How Big Box stores lost me forever this thanksgiving.

[Pulsar]

One of the items on my 3 boys list was a ps4 because their Wii finally broke. So I set out trying to buy one.

First, Meijer. I have a friend there. Ps4 on sale for $199. Called her while the website said in stock at her location. They'd been out for 3 hours, and they had been told the inventory system would not report online correctly. So Meijer was using false pricing to get people into their store.

Best buy. Called them only to discover that not only were their phone systems intentionally shut down across the country, their inventory system was also not reporting correctly online.

JCPenny out of stock. Showed in stock on line. Kohls same.

Luckily I just needed to call a few friends and didn't drive the distances required. BUT INVENTORY SYSTEMS ARE NOT THIS COMPLICATED. If they were, I'd know because I handle ordering hundreds of thousands of parts to make engines.

So I did two things. I bought it at a slightly higher price online ($230 for the 1tb). And I'll be damned if I jump through the big box stores hoops ever again falsely reporting inventory levels just to get people in the door. Online shopping 100%.

 

[ViRGE]

BUT INVENTORY SYSTEMS ARE NOT THIS COMPLICATED. If they were, I'd know because I handle ordering hundreds of thousands of parts to make engines.

But does your inventory system scale up to tens of millions of orders, with 50x as many queries in a single day?

You're right in that inventory isn't normally very hard. But there's nothing normal about Black Friday.

 

[purbeast0]

PS4 Slims were $199 literally EVERYWHERE during this week's sale just like the PSVR stuff was $100 off EVERYWHERE. You clearly did not try hard enough to find one if you didn't find one. Even if you didn't want to go tot he B&M stores you could have ordered from Walmart, Best Buy, GameStop, Target, and probably a dozen other places without even leaving your house.

Also you do realize how busy these stores are right? I went to Target, GameStop, and BB today and in all of them I saw the $199 PS4's sitting out to pick up. Their online inventories (at least BB) didn't say they had them in stock when looking online, and it also didn't say BB had the game I purchased in stock when checking online. But they had it in stock when I was there.

Sounds like PEBCAK more than anything.

 

[Pulsar]

So I take it that repeatedly misstating inventory is ok? And this is these stores first Black Friday so we should cut them slack? No and No. These stores can report to the dollar what they made today and to the item what they sold. Believing it is just a "scaling" problem is just an excuse to let them do it all over again. Life is too short to be screwed around like this.

 

[purbeast0]

So I take it that repeatedly misstating inventory is ok? And this is these stores first Black Friday so we should cut them slack? No and No. These stores can report to the dollar what they made today and to the item what they sold. Believing it is just a "scaling" problem is just an excuse to let them do it all over again. Life is too short to be screwed around like this.

Then you should have ordered online from the bajillion sites selling PS4's for $199.

Definitely PEBCAK.

 

[Kaido]

Good luck with that

 

[John Connor]

Have you heard of Amazon or the countless other online stores? I don't go into a store anymore. Forgetaboutit

Edit- Ah! I see why. They're expensive as fuck on there. That's BS!

 

[bradly1101]

I can never get my local Best Buy to pick up the phone [edit: on non-holidays].

 

[John Connor]

That's ridiculous. They'll be out on their ass in no time. You just wait.

 

[bbhaag]

How Big Box stores lost me forever this thanksgiving.

Heh...you'll go back. It may take a couple months maybe a year but eventually you will find yourself walking around a big box store. It's nothing to be ashamed of though. All off us swear them off at one point or the other but we always go back.

 

[John Connor]

All off us swear them off at one point or the other but we always go back.

Last time I bought from a big box store was circa 2003 when I bought a JVC camcorder from Circuit City. I buy all of my electronics crap online anymore. Hell, I can't remember the last thing I bought at BestBuy. It's always been NewEgg, Zipzoomfly, Amazon or eBay.

 

[lxskllr]

But does your inventory system scale up to tens of millions of orders, with 50x as many queries in a single day?

You're right in that inventory isn't normally very hard. But there's nothing normal about Black Friday.

I dunno. Scan it in, scan it out, report. How hard can it be? It has to be setup right, but it's not an intractable problem. The only step that requires separate human interaction is the scan in. Everything else gets taken care of in the purchasing stage, and a computer can trivially add reporting.

Stores fuck it up because they want it fucked up. They want bodies filling space making impulse purchases. If everyone knows they don't have $item in stock, they won't go to the store.

 

[allisolm]

Walmart's online inventory is never right, nor is Best Buy, Home Depot or Staples and some others (all in my opinion and experience.) Don't have Meijers and haven't used Kohls or JCPenneys. It has nothing to do with Black Friday or false pricing or luring you into the store. It's always like that. BF related outages did occur with Macy's credit cards and Lowe's website. But they weren't a grand conspiracy, just internal ineptitude.

 

[ViRGE]

I dunno. Scan it in, scan it out, report. How hard can it be? It has to be setup right, but it's not an intractable problem. The only step that requires separate human interaction is the scan in. Everything else gets taken care of in the purchasing stage, and a computer can trivially add reporting.

So it's all based on total load, i.e. capacity planning. If you design a system that provides sufficient capacity for three-nines (99.9%) of all workloads, then you have a system that can handle everything except Black Friday. Black Friday is the last 0.1%.

You can design a system for it, but the costs tend to grow quickly. In the case of Black Friday, means you now need sufficient capacity for 99.99% of all workloads. Is that one day worth doubling (or more) of your infrastructure costs?

For someone who is entirely web-based like Amazon it is, since they have to overprovision anyhow for general reliability reasons (and it helps that they own a booming cloud hosting business). But if you're a brick & mortar retailer, where most of your sales even on Black Friday will be in the store? Sure you'll lose a few sales, but would the difference be enough to cover the high costs of a higher performance system?

 

[WelshBloke]

Heh...you'll go back. It may take a couple months maybe a year but eventually you will find yourself walking around a big box store. It's nothing to be ashamed of though. All off us swear them off at one point or the other but we always go back.

Screw that! Occasionally look at stuff in a department store if I need to check it out, then I order it on my smartphone while having a coffee in the department store cafe.

 

[ponyo]

I dunno. I use Brickseek and it's been pretty accurate with inventory levels at Walmart, Lowes, and Target locations. But I only search for less popular stuff like discounted BBQ grills and accessories. I used Brickseek over the summer to score several Weber kettle clearance deals. I used it couple days ago to find and buy some discounted Weber charcoal at Lowes. I just found some discounted Kingsford 15 lbs, 2 pack charcoals for $7.88 at several Walmart locations so I'll pickup some more today.

PS4 was available for $199 everywhere. You shouldn't had any problem ordering online and having it delivered.

 

[Ichinisan]

I walked into Best Buy in the afternoon and they were loaded with PS4 systems.

 

[Exterous]

BUT INVENTORY SYSTEMS ARE NOT THIS COMPLICATED.

The interactions with them are more complex than you may realize. It certainly isn't malicious intent at work here.

You've got a couple of problems with inventory systems. The first is how the store is stocked. Some stores that carry a crap ton of variety do whats called 'pallet receiving'. That is the pallet comes in and they scan the barcode on the pallet. If the pallet is right - great job! Your inventory is right. However - I can speak from personal experience that the pallet pack sheet is often wrong and stores know its often wrong. So the company can either plan for more personnel at the warehouse to do a better job\count pallets shipped from manufacturers, more people at the store to scan everything in or know that a certain % of the inventory will be wrong. Different stores do it differently. For a store to accept a % is wrong isn't malicious intent to mislead the customer they just know their inventory or website will be off anyway due to the reasons below so they won't have a perfect inventory anyway and another percent or two off is offset by the savings in labor costs.

The next is customers walking around with the product - esp on days like Black Friday. Many stores use 'spider wraps' on things sized like PS4s. I don't know if they are still using them for game consoles but they could be anywhere in the store. Employees aren't going to sift through carts to look for your PS4 that the website says should still be in the store. If they don't let people walk around with them they will often be 'put up front' or 'behind the counter' with a name on them but, obviously, they won't leave inventory until they've been paid for.

Theft is also a huge issue. Theft at the warehouse, theft by transit companies, theft by store employees and theft by customers. Most of this you won't catch outside a cycle count or store wide inventory which are time consuming (affecting how often a store wants to do it) and are subject to human error and delays in updating. And there are a lot of very good customer thieves out there. I've seen cages picked in seconds, packages slit open like they were in tissue paper, and spider wraps clipped like it was twine.

And don't over look human error especially when it comes to things like online pickup orders or store to store transfers. Stock might get pulled and put aside but not be properly removed from the inventory. This usually gets fixed once the customer picks it up or its delivered to the other store but the lag for that can be days. Its not always due to incompetence either. The person might just be standing there working when they're called away and then don't have a chance to come back around to it for 8 hours and then they forget or don't care because 'Black Friday customers are all dicks' anyway. Or they are interrupted by someone screaming in their face that they ran out of some $5 filler. The person is clearly a moron since its 1pm and the ad says 'limited availability' but that doesn't stop them from running through all the expletives they know as they actually threaten you and refuse to leave the store. Now you have to give a statement to the cops as the person is forcibly removed from the store (<- actual story of mine from working a Black Friday)

 

[Schfifty Five]

Wait, why didn't you buy one for $199 online from the dozens of big box stores selling them?

 

[FeuerFrei]

Etsy sellers are guilty of using artificial shortage to spur demand. It tells you "Only 1 left" or "2 in stock and 5 people have this in their carts." Sure you can buy the "only" one and it will soon be back in stock. Imagine that So chances are there's no real pressure on you to buy today.

 

[zerocool84]

Yea the company purposely makes their inventory off, they totally love having wrong inventory levels for employees and customers so. Who doesn't love having wrong inventory levels for a multi million dollar company?

Sorry but you're insanely wrong

 

[lxskllr]

Etsy sellers are guilty of using artificial shortage to spur demand. It tells you "Only 1 left" or "2 in stock and 5 people have this in their carts." Sure you can buy the "only" one and it will soon be back in stock. Imagine that So chances are there's no real pressure on you to buy today.

I'm not super familiar with etsy, but perhaps 1 is the minimum you can list a product at, even if there's 0 in stock. I just bought a ceramic travel mug for my daughter, and the description was clear they were made to order. but it still said there was 1 in stock.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Went into Best Buy last night around 6pm to get a 8tb external hard drive for $129 that I ordered online for in store pickup and there were plenty of PS4s, saw multiple people walking around with them.

 

[shortylickens]

Walmart right now:

 

[SearchMaster]

I was at Best Buy Wednesday afternoon for something non-BF-related and they had stacks of PS4's with the $199 price and very few people in the store. I asked the guy if they were selling them for that price and he said "yes sir, have been all week".

BF is a PITA and there's no way I would sit in line for hours, but you picked a bad time to shop.