I hope this will enlighten some of you how to deal with the Wiz... First off, you have to understand that a LARGE number of Wiz employees (not the college student part timer, but the store managers and higher) are ex-Crazy Eddie employees and come from that era... Second, they all work on some sort of commission... Third, they will do anything to put money in their pocket...
Let's see, where to start...
Ok, prices... There are basically three prices at the Wiz. 'A' price is the ticket price, 'B' price is the sale price and 'C' price is cost price. Cost price is really what's called Landed Cost, or rather the raw price of the item plus all the overhead like rent, trucks, utilities, etc...
Now, salespeople make a straight 1% commission based on volume and also get what's called a Spiff on just about everything. A Spiff is basically an incentive to sell that item for some reason. You can bet that the higher the spiff on an item, the more money the company makes on the item (higher markup), the more of them the company has in stock or the quicker it's going to be discontinued... For example, walkman's. The Wiz makes extremely more money on Aiwa than Sony, thus a $60 Aiwa walkman may have a $3-4 Spiff and a Sony may have 50 cents or a dollar... Spiffs are usually sliding scale between 'A' price and 'B' price and are 0 ifthe sales person sells below B...
Salespeople are also rated on sales performance. Each day, week and month, reports are distributed listing total volume, margin % (profit), service contract %, accessories %, returns, etc... Stores vary, but generally, company wide, around a 18% margin, 4-5% service contract and 7-8% accessories is required at a minimum. Car stereo and small electronics usually has a higher margin (mid 20's)...
So, what does all that mean to you... Well, every salesperson has one important goal. Put more money in their pocket...
Here are some Jedi mind tricks you can play...
-Price matching merchandise other than accessories, like tape decks, tv's etc...
Time was, sales people at the Wiz knew they were the only guys in town... Newmark and Lewis was out and PC Richard's only stayed around because they sold refrigerators and washing machines... Sure there are the schlock places in the city that are really all owned by the same people who go out of business and start over again ('a la' Uncle Steve's, Steve's, Uncle's, Uncle's Stereo). Companies like Camera World, e33rd St., etc... The Wiz's idea (a rethough out strategy from Crazy Eddie) was to win a war of attrition. Starve out these little guys, so that's why for years they took any ad you could find.
These little guys, on the other hand, really didn't have many of the items they advertised. It's called bait and switch... I run an ad for a Sony D-8 for $400, but when you come in the store, I'm out of stock and will have to order it. Noi rainchecks and no guarantee you will get it (and why should you, they're not an authorized Sony dealer, so you're either buying it illegally or it's gray market, which is non-USA warranty). So, instead, I sell you something else, like a DCC deck! ;>
Sometimes, the store will go into a Wiz and buy 1-2 at the cheap price and bring it back to their store and possibly resell it. They have even bashed the outside of the box and tell you it's the last one left, but I have a better model over here...
So, the Wiz figured it would try and beat them at their own game and also increase their customer base... By the way, they spend more money on advertising than anyone else in the entire north eastern US. If a salesperson is good, s/he will 'step' a customer from the price match piece (or even a Wiz sale piece) and sell you something else (usually with a huge Spiff). Unfortunately, most salespeople at the Wiz are really clerks. Their training program was amusing, but they just teach them about the merchandise, not how to sell... Sure they go over things like overcoming objections (usually to service contracts) and how to increase accessory sales, but no real sales skills.
When you pull out a price match, the clerk starts to get that really bad, sour disgusting feeling in his wallet... What you need to do is mention you are buying lots of accessories and inquire about the service contract... You are now telling him: "You're gonna make shit on the D8, but you're going to jack up your service contract and accessories percentage and also your margin (because accessories are usually 50% markup and service contracts are 100%).
Then you have two options... You can either dump all the accessories at the last minute or at the register, or, if you think you'll have a problem, just go back in within the month and return everything then... Or go to another location and return it... That all goes for the service contract too...
Remember, they make 10% commission on the service contract, so you make them lost a $5-$10 spiff on an item, but tell them you are buying a $150 service contract that will put $15 in their pocket and bump up their numbers, you better believe their gonna sell it to you. You walk in though, and make them spend 30 minutes with you, then you pull out the price match and act like a dick and tell them you're not buying anything else, they're going to find some loophole to screw you...
The salespeople are generally not allowed to make a deal for lowering the price on an item to make the service contract seem cheaper (drop $20 off the VCR, if you buy the service as opposed to saying, I will take $20 off the service contract...) That's called 'cheesing' and sometimes a manager will get pissed off and sometimes not... It depends how much the manager cheesed when they were sales people... ;>
Managers get paid on store performance. They have certain goals as well, like volume, margin, service contract % and accessories %. They get a percentage of the profit of the store for the month times how ever many of these goals (or buckets, as they're called) they hit... In some of the bigger stores around x-mas, you can believe these comp checks are pretty nice... ;>
So, it all comes down to putting money in the register and in the salesperson's pocket. When a salesperson looks at you, they are looking at a 'fill in the blank spiff' and most of these kids will 'drop their pants' just to make a sale, or rather what they consider a sale... Real salespeople understand that the sale doesn't begin until the customer says no... ;>
Hope this helped some people out, hope it didn't piss anyone off because it was long, but as a whole, I believe that most people out there shop in similar stores (Circuit City) and can use some of this to their advantage... Know your adversary. Know what drives them. Know what their objectives are. Then use that knowedge to kick the shit out of them... ;>