If there’s one slightly good thing about capitalism, it’s the blood-thirsty competition. Some corporation wants your money, and they’re gonna do what they can to capture the market and get your money. Drive up package pickup sounds really cool for a $79 annual subscription (until it eventually enshittifies).
It’s already enshittified. It’s a store. What you are describing is a store.
People have already forgotten this, but in the beforetimes you used to be able to go to a store and they would actually have a selection of products. Like, in stock. You could go to Radio Shack or CompUSA or Circuit City or even Best Buy and get whatever tech gizmo, hobby component, computer part, cable, or whatever it was you needed. Right then and there. And they would have it. All of it. No waiting. No shipping. You could even pay with cash. And you didn’t need a goddamned subscription.
Or you could go to Sears and get just about any fucking thing. Or K-Mart.
Nowadays retail is so damn transient because “everything is online,” so even major retailers don’t keep wide swathes of product in stock and expect you to just buy it from their web site. And worse, what they do have in store is always super scarce, which I’m positive they do on purpose to increase your urgency to buy whatever they do have now, because if you come back tomorrow it’ll probably be gone and out of stock forever.
As someone who doesn’t shop online anymore and a really goes to brick and mortar, the stock is dwindling OR you can actually sure the garbage they are trying to sell. I’ve just not bought things so many times because I can actually see the poor quality up front.
It’s really maddening, isn’t it? I went in to Autozone the other day fully prepared to pay 3x the online price for a coil pack for the vehicle I was working on in order to have it now. Autozone claimed they had it in stock on their web site, at the location I went to.
They didn’t have it. Their only response was that they could order it – at their full retail price – and have it from the “hub” on their next shipment in three days.
Even with the Hyper Mega Priority Next Day Select Plus Ultra shipping option, it was $80 cheaper to get it from RockAuto and I had it the next day, which wasn’t ideal but still better than Autozone’s bullshit.
I didn’t expect the brick and mortar retail location to compete with online stores on price. I was absolutely willing to pay a ridiculous premium to have that part right then, when I needed it. But what I got was the worst of both worlds: The insulting price, but still no availability. This is because bean counting idiots have decided it’s cheaper to make their inventory “lean” and keep as little as possible of it in stock. And apparently they keep their staff lean, too, because no brain cells were available to notice that a ~$180 component in a box about a foot and a half long was no longer on the shelf even though the computer said it was.
And motherfuckers wonder why retail is dying. Um, yes, that would be because retailers ruined it.
Correct, that’s why my comment also mentions the return of brick and mortar. I’m aware of retail stores and how they used to operate, having worked retail for years while I did school
It’s costs a lot to store unsold inventory. It costs a lot to ship it from store to store to try to get it to sell (based on their inventory metrics they want to place that product in stores that will be able to sell that product). Not all stores carry enough (or at all) of the item you want to buy. Brick and mortar could return, but we still have that problem of stocking stores.
I proposed an option I could see happening if it somehow became the norm to tip your delivery drivers. Maybe we would see drive thru pickup services.
It’s already enshittified. It’s a store. What you are describing is a store.
People have already forgotten this, but in the beforetimes you used to be able to go to a store and they would actually have a selection of products. Like, in stock. You could go to Radio Shack or CompUSA or Circuit City or even Best Buy and get whatever tech gizmo, hobby component, computer part, cable, or whatever it was you needed. Right then and there. And they would have it. All of it. No waiting. No shipping. You could even pay with cash. And you didn’t need a goddamned subscription.
Or you could go to Sears and get just about any fucking thing. Or K-Mart.
Nowadays retail is so damn transient because “everything is online,” so even major retailers don’t keep wide swathes of product in stock and expect you to just buy it from their web site. And worse, what they do have in store is always super scarce, which I’m positive they do on purpose to increase your urgency to buy whatever they do have now, because if you come back tomorrow it’ll probably be gone and out of stock forever.
As someone who doesn’t shop online anymore and a really goes to brick and mortar, the stock is dwindling OR you can actually sure the garbage they are trying to sell. I’ve just not bought things so many times because I can actually see the poor quality up front.
It’s really maddening, isn’t it? I went in to Autozone the other day fully prepared to pay 3x the online price for a coil pack for the vehicle I was working on in order to have it now. Autozone claimed they had it in stock on their web site, at the location I went to.
They didn’t have it. Their only response was that they could order it – at their full retail price – and have it from the “hub” on their next shipment in three days.
Even with the Hyper Mega Priority Next Day Select Plus Ultra shipping option, it was $80 cheaper to get it from RockAuto and I had it the next day, which wasn’t ideal but still better than Autozone’s bullshit.
I didn’t expect the brick and mortar retail location to compete with online stores on price. I was absolutely willing to pay a ridiculous premium to have that part right then, when I needed it. But what I got was the worst of both worlds: The insulting price, but still no availability. This is because bean counting idiots have decided it’s cheaper to make their inventory “lean” and keep as little as possible of it in stock. And apparently they keep their staff lean, too, because no brain cells were available to notice that a ~$180 component in a box about a foot and a half long was no longer on the shelf even though the computer said it was.
And motherfuckers wonder why retail is dying. Um, yes, that would be because retailers ruined it.
Correct, that’s why my comment also mentions the return of brick and mortar. I’m aware of retail stores and how they used to operate, having worked retail for years while I did school
It’s costs a lot to store unsold inventory. It costs a lot to ship it from store to store to try to get it to sell (based on their inventory metrics they want to place that product in stores that will be able to sell that product). Not all stores carry enough (or at all) of the item you want to buy. Brick and mortar could return, but we still have that problem of stocking stores.
I proposed an option I could see happening if it somehow became the norm to tip your delivery drivers. Maybe we would see drive thru pickup services.