Hey Gerry Harvey… Get Online And STFU

Then why dont you guys start competing on service. How many times have I gone into a store and been confronted by a salesman who has no idea what they are talking about, 90% of the time. And what about when something breaks, you might as well have bought it online and sent it back to the manufacturer yourself!

Those two reasons in themselves stop me from shopping at a bricks and mortar store. When my non tech savvy friends or relatives want to buy electronics i advise them against going to a store where they are regularity conned into shoddy overpriced products from people with no clue.

So yes you are 100% correct, brick and mortar stores have absolutely nothing to offer. PS the aussie dollar is near parity, pass it on you scum bags!

Harvey Normon survives on ripping people off. this is why they are happy to lie to the customer about accessories like HDMI cables etc… where else can you find a Monster HDMI cable in a direct comparison with a yellow composite cable trying to show the benefits of Monster HDMI cables and their $300 price tag WTF? this is illegal (or should be if it isn’t). Harvey’s salesmen are the worst in the industry and belong in the car industry. they know to get the sale there and then before the customer can research online.

they are now dinosaurs. in this increasingly confusing industry, the last thing people need is to deal with idiots like Harvey Normon sales people who will sell you what they want, not what you want.

of course they cannot compete online when they rely on misleading people for profit, this is the one ability they lose when going online. they are just con men.

Frankly, you deserve to go out of business with that attitude.
Customers don’t exist to support you. YOU chose a career where you serve others. Calling them ‘stupid people’ shows how much you care about the job.

I’m sure that people working in a hundred other outdated, irrelevant positions probably protested when the time came for them to move on, but that’s progress. Why should the rest of the world be living in the Dark Ages because you can’t compete?

The reason we are still in business is because we give the best service around, we have been in business for over 100 years. But there is no way that you can compete with a store that doesn’t have to pay any tax, they already have a 10% price advantage.

A business can’t sell things below cost and still stay in business. If I, Harveys, Good Guys, JB-HI etc are buying our goods at a higher cost than what an online store can sell it for, no matter if we sell online we still cant sell it for the price of a parallel imported product without tax.

Just take a look at shopping square who sell Australian goods & parallel imported goods next to each other, the Oz stock is way more expensive then the parallel imported stock.

by the way @Tegzilla I never said customers were stupid, I was talking about most of the people on this blog that believe they know what its like for a retailer when they have no idea at all.

If we could buy cheaper maybe we would have a chance but until that happens we can’t compete. But as I said before, the consumer will be the first ones to carry on when they can’t walk into a store & look at a product, as there will no longer be any stores to walk into.

I love a bargain as much as anyone else but when the current situation will wreck our economy something needs to be done about it.

I agree 100% Adam. I’m a consumer, but I’m not greedy. I just want a fair deal not the cheapest deal. Because cheapest is not sustainable model.

Any idiot should be able to follow that logic. Seems a lot of people are still working their way up to idiot status.

Plenty of burned out husks from price wars in this country already. There is a big different between being competitive and simply undercutting the opposition until someone falls over.

And how many negative people on this thread are happy to go into a store, play with the gear and then go onto an online store and buy the cheap deal. Take take take take take.

I’ve had the same “just get competitive” statement dealed out at our business too. When the people we have to compete with work out of home, or outsource to third world countries, bit torrent all the design software and fonts that we have to pay huge amounts for.

Thank you @Angus

[QUOTE]“And how many negative people on this thread are happy to go into a store, play with the gear and then go onto an online store and buy the cheap deal. Take take take take take.”

I deal with people like this every day that want my expertise and to bleed every bit of info out of me, play with the product then ask me if I can match a price they have found on eBay or another online parallel importer. I tell them I can’t because it’s way below cost they then leave and get it from them.

People are way to willing to waist other peoples money to save themselves a buck, this is very unfair to retailers and something that people wont be able to do in the near future when there local has shut down because they were just using them to check out products before they brought them online.

If your business survival is crying out for government protectionism, you’re business is already dead. Any high-school economics student will tell you that economic forces are actually the answer. Your business model is no longer as lucrative as it once was, you have to downsize or close and opportunities will be opened up for more efficient businesses. Bad news for you but the customer is king and in the long run businesses and industries which are allowed to fail are good for the economy. The horse drawn buggy industry was wiped out by the unfair imports of the automobile.

Man, there’s a few really bad analogies being waved about here. If we really want to use the horse drawn cart being replaced by an automobile… What we are dealing with here is the shop that used to sell buggies, and now sells spanky automobiles is now dealing with a situation where consumers come into their store, test drive spanky automobiles and then go home and order the one they like from an overseas retailer who has no overhead in maintaining a physical presence in this country or contribute to the community in the form of jobs, services or taxes. Then people here are complaining that local business needs to simply close it’s doors if it cannot compete. Where do you think that will end up? I mean follow the logic. It makes about as much sense as pyramid marketing.

Wow Adam your arguments in so many ways are flawed!! You talk about 2 points to -6 points margin on sales…. thats bullshit…. possibly the business is communicating this to you on the sales floor to discourage over discounting but the real margins are a completly different story….

I appreciate that Real estate/ staff / lights etc cost money but there are some huge advantages for a consumer to purchase instore that retailers just don’t get.period. I’m a tech savy 20 something male and when i want a new item, i want it NOW!! online cannot compete here.

The problem is that retailers have been taking the piss for too long and have been caught sleeping (for the last 10 years). If a business is not profitable and can’t compete…. well…. it’s not a business and should be allowed to fail!! end of story….

Adam, you may need to learn a different type of snake oil to sell…..

I worked for Harvey Norman and I can tell you that you do not know what you are talking about.
For starters the only reason why profits aren’t so high now is that the retail industry is down and stock still remains from when the AUS dollar was lower which costs aus companies more to purchase the items. I will also add here that when the AUS dollar goes the other way retailers very rarely pass on the savings to customers so they can’t scream now when it’s effecting thier pockets.
Most of what comes from the US goes through a maze of profit making before it gets to our stores. The larger companies in the US use international distributers, who make a profit on what they supply to our distributers, who make a profit on what they supply to our retailers and then the retailers make a profit.
When we purchase from the US ourselves we purchase for what is in many cases below what our Australian retailers can buy the items for at costs, even if we did pay duties.
Why should we be expected to pay more for items here from our retailers so these rich paople can all make profit from our purchase when they are not needed. Expecting everyone to pay extra for items to have someone else get them over here is like saying we have to pay someone to do our gardening or wash our car when we can do it ourselves.
Jerry Harvey had the chance years ago to embrase the internet and he chose not to. I know that for a fact as I was involved in putting a proposal to him that would have involved sales people from each indidvidual store selling over the internet.
He chose to pretty much ingnor the internet saying that it will never do much and gave very little support to a friend of mine who established the Harvey Norman website, which failed.
Jerry Harvey is now getting what he deserves as he made the wrong choices and chose to ingnor the potential of internet sales.

I don’t necessarily agree with Gerry here but don’t forget that Stores will be ordering stuff well before it often goes on sale so the price they are charged may not have had the same exchange rate as what you see now.
Also the whole FIFO issue arises. First in, first out is where a retialer orders 2 items at $1000 and the next 2 are ordered a month later at $750. Say the margin is 10%, on this item, the retailer still has to sell the first 2 item at a higher price to cover his own buy price
A lot of invective seems to be aimed at the retailers here, don’t forget that there is another layer in here, the distributors. Whether it is an Australian off-shoot fo the parent comapny or a completely seperate entity, they are just as involved in affecting retail prices as well

Spot on

See my issue is the fact that Local distributors haven’t moved with the times quickly enough. I really do not think the 10% GST here is the issue at all. People in my experience, even for pricey goods, are usually happy to pay 10% extra if it means they will get local warranty, don’t have to pay shipping and get the goods faster.

The reason why people are buying overseas isn’t the 10% GST at all IMHO but the fact that local retailers price the goods well above what it cost overseas, and not by 10% but sometimes closer to 30% – 50%. As an individual I’m also buying from other retailers, be they online or not where HN and the like should have more direct access to the wholesaler (and thus cheaper prices).

While perhaps this GST thing isn’t “fair”, I would argue that it should still be verging on more expensive for me as an individual to import a single item than it cost a distributor to order a crate of them. At the very least the costs should be close to one another. If the local distributors and retailers would actually make an effort to remain competitive then the 10% GST would probably become far less of an issue. As it is I see it as an excuse to kick up a cry over declining sales because they refuse to also drop their prices as the dollar increases.

I mean really…when the $AU was weaker why weren’t the retailers complaining then? It’s only when they have to make a decision regarding lowering their own prices that they begin to actually care.

Ah, see, but he hit the nail on the head. many retailers are just customers them selves! to some greedy Australian distributors! they are stuck between a rock and a hard place! as he says, the Gov DOES have rules stopping these retailers bypassing local distributors and getting stuff direct from overseas. this effectively creates a government funded anti-competition, which is why the distributors have no inclination in lowering their prices. (not to mention warranties, that, just like if you’d bought from overseas, become much more complicated.)

for many retailers, they are just like you: buying stuff from Aussie distributors, in Aussie dollars, when they could get it a lot cheaper internationally. its only fair to remember that KOGAN doesn’t have this problem, in fact, that’s the whole trick: He can’t import existing international brand name stuff himself from OS, so he just made his own brand, so he could bypass all the middle men! (clever, all power to him, but no good if you want an existing, international brand.)
http://www.kogan.com.au/profile/

now, of course, not ALL distributors are evil (or stupid, ultimately its less sales for them too). and some retailers have more control over distribution than others, (e.g. HN) shifting the blame more to them. really, it could be the retailer ripping you off, or the distributor, or maybe even the manufacture. (and almost certainly the government too)

all I’m saying is, don’t be so quick to place all the blame with the man behind the counter. he may be just as frustrated as you.

This is about the only reasonable response I’ve read in this flood of hysterics.

Is this a moral issue? Hardly. Times are changing, and if our government wants our local retailers to remain competitive in the new (read: global) market, they’re going to have to support them. Protectionist tarrifs and other laws will only see more market share lost to grey imports, faster.