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Re: What's happening to Jaycarand Harvey Norman?

wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@dnews.tpgi.com.au:

And another beef: For years I bought all my computer needs from HN at > Balgowlah, and that's quite a few thousand dollars. Then I wanted a

My position is somewhat different to yours. I have never been able to understand why anyone would buy anything of a technical nature from Gerry Harvey. His (technically, it's "Her", his wife runs the retail business now) salesdroids are on a commission with minimal retainer arrangement. This means that the only time they're going to be helpful and/or not lie to you is in the unlikely event that what you want to buy happens to correspond with what they want to sell you. They want to sell you high ticket items with minimal actual interaction with you.

Havings salesdroids on this renumeration arrangement means that shopping there is going to be a universially bad experience. The salespeople are puthy and unhelpful (their idea of 'help' is to intercept you, the customer who has done his own research and made his own decision en-route to the point-of-payment to "help" you carry the goods to the counter and "help" him get his name on the sales slip (so as to "help" him earn a commission for doing nothing).

Low ticket items don't contribute significantly to the salesdroid's income, so he's not interested in making any sort of effort to sell them to you, particularly if some sort of special order might be required.

As for customer loyalty, salesdroids at Harvey Norman show every bit as much loyalty to you as Gerry Harvey does to them: none. You'd be well advised to effect the same degree of loyalty to them.

The Woolworths/DSE case is instructive in that staff are motivated similarly. Woolworths Limited are right cnuts insofar as staff relations are concerned. Woolworths considers staff to be an unfortunate (and disposable) necessity, and they renumerate accordingly. When Woolworths bought DSE, DSE died. It's just a junk electronics retailer now.

Jaycar. Google it. There's been a long and detailed discussion here in just the last month or so.

GB

--
 "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the 
  entrails of the last priest." (Diderot, paraphrasing Meslier)
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GB
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She runs Domaine.

Reply to
Lohn J. Deister

Interesting. originally I actually had quite good experiences at HN in furniture, white goods and computers. Maybe it was because the sales staff saw me as a good prospect (and they were right - I bought tens of thousands worth) but it worked then. But it fell down when I wanted the battery and so they lost their man. And only a few weeks later I've bought a new printer and a new laptop -- from somewhere else. And I'll never go back. Lack of intelligence I suppose -- the good service would have rapidly paid. Paying on commission should work if the salesperson has the intelligence to realise that loyalty breeds ongoing sales.

Reply to
<aalaan

My 2 cents worth: Due to a simular bad experience, I refuse to shop at hn. I have also suffered from the lack of service and intelligence at dse.

Where possible I buy my electronic parts from WES (Sydney), or consumer electrical items from The Good Guys. But I do live in a small town and I have limited options.

I have mostly found WES good, I had an issue with some of their belt sets some years ago, but on all occasions that I wanted to return or replace an item - they came through, even paying the return freight on occasion. So one can't complain when you get service like that.

With consumer electrical items, that's a different story. It pays to shop around.

Jeff jeffqld+aus_electATgmail.com [replace AT with @]

Reply to
Jeff

Yeah, I have no loyalty, I buy from the cheapest seller.

I recently had a very good experience with HN. My breville toaster died after six months (the wizz-bang white LED "countdown" display backlight went dim) and I took it back under the 12month replacement warranty. I expected to be in there for ages and have a big hassle etc, but I came out about 2 minutes later with a new toaster off the shelf, no questions asked, no hassles. Same thing happened again two weeks later (same fault!), I was again out with a new toaster within two minutes.

Dave :)

Reply to
David L. Jones

It's no skin off their nose to do this. The manufacturer most likely has a return for exchange warranty policy on this appliance. The droid at HN had enough sense to realise that to replace it immediately for you would mean not having to engage you in a trial argument, thus wasting his potential sales time ( read possible commission earning) with other buyers.

Cheers, Alan

Reply to
Alan Rutlidge

Yes, and I was glad for it. At the very least I expected some paperwork and that I'd have to line back up at the checkout again etc, but they let me pick one up off the floor stock and walk right back out the door. NICE!

Dave :)

Reply to
David L. Jones

And then there are the salespeople/ businesses who don't help with the little stuff and wonder why they don't get repeat custom. I tried to buy a cable from Johnnyappleseed GPS the other day, total lack of communication on their part, guess which store will not sell any more GPS or mapping to me any more?

Reply to
Blutt

I wonder if Kymbal knows about it... AFAIK he's still the Brisbane based principal. I've never had anything but first class service from him (and sent many a potential customer in his direction).

Or has the management recently changed by any chance?

--
John H
Reply to
John_H

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