Getting down and dirty with Bill. :)
Yeah, but I don't buy an item because I expect to want or need after sales service. The same reason I won't spend the extra 100's of dollars for an additional warranty. I always ask the salesman, "Do you expect this thing to break? If so, I won't buy it". (Good grief, I had a salesman try to sell a policy on a $40 DVD player).
It sounds like what you're saying is (in part) that those customers who weren't bright enough to 'make the equipment work' were the ones that came back into the store for help. On the other hand, many that were bright enough, didn't need the service and were bright enough to save themselves some money to boot. The others that were bright enough to make it work, paid a premium to buy it from the small store and got nothing in return.
In todays market, many things, PC's and digital cameras have pretty much become commodities. They're almost, if not already, to the point of being disposable. I've had the *ist D for a year and three months. If two years from now, it breaks, how much will I care? If I had bought it full price at a local mom & pop, could they fix it? What would they do with it? Send it back to Pentax and probably mark up the price of the repair. I could send it back myself. Would I? I seriously doubt it. By then Pentax will have released a better camera, and if not I'd look at another brand.
I'm partly just sparring with you but I'm seriously expressing my POV as well. For me, the fact that I can go to a mom & pop store and feel the camera in my hands and play with it for 5 minutes, does not justify the extra, possibly 100's of dollars.
To me the best thing about the mom & pops is that I could go in and peruse. There's tons of small ticket items that I could easily have access to, and if on vacation I wanted to splurge and pay a little extra for a certain lens or filters, or needed a certain kind of film, I was/am happy to do it.
One side thought... the PDML in itself, serves to negate the value of the in-store service in many cases. How many questions that are asked and answered here, would have been formally answered in-person in-store? Damn. I wish I wouldn't have said that. :(
Tom C.
From: "William Robb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: pentax-discuss@pdml.net To: <pentax-discuss@pdml.net> Subject: Re: Film is dead... Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 17:09:26 -0600
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom C" Subject: Re: Film is dead...
What would possibly convince me to take $80 - $110 out my wallet and give it away for nothing?
After sales service.
We had a big box move in on us when I was still im the camera shop. They undercut everyone by having minimal service levels and minimal overhead.
Sure, they would beat us up on price, but when their customers couldn't kake the equipemnt work, they wouldn't help either.
We eventually had to institute a bill of sale policy because so many Superstore customers were coming to us for free advice that it was impacting our customers service levels.
Local service does cost extra. Online retailers don't have service or support staff, they don't have display equipment or even a store.
Buddy with the vacuum cleaners may well be flogging them out of his basement.
William Robb
