I am into cycling and wanted to buy some padded cycling shorts and these Azure branded ones came up on the Google shopping results at Halfords. They were the right size and reduced on the website from £19.99 to £12.99. Being a hardworking individual I am never in the house during working hours and so daytime deliveries are not conveniently for me. I checked the stock in my local store and planned to visit the store the next day.
I cycled to the store and found the bike section. I then found the exact shorts that I was after and took them to the counter. "Excuse me, can you check the price on these please?" I said "Yep" replied the spotty teenager, "they are £19.99" Playing naivety to the behemoth of shopping experiences that is the Internet...."But they are £12.99 on your website" "Well you could have them delivered from the website" "But I am never in to receive the item" "Ok, you can have them reserved for in-store collection" I said, "Ok can you give me 5 minutes" Sure, "Ill put these shorts aside for you"
I moved to the side of the counter and got out my Smartphone. I navigated to the Halfords website, found the item and was able to reserve them for collection, without paying anything, at my local store, which was conveniently where i was!!! I then went back to the counter and said smugly "Hello, I have reserved a pair of shorts for collection, do you have them set aside for me" "Sure they are right here!" He took some details, and presumably checked an email confirming the reservation, with a discount code. No only did the shorts go through at the reduced price but a further 25% was taken off and I managed to unbelievably pay just £10.39!!! So for 5 minutes work I basically paid just about 1/2 price.
From what I can see, Halfords have not realised this would be possible to do in store with a Smartphone for many items. The staff member did not question or refuse the transaction (he was more interested in assembling bikes). The thing is these stores need to compete with the internet to some degree or at least provide a means to encourage people to visit the store (foot-fall) especially at 7pm on a weeknight. Whilst at the store they then hope that I would buy something else as an impulse purchase. Most of the prices of items are at a super-inflated price in store and so hope to take advantage of people that have already made the trip to the store, which is a sign that those customers are almost guaranteed to make a purchase. However if you are keen to get a discount very easily you can repeat the steps above whilst being able to check the produce in store before payment is taken.
