Pay to Shop -- Fools!

They are building a new BUY MART store in my town. Apparently BUY MART is one of those stores that charges a fee for the “privilege” of purchasing their overpriced crap. They are not alone, several other merchants charge user fees to set foot in their pathetic stores. Some others are Costco, Sam’s Club (a branch of Wal Mart), and Direct Buy. I don’t know what kind of pathetic suckers are willing to pay good money to purchase from these greedy vendors, but the whole program rubs Bob the wrong way.

Bob spent close to a decade as a buyer for a large business organization, and has also several years of professional experience doing the purchasing for small business organizations. Bob is accustomed to sellers seeking out my custom, and working hard to encourage me to buy their products. We don’t live in the former Soviet Union where big stores had mostly empty shelves. We live in a country where there are ten thousand sellers offering us merchandise every day. We live in a country where sellers have to compete with each other to get us to shop in their stores, or to buy on-line from them. I still have a pocket knife that was given to me by a seller some years ago, along with a dozen golf balls that had the company logo. The logo has warn off the knife and I lost the golf balls, but I remember the name of the seller who gave them to me. He didn’t ask me to pay $50 for the “privilege” of buying his products and services. I can even remember when gas stations gave away premiums such as free glassware with each fillup. Sellers should have to compete with each other by giving us customers some bonuses for our custom. Their products should be higher quality, more reliable, lower in price, etc., or we’ll go down the street to the next seller.

Over the past few decades far too many retail giants have started screwing the public, and pretending that they can get away with any abusive crap they like. (See HughesNet Sucks Yes, they can get away with it for a while, and the sheep will follow if there is lots of advertising.

Bob is very skeptical of any seller who wants Bob to pay to be allowed to shop at his store. Bob watched the “Direct Buy” ads on TV where some flake claims to have “saved” $30,000 on the kitchen cabinets for his home. If you listen to the details it sounds like he spent $40,000 on cabinets. Bob has built numerous custom homes and finds those figures ludicrous. Maybe, if you are building a multi-million dollar home, and want cabinets made of Endangered Species wood, then you might spend that much. But “saving” $30,000 by paying Direct Buy a thousand for a “membership” is a fools bargain. They claim these huge “savings” and demand that you get an appointment to meet with a high pressure salesman for the “privilege” of seeing their catalog order office. Bob has years of experience as a buyer, and has never paid for the privilege of buying. Any price offered today, to any customer, is available tomorrow to any other customer. If this lying scumbag wants you to pay good money for him to quote you a price, tell the greedy scum to pound sand. There are a thousand other merchants you can go to, and with a little work you can save more than their fictitious “bargain.”

So Buy Mart can open their doors, and charge any fools willing to pay to shop there, but Bob won’t be paying them. If they want Bob to buy their crap they need to be thinking about giving me a free dozen golf balls or some other bonus for darkening their door. But then, I’m a professional buyer, not the usual dupe who was characterized by P.T. Barnum a century ago when he observed, “A fool and his money are easily separated.”