PMT Online vs Instore prices

[Tim2291]

I was in PMT the other day and they had a Yamaha BB734 on the wall priced at £1256... on their website the same bass is £889.00... I completely understand that stores have over heads etc, but why do retailers seem determined to destroy their trade in shops by making their products 30% more expensive in store! I guess from a purely business point of view, getting rid of the shops would save them a fortune!

[MichaelDean]

11 minutes ago, Tim2291 said:

I was in PMT the other day and they had a Yamaha BB734 on the wall priced at £1256... on their website the same bass is £889.00... I completely understand that stores have over heads etc, but why do retailers seem determined to destroy their trade in shops by making their products 30% more expensive in store! I guess from a purely business point of view, getting rid of the shops would save them a fortune!

It is mad isn't it. I think if you pulled up the website for a comparison, they'd probably honour that price. They're probably relying on either people just paying the price on the label, or having someone haggle and then feel like they got a great deal, when it is actually just the price on the website.

[casapete]

Hard to think that PMT would do this - could have been a genuine oversight maybe?

[MichaelDean]

2 minutes ago, casapete said:

Hard to think that PMT would do this - could have been a genuine oversight maybe?

I see it all the time in the Bristol store.

[BassApprentice]

From working in retail recently with a web presence, it sounds like a left hand not talking to right hand situation.

 

Price change online - not correctly relayed to store or Price changed online - someone in store should have changed tag and didn't. When they went to put it through the till the online price probably would have popped up on the till.

 

As other have said, if you flagged this then they would sort it. If you bought it then checked online think you would be due a refund of the difference.

 

EDIT: Just checked PMT - could it have accidentally been priced as a BBP34?

Edited November 27, 2023 by BassApprentice

[casapete]

1 minute ago, MichaelDean said:

I see it all the time in the Bristol store.

Ah, okay. Doesn’t seem great business practice to me then. 
I’ve seen this before with some clothing companies where the price difference has been

small, but £367 is crazy. 

[urbanx]

Yeah I've had this. I saw the Meteora by chance in a PMT store. Cant remember how much it was maybe £1,100? Anyway I walked straight by thinking "I'm not even going to bother trying it, it's out of my range" 

 

Went home, Googled it: £850 at PMT. So I trot back to the shop to find the store model has been damaged. 

 

I purchased it, elsewhere. If it was priced at the online price in store I would have bought it there and then. 

 

 

[neepheid]

Before people jump simply to attributing this to malice, it could be a systemic failure - where IT change stuff on the website and neglect to inform the people who maintain that info on the shop floor.  If they haven't realised that there's a problem, it'll keep on happening until they get a procedure in place that properly handles price changes.

But they probably are at it, yeah

 

[Tim2291]

4 hours ago, BassApprentice said:

From working in retail recently with a web presence, it sounds like a left hand not talking to right hand situation.

 

Price change online - not correctly relayed to store or Price changed online - someone in store should have changed tag and didn't. When they went to put it through the till the online price probably would have popped up on the till.

 

As other have said, if you flagged this then they would sort it. If you bought it then checked online think you would be due a refund of the difference.

 

EDIT: Just checked PMT - could it have accidentally been priced as a BBP34?

I did wonder this but no, the label definitely said BB734! 

 

They also have a Taylor 214ce acoustic for £1349 in store... £936 online! Taylor 324ce, £2249 in store and £1969 online! Sadly I think they are just trying to get more money in store and preying on people who don't do their research!

[BassApprentice]

58 minutes ago, Tim2291 said:

I did wonder this but no, the label definitely said BB734! 

 

They also have a Taylor 214ce acoustic for £1349 in store... £936 online! Taylor 324ce, £2249 in store and £1969 online! Sadly I think they are just trying to get more money in store and preying on people who don't do their research!

Really odd business practice....

 

Wonder how they would counter this if asked?

[mr4stringz]

Makes even less sense given they have the facility to order online to collect from store.

[BassAdder60]

You would think they would have lower prices in store for collection to encourage actual folk to come to the store!!

 

PMT are mostly ok but on occasions I see damaged goods being sold as new, wrong prices and now they charge more for shipping 

 

Ive started using Gear4 Music, GAK and a few others online who seem to get it right more often as not ! 

Edited November 27, 2023 by BassAdder60

[Old Horse Murphy]

I spoke to the guys in PMT Bristol about this and their tactic seems to be about the "Big Reveal", in that you get the price checked there and then and they'll generally match the best price they find it being sold for online. 
 

It may work for some but I'd rather the price on the instrument reflected the price online but I get why they do it. I wonder though, how many potential customers see the price tag and walk away before speaking to anyone. 
 

 

Edited November 27, 2023 by Old Horse Murphy

[diskwave]

2 hours ago, Tim2291 said:

Sadly I think they are just trying to get more money in store and preying on people who don't do their research!

This. Stores are now the Saturday afternoon domain of mum,dad and the grandparents who dont know much and will just hand over the money, meanwhile those in the know will trawl online and just get it cheap anywhere. 

[Barking Spiders]

8 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

I see it all the time in the Bristol store.

I was hoping to pick up an electro-acoustic guitar from PMT Bristol next weekend as the online prices are competitively priced. If the store price is 30% higher I might as well by one locally and save myself the cost of a 60 mile round trip. 

[Old Horse Murphy]

9 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

I was hoping to pick up an electro-acoustic guitar from PMT Bristol next weekend as the online prices are competitively priced. If the store price is 30% higher I might as well by one locally and save myself the cost of a 60 mile round trip. 

They won't be, but you'll just need them to price it up for you and they'll compare it with other online prices  to give you the most competitive offer. 

[Burns-bass]

This is really stupid. I bought my bass at PMT and I asked about the online price. The guy explained that they simply don’t have time to alter the prices every time they change and they always honour the online price. In fact, it it were cheaper online anywhere they’d match it.

 

The online and in-person operations are the same. The price you pay will be the same online as in the shop.

 

Speak to a person and all will be well.

[BassApprentice]

I get that speaking to someone or actually buying a product will end up at the same point - but that's a crap excuse.

 

I worked in a jeweller and we had price changes all the time that we had to get through to avoid these very situation happening. Or customers complaining the advertised price is different from sale price etc. 

 

It's part of the job to maintain and monitor your stock, saying you don't have time isn't good service.

[Burns-bass]

Just now, BassApprentice said:

I get that speaking to someone or actually buying a product will end up at the same point - but that's a crap excuse.

 

I worked in a jeweller and we had price changes all the time that we had to get through to avoid these very situation happening. Or customers complaining the advertised price is different from sale price etc. 

 

It's part of the job to maintain and monitor your stock, saying you don't have time isn't good service.

They’re physically printed tags. Of course, in an ideal world, they’d do this but the chap explained to me it would take too long as they fluctuate daily. 
 

The shops will likely be tracking online prices daily using a programme and updating them to ensue they’re competitive. This is how online businesses work. (I know because I’ve work with lots of them)
 

I just don’t get someone wandering around a shop and not stopping someone and asking a question, especially if I wanted to buy an item.

 

 

[Woodinblack]

In the bristol store they stopped putting prices on at one point - something to do with price matching. Either way it stopped me buying my reface DX when it was actually a good price as it wasn't labeled.

But I always found if you say it is a price on the site that is the price you pay. 

[AndyTravis]

I left the trade in 2014.

 

The fluctuations in currency, the fact most things are bought on 30-90 day payment terms meant our final “cost” at invoice payment could be vastly different (weirdly, they never seemed to go down…)

 

we’d get 200 lines of price changes every few days - particularly on Yamaha/Fender/Gibson.

 

The website was updated overnight, done by some clever computer.

 

The tickets were either shipped to us from head office or generated by us on publisher or something of the ilk.

 

So there was always a delay - “hey mate, this is £299 on your website but it’s £269 in store” and we’d have to match and take the rollicking. Legally we didn’t “have” to match it - but we usually honoured it.

 

i voted for hand written tickets (for speed) but our head office wouldn’t stand for it.

 

It was a weird business, and everyone got into a race to the bottom - a competition to see who could survive on the thinnest margins.

 

And then there’s the “alleged” price fixing from a few big players…so reps would arrive “£729?! They’re meant to be £849, if you advertise that at £789 like everyone else is doing; you’ll sell them all day long…” meaning “change it to £789”

 

We’d found ourselves at the back of certain order queues etc if we didn’t play ball.

 

Shame. Was an ace job in many ways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[tauzero]

I suppose it's not occurred to anyone to put QR codes on the instruments instead of price tags. The QR codes would simply take you to the web page for the instrument in question.

[lozkerr]

9 hours ago, neepheid said:

Before people jump simply to attributing this to malice, it could be a systemic failure - where IT change stuff on the website and neglect to inform the people who maintain that info on the shop floor.

That sounds quite probable, but if that is the cause, it's likely down to slovenly system design resulting in crapware thrown together by hipster brogrammer types whose confidence far outweighs their ability.

 

I've spent almost my entire working life in IT. Primarily healthcare and life science, but I did have a stint working on a retail and supply-chain management system.

 

This setup had a central pricing system that used a basic retail price and added markups depending on the store type and (IIRC) location postcode. I think the idea behind that was to offer lower prices in deprived areas - £9.99 in Torquay vs £4.99 in Toxteth, for example. Or conversely, screw a bigger margin out of the better-off. Sounds brutal, but that's how the retail industry works.

 

For this to work properly, price changes had to be communicated instantly to every store. When a central change was made, electronic messages were sent to the in-store systems notifying them of the change. Cue harassed shop staff changing shelf prices at very short notice.

 

The reason I know all this is that the main part of my job consisted of testing those messages.

 

The point of this waffle is that price management is really basic stuff - Janet and John level - when you're managing a large retail operation. The PMT website is just another type of outlet. A price difference of that magnitude suggests a big hole somewhere, which makes asking for either a price match or ordering online at the lower price a very sensible thing to do.

[AndyTravis]

8 minutes ago, tauzero said:

I suppose it's not occurred to anyone to put QR codes on the instruments instead of price tags. The QR codes would simply take you to the web page for the instrument in question.

Yeah, this was being discussed at the time - alienates the punters who don’t use them (also, this was 10/11 years ago so they weren’t as commonly used then).

 

we also talked about using on wall iPads with pricing and financing options.

 

we trialled it with some Roland Drums.

 

even bolted to the floor, people nicked them…ah Manchester Piccadilly 😳😂

[Dad3353]

1 hour ago, tauzero said:

I suppose it's not occurred to anyone to put QR codes on the instruments instead of price tags. The QR codes would simply take you to the web page for the instrument in question.

 

It sounds simple, indeed, but I'm afraid that I'm even more 'simple'. I don't use/understand 'smartphones' (Too old..? Too dumb..? Too lazy..? Whatever...), so I'd be the one walking out if the ticket price didn't fit my budget. I don't 'haggle', nor price compare. Two questions are all I have, for myself. Do I want it..? If 'Yes': Can I afford it..? If 'Yes', buy. That's it. Simple..? Yup, that's me.