheapest online store. Sometimes this is the GAME website, other times its Amazon or gameplay.
Whilst I don’t want the high street shops to disappear, I’m not going to spend any of my hard earned cash with them if I can save money, spend it online and get the product I want 1-2 days later. I’ve never been in such a rush that I’ve had to have something there and then. (we’re talking electricals here, reptiles and other non-electrical impulse buys are excluded from this statement)
Thanks for reading 
