Posted: 20 January 2019 at 12:42am | IP Logged | 3
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It's the store owner's responsibility to know the value of their product. If you're just looking that information up when the customer brings something to the counter, you're doing your job on their time. Plus, you're inviting haggling. Three seconds ago, this book wasn't worth the time it would have taken you to price it. Now, suddenly, it's eight bucks. Really? How about we meet in the middle and call it, I don't know, three-fifty? Oh, no, it says right there "eight?" Well, on the cover it says 60 cents. As the customer, I expected to pay the marked price. That's not how it is in this business? Funny. That's how it is everywhere else. So, three-fifty or is this good-bye for the two of us?
Or, y'know, you could have just... priced... the... book when you put it out. Just a thought.
Ah, but prices change. Things fluctuate. So, keep up with it. Come in a little early one day and mark up the rising books and mark down the... oh, who am I kidding? The prices never go down, right?
I have no interest whatsoever it the trials and travails of my local comic book store owner's difficult life. Either there's a price on the book and it's good, or it's no sale. Which many a store owner has told me is fine with them. They're not going to lose money on this... book... they... had... no interest in pricing... until it appeared under their nose. Huh. Yeah. Super valuable commodity, that.
I watched an otherwise pleasant transaction melt down because a used book dealer decided the woodworking magazines my friend was buying were worth more than the price written on them. Just so we're clear... She'd gotten them in, priced them at some point, put them out, and would not sell them at the price she'd marked.
This is the downside to pricing things in advance; the idea that things could shift in value over time. This is where the bozo with the Overstreet will tell you he's the smartest man still standing. He's not going to lose money on that sale. He'll just kiss that customer goodbye (forever) and make it all back when he sells the books to the wealthier guy in line behind him. Provided those are the books that guy wants. If he wants something that was the price it was when you put it out and now is more, well, you're now losing two customers in one day.
Might be more prudent to just... y'know, sell the books at the marked price and call it good; learn the lesson and scout your store for the valuable stuff before the customer finds it, & mark it up then. All of this cloak and dagger stuff at the time of purchase is perhaps fun for the hardcore garage sale hagglers, but the rest of us...? We were just trying to buy a book. It's okay. We didn't really need it. You hang on to that. It's your ticket to easy street, after all.
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