CompUSA can't sell a Compaq box for toffee

ONE OF the most unpleasant experiences is America is going to an automobile dealer and trying to buy a new car, or worse yet, a used car. Sales people work off commission, have quota to make, and have a number of pre-set clichés and games to play, including the catch-all phrase, "What do I have to do to get you into this car today?" Unfortunately, the disease of car sales tactics has migrated from auto dealers into the Big Box stories as I found out today day.

I was over at CompUSA for my weekly pilgrimage, watching them go through Yet Another "Hey, we need to shuffle around the products on the shelves so we look fresh, don't worry that people won't be able to find what they want if they haven't been here in a while" exercise. As I weaved between the aisles, I quickly locked onto the "Display & Discard Table," the place where CompUSA and other big boxes put out their display model hardware at discounted prices.

I saw a Compaq Presario sr1710nx model with no price tag on it, no specs. It's an open-box model, but the keyboard, powercord, and mouse are still with it, so it's a good sign. It looked to be in very good shape and had two Firewire and six USB ports on it, a 10/100 Ethernet port, a CDRW/DVD-ROM drive, an empty expansion and an AMD Sempron processor. Oh yes, and one of those "Read all Flash Memory" 7-in-1 panels in front. No info on hard drives or RAM. Crappy mouse, but who cares, I'm going to turn it into a file server.

I flag down one of the red shirted chaps and see if he can find a price on it. He goes to CompUSA's website to look for a price, but the sr1710nx isn't listed on there, not even as an overstock or refurbished model. I start smiling wider. Open box, obsolete hardware, I'm thinking maybe I can walk out of there with the whole thing for around $200. It takes me about 10 seconds to pop open the case and spot "Serial ATA" on the drive. Right now, I'm really happy.

Meanwhile, nobody can find the store manager, so the supervisor on duty finally pulls up the DOS-based story inventory program and sees the item listed at $299.

"You want to pay $299?" the eager sales person asks.

"Wait a minute," I said in my best 'Please don't smoke me' tone, "It's an open box special, I don't know what size the drive is, and I don't know how much RAM is in it. It's not even on the CompUSA website."

So he goes and looks up the box on Compaq's website. Compaq is selling re-furbed 1710nx boxes for $251.99 after a 10% instant rebate (yah, whatever). The box has a 100 GB Serial ATA, 2.0 GHz Sempron, and 256 MB RAM, expandable to 4 GB; it's got three open slots for RAM. I'm really loving this.

"Do you want to pay $299?" sales person asks again. "No, I can go buy this box from Compaq directly for $251. Why would I want to pay $299 here?"

"But that's with rebate," he protests.

"Yes, so, why would I want to pay $299 here?"

He frowns, mutters "Wait a minute," and then pulls this folded card out of his pocket and studies it for a minute. The card has an elaborate chart of numbers on it and I can see him skimming his finger down one of the columns.

After a moment of study, he starts writing down numbers on the back of a piece of paper $200, plus another $209.

"I give you the whole thing for $409," he says, smiling, as if he's discovered a diamond.

"Wait a minute, you wanted me to pay $299, now I'm paying $409 to walk out of here?"

"I give you $100 discount, you pay $200 for a three year service contract."

"Why would I want to pay $200 for a service contract on obsolete technology?"

"How much do you want to pay for this computer?" he asks.

At this point, I grunt and step away for a moment, wondering if I should just tell him that I'll pay $200 straight up for the box, although I haven't seen it boot, and tell him to go get his manager. Suddenly, I have a flashback to the last two times I've been shopping for cars and realise this just ain't worth haggling over, especially since I don't know if the thing will boot or where the manuals and original CDs are.

"Thank you very much for your effort, but I'm not interested," I say, and walk away, resisting the urge to jerk his chain, ask for a manager, then say No.

Now, I can't really fault the bloke trying to tell me the box. I mean, he has to eat, and I suspect he'd get a fat chunk of that three year $200 service contract as a direct commission, but it's the sort of behavior I'd never seen at a Big Box before. Sure, I've seen the lurking salesmen at Best Buy, but they never started haggling with me.

Is this a reflection of the future of Big Box stores in the States? Are they going to be the used car sales lots of the future? µ