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Matthew Yohe

macrumors 68020
Oct 12, 2006
2,200
142
When you are as HUGE as best buy, and you are selling a product as huge as the iPad, it makes sense to create a demand. People do this all the time. You can't get it now, so the second it becomes available to you, you buy it in fear that you might have to wait another month. This happens all the time with a lot of products.

You really think Best Buy needs to help create a demand? Seriously?
 

Gupster

macrumors newbie
Apr 7, 2011
2
0
Happen to me today

:mad:Best Buy told me today that they had them in but Apple would not let them sell them. I have been going for two weeks every other day and they finally tell me they have them and can't sell them. I hate this crap. I want my IPad 2.
 

jrb363

macrumors member
Feb 17, 2011
43
0
Typical Best Buy

Quota? Are these guys idiots?

Best Buy isn't the only place to buy these... I've thought through the various marketing gimmicks, and really none apply here. Why would they do this...

Maybe they ate too much magical unicorn dust and it clouded their judgement. :rolleyes:
 

b166er

macrumors 68020
Apr 17, 2010
2,062
18
Philly
It's psychology, man. big companies use it against us every day. I have worked in retail a long time, and I see this all the time with high demand products. Dollars to doughnuts apple has a stock pile of iPads and they are just letting so many thousand slip out at a time. Hype generates massive amounts of free press and profits at no cost to the company making the product.
 

xStep

macrumors 68020
Jan 28, 2003
2,030
143
Less lost in L.A.
"Apparently, Best Buy was holding off on selling the iPad 2s it had in stock, telling customers there weren’t any when in fact they had just reached their quota of sales for the day."

The difference to the customer is zero. Unavailable for purchase either way.

If this report has any truth to it, Apple should be ashamed to nick-pick over semantics.

NOTE: I seem to have misunderstood.
 
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Drew n macs

macrumors member
Apr 16, 2010
85
1
On topic, I called Best Buy and was told that unless I pre-ordered before the day of the sale, I could not get an iPad 2. My co-worker walked in last week off the street and purchased one. Why the inconsistent message? I don't get it.

The same thing happened to me at bestbuy, inventory showed they had ipads available I went to the store and none available. I called a couple hours later and they said the had the 32gb available, so I trek back to BB and by the time I got there they were all gone. Interesting, I don't know what to believe.
 

Matthew Yohe

macrumors 68020
Oct 12, 2006
2,200
142
:mad:Best Buy told me today that they had them in but Apple would not let them sell them. I have been going for two weeks every other day and they finally tell me they have them and can't sell them. I hate this crap. I want my IPad 2.

Well of course they say they have it now, because they can't sell you any. They also probably had it the various times you went in, and yet lied to you.
 

uncclew

macrumors newbie
Aug 12, 2008
4
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

It's about consistent sales numbers, lower volatility. I'm sure bonus numbers etc. are tied to this. Just like when a company has a great quarter, they may try to push out revenue to the next quarter. Less volatile net income equals stronger stock price.

Not that this move would necessarily influence the stock significantly but same concept.
 

CIA

macrumors 6502a
Jun 17, 2003
655
460
As best as I can figure, it works like this. Managers get good grades if they sell certain amounts of products.

I'll use low numbers here. Let's say BB corporate wants you to sell at least 5 iPads a day to make your "Quota". One day, 10 iPads come in. You sell all ten, yay, you made quota for the day.

But the next day, none get shipped to the store. So, boo, you didn't make quota, since you didn't have any to sell.

So, if you get 10 the day after that, & not knowing if more are coming tomorrow, you sell 5, make quota, and hold the other 5 for the next day when, low and behold, none get shipped to the store. You still have 5 left over to sell, which you do, and again you make quota for the day.

Basically the more days you make quota, the happier BB corporate is, and the better chance Mr. Manager gets a bonus down the road.

Mr. Manager
 
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ThunderSkunk

macrumors 68040
Dec 31, 2007
3,774
3,975
Milwaukee Area
Not a best buy / walmart fan. It's hard to say they bring a negative perception of cheapening the brands they carry without coming off like a pompous ass, but perception is subjective, and that's just how they come across to me.

Stuff like this doesn't help.
 

gkarris

macrumors G3
Dec 31, 2004
8,301
1,061
"No escape from Reality...”
I was at an Apple store and I saw a salesperson holding one new in the box and was just taking it to the back.

The sign up front said "iPads available every morning at 9:00 am".

I think that says it all... :eek:

I work in retail - if we have a product, we'll sell it (why would we deny a customer or "make them come back the next morning to wait in a line"?).
 

Mr. Savage

macrumors regular
Jun 11, 2010
248
0
Toronto
That's nothin'. I remember shortly after the new MacBook Air was released at BB I was playin' around with the demos and was listening to an older man with his teenage daughter talking to the salesman about getting one. Then I noticed they ONLY had the more expensive versions (bigger SSDs) on the price cards. The old guy was oblivious about the different versions and the daughter was spoiled so he agreed to buy her one. When the sales-twerp went into the back to find one I pulled up the inventory right there on the demo model and showed the guy the cheaper model. When the sales-kid came back out the old guy asked him if they had the cheaper model in stock. The kid played dumb and pretended he didn't even know there was such a thing. I helpfully pointed out the one on the inventory screen and its "In Stock" status.

Long story short: kid acts surprised and confused, goes gets one and old guy buys his daughter a $1350 (instead of $1650) computer to update her facebook status with and thanks me for not minding my own business ;)
 

scotty321

macrumors regular
Jun 4, 2003
229
181
Anybody who knows anything about the people who work at Best Buy will tell you that they are all a bunch of untrustworthy backstabbing liars, and you can't trust a thing they do or a thing they tell you. Best Buy is the worst.
 

Amazing Iceman

macrumors 603
Nov 8, 2008
5,214
3,930
Florida, U.S.A.
Weird... I think there's more involved in this than we can imagine.

One thing that comes to my mind is the possibility they were holding their stock to sell it outside the country, as there's been a high demand and higher value to sell overseas.

Or... a competitor made an arrangement with Be$t Buy to sell a minimum quota a day (well... very odd, but possible) for who knows what reason.

It's a strange concept on BB's part, but if I had a store I would sell all my stock if there's a demand for it. If I hold off, my customers would be driven away to a competitor and I would loose both present and future sales.
 

Scott90

macrumors 6502
Jul 14, 2008
273
0
For everybody wondering why they would do it like this:

Corporate looks at whether or not daily sales goals are made. An iPad is a guarantee sale, so if they have five available, and already made today's goal, they want to keep it until the next day, because that's a guaranteed $2500 (at least!) they'll make. For Best Buy as a company it doesn't matter and it's probably not beneficial, but it makes a store manager look good if he can say he made the sales goal every day since the launch of the iPad 2.
 

BLUELION

macrumors member
Oct 25, 2007
67
0
what ever...

This is not a low for apple, when you have stock and have entered into a legal agreement to sell the stock, you sell what you have. Not selling the product is lost sales and dollars.

The fiasco here lies with Best Buy entirely. Apple did the right thing to pull their product.

Get a clue dude.

another low for apple, i ordered Mar 19th still waiting ...

fiasco just continues, does not look nice apple.
 

axual

macrumors regular
Oct 31, 2007
214
4
Not surprising ...

I had called BB multiple times (6 times over two weeks), each time resulting in the answer that they were sold out. They had a reservation list however.

So, I walked into Best Buy just to look at the iPad 2. As I was discussing this, the BB rep said they had one which had been returned that was up at Customer Service desk. After checking, the Manager got involved because they wanted to make sure the SIM card had not been activated.

At the same time, unbeknownst to my discussion, some guy who had called earlier was told by the Customer Service desk a returned unit was there and he could have it. When I went up with the manager to check it, the other guy was there and expecting the returned unit to purchase.

So bottom line, I actually ended up not with the returned unit, but with a brand new iPad after the manager who didn't really want to deal with the other guy, said he had a new one because that the 48 hour window for a reservation holder had expired.

So my take: BB probably had more iPads than they said they did. I also wonder if the 48 hour reservation hold window was something Apple was aware of.
 

Amnak

macrumors 6502
Nov 16, 2009
461
48
Normally I'd call bs, but I got mine at Best Buy and my friend a former employ asked if they had any more, the said technically no but for him they'd "find" one. Thank god I got it from there for reward pointssss!
 

KT Walrus

macrumors member
Jul 10, 2008
30
0
I know some Apple Stores hold back iPad 2 stock for "special customers". I was talking to a retired school teacher who had a contact at an Apple Store and she said she got her iPad 2 by having her contact hold one for her when he could. She got hers a few days after they first went on sale when her contact called and all she had to do was pick it up at her convenience.

Best Buy employees aren't the only ones setting aside stock of iPad 2s. It isn't about first come first served, but who you know.
 

mikeapple

macrumors member
Apr 23, 2010
43
0
Best Buy as ALWAYS been really ****** to the customer...

Always had run-ins with workers there and the management always takes the side of the rude sales person... SCREW YOU BEST BUY.. I hope Apple pulls out
 
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