People spending less

Over the last month, we have noticed that sales are down in our electronics business.  Basically people are not buying things that they don’t need.  Lets admit it, you don’t “need” a wireless router in your home.  You can keep swithing the ethernet cable back and forth between the computers in your home.  Sure, you can’t wonder around the house, but do you really “need” to?  The answer seems to be “NO” for more and more people.

They also don’t “need” to replace that older computer.  They may sit waiting a little longer, but parting with the $500 for a slightly better model is not a necessity.  A laptop would be a nice replacement for the aging desktop system, but the laptop cost money.  Money you are spending on something else, like bills!

This is actually the first month that we have seen declines in sales.  I don’t think that it will be the last though.  One thing that may help is that Christmas is coming.  People tend to lose their minds at Christmas.  Society puts so much pressure on gift giving, that people spend money they don’t have.  Not everyone does this, but enough of them do that it ends up in the retailers favor.

One area of the store has been better than the last few month, video rentals.  We have been renting movies like crazy.  I think that people are renting movies instead of doing other more expensive activities.  Also the movie selection has been a little better than the last few months.  There is also the weather to thank.  So some reason the weather on the weekends has not been all that great for the last couple of months.  When this happens, we get a flood of people looking for movies to rent.

I am Gonna Gripe

This lady comes in the store today and tells us how she paid late fees on Saturday when she rented her movies.  Great!  Then she says that when she got the movies home, her daughter told her that she already paid the late fees.  Well the damn computer will not let you pay them twice, its stubborn like that.  We look up the account, sure enough the lady and her daughter both paid late fees.  Only not on the same movies.  If you bring them back on time then these things don’t happen.

Pissed about Late Fees

A couple of days ago a man came into the store to rent videos.  He was really nice until the clerk stated that he had some late fees on his account.  The bomb went off!  The guy started using some really nice language towards us.  Turns out his “daughter rented the movies without permission”.  Of course she did, that is why her name is on the account.  I took the name off, put a note on the account about the daughter not renting anymore and told him that I was leaving the fees on the account.  I said that I would be happy to remove the fees when they were paid and that he could take it up with his daughter.

Next day.  A woman comes in and she is also very nice, at first, but blows a gasket when she finds out about some late fees.  Turns out that these late fees were “racked up by here EX-husband”.  I look at the account and what name do I find, the guy from the day before.  Wow, no wonder these two people are not married anymore.  I bet they could piss-off the Pope.

Damaged Movies

Our video rental business is very anal about the condition of our movies. We have a $2500 disc repair / cleaner from VenMill. We inspect every movie that comes into the store for any problems and then clean or repair them. If they are not repairable we mark it as damaged and throw it away. We really like to try and keep our customers happy. The less they complain the better it is for us. Now, a woman brings in one of our movies. She makes the 6 year old kid explain that the movie wouldn’t work. Ok, it happens from time to time. So we offer a credit, she then tells us that she thinks they may be late. Sure enough the movies are late, so we take off the late fee. We then look at the movie, Holy Shit. No wonder it won’t work, the dvd is scratched to hell. One of my employees looks at me and says there is no f-ing way that movie went out in that condition. Great! Maybe we shouldn’t be so nice. To top it all off, the scratches are so deep that it will not buff out. Into the trash it goes. It was a new movie that had been rented 2 times. Now we will be stuck owing the movie distributor money on it because it didn’t rent enough times.

Creative Customer

Yesterday, we had a customer that came into the store to tell us that she had lost two movies she had rented seven days ago.  She wanted to know how mush the fee would be.  We looked at her and told her that what she really wanted to know was what the replacement costs were for the movies that were now gone.  This is when she decided that she was smarted than us and told us that there was an new “Federal Law” stating that we could only charge her the cost of the movie new.  So $20.  Well we politely told her that she was mistaken and that we could in fact charge her more than $20.  Nice try!

I have to assume that she was perverting the lawsuit against Blockbuster Video.  That case really had nothing to do with late fees, rather the practice of converting a rental to a sale.  People complained that it was deceptive.  Well we have no such policy.  But, we do have a policy on late fees and the replacement of lost/stolen videos.

Movie Rentals

I have to make a comment about this because it happens almost everyday at least once.  We rent videos at our store.  Now we do have quite a collection, but space does dictate that some movies eventually have to go.  Sometimes that movies get damaged beyond repair and if they are not big renters they just don’t get replaced.  Now the think that irks me is that someone will walk in and ask for some totally obscure and off the wall movie.  Of course, we don’t have said obscure movie and the person freaks-out.  They start complaining, even yelling, about how we never have anything they want to watch.  Well no one does.  The movie probably hasn’t rented at any video store in the past five years, but we are supposed to have it in stock for the day that this person walks in and wants it.  I have a suggestion, buy the damn movie from Amazon!