hole

Part 225: Bait & Switch

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RECORD STORE TALES Part 225:  Bait & Switch

One Wednesday afternoon in 1997, I was working alone. A gentleman in his mid-20’s walked into my store. He browsed the hip-hop section and I asked him if he needed any help finding anything. He said no, and was pleasant enough. About 10 minutes later, he approached the counter to make a purchase.

I knew immediately there was a problem. In his hands was a used copy of Puff Daddy’s brand new smash hit album, No Way Out. It had one of our Bargain Bin stickers on it, priced at $5.99. However the album was a fairly new release, and any used copies we had were always priced at $11.99. I’d never put one of them in my Bargain Bin, ever at this point. You just didn’t throw a new release into a sale bin. As Puffy said, “It’s all about the Benjamins.”

I couldn’t rule out staff error, so I double checked. Each price tag had a stock number on it. That stock number told me the location of the actual CD; the discs were all kept safely behind the counter.

Sure enough, I referred to the stock number which led me to a completely different CD, one that was common for our Bargain Bin. It wasn’t staff error. This meant that somebody switched the Puff Daddy price tag with another CD, from our Bargain Bin.

I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

“OK, I have a problem here,” I began, as gently as I could. After all, I had no way of knowing for sure that this guy switched the tags himself. It was probable that he would, very few people would switch a price tag and leave it. I could even see where the tag was peeled off and re-applied. “This CD isn’t actually $5.99. It’s supposed to say $11.99. It looks to me like someone switched the price tags. I’m not saying it was you…I’m sorry about this…but I can’t sell you this disc for $5.99. $5.99 is less than we actually paid for it.”

He shrugged. “That’s not my problem. You have to honor the price tag.”

“This price tag,” I countered, “links back to a CD by Hole. I can sell you that CD for $5.99, but not Puff Daddy. This is a brand new release, we never put new releases out in our Bargain Bin.”

Then he got fancy. “Are you familiar with the Bait & Switch law?”

I was. From Wikipedia:

First, customers are “baited” by merchants’ advertising products or services at a low price, but when customers visit the store, they discover that the advertised goods are not available, or the customers are pressured by sales people to consider similar, but higher priced items (“switching”).

“This isn’t a Bait & Switch,” I argued. “Somebody else switched the price tag. Like I said, this tag right here links back to Hole, not Puffy. I can sell you Hole for $5.99, for Puffy, you’d pay $11.99. Again, I’m not saying you switched it. But somebody did. I’m sorry about that but I can’t lose money on this CD because somebody switched a price tag on me.”

“Legally, you are obligated to let me have that CD for $5.99. You’re in violation of Bait & Switch laws. Do you want me to get the cops involved?”

I knew he wouldn’t do that. “You can do that if you want, but what’s to stop me from going over to Walmart, taking a price tag from a $2 bag of chips, and putting it on a CD myself? Would Walmart have to sell me that CD for $2?”

Cool as a cucumber, he just shrugged.

It was at that moment that my boss walked in.

“What seems to be the problem here?” he asked.

I explained the whole situation, how somebody switched the price tag, and how he wanted Puffy for $5.99. I explained how I was 100% certain of the situation, and how the stock code on the price tag led me to a $5.99 Hole CD.

One issue that I had with my boss was that he didn’t always stick up for store managers in situations like this. I could never predict if he would stick up for us or cave.  So what did he do? He apologized profusely and he rang in the CD for $7.99 or something like that. The customer was happy as could be, so polite.

He strolled out knowing he’d won. I wonder who he scammed next?

I walked over to the Puff Daddy section to see if I could find evidence of the missing but correct price tag. Sure enough, what did I find? A Hole CD, with a poorly applied $11.99 price tag on it, in the hip-hop section not far from Puffy. And what did that $11.99 tag’s stock code lead me to? The spot that the Puffy disc occupied.

An $8 scam was hardly going to break the bank, but I felt about two feet tall, because I knew I was right. I never let anybody else scam me in that way again.  But that’s another story…

Part 156: Value

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RECORD STORE TALES Part 156:  Value

The art of buying and selling used music mainly hinges on two factors:  condition, and re-sell value.

Condition can be subjective.  Is it slightly scratched?  Heavily scratched?  Do those minor marks from wiping the CD count as scratches?  Our upper management tried to give us consistent guidelines to follow on condition.  The customers didn’t always agree, but we tried to be consistent – not an easy task when you have dozens of buyers!

Value, on the other hand, could get very subjective.  For example, let’s say the year is 1996.  You went out and bought yourself a brand-spankin’ new copy of Live Through This, by Hole.  You paid $23.99 for it at your local store.  You played it a couple of times and didn’t like it, and they won’t take it back without the receipt.  So, you come to see me with a mint condition copy, only played twice.  You’re hoping for good money.  You paid $23.99, maybe you’d like to cut your losses and get $10 back?

Well, it never worked that way.  We’d never pay that much for a single regularly priced CD for many reasons:

  1. If you paid $23.99 for Live Through This by Hole, you still paid way too much, even in 1996. You could have got it cheaper elsewhere.
  2. We have to make a profit on it too.  Whatever we pay, we’d generally have to double it to make a profit, after the overhead of running a store are considered.
  3. What if we already had a couple copies, that have been sitting here for a month or two?  Do I really need a third to sit there?

These are all factors that came into play.

The next thing the customer would often say was this:

“I’m not looking for my money back, just another CD.  Can I just trade this to you, one for one?”

Well, again, no.  There’s no profit in that either.  I’m just swapping your disc for my disc and not making a dime on the transaction.  Essentially, I’d be doing you a favour and that’s all.  And chances are, you’d want to trade it for something better than Live Through This!

One time, while having this very same discussion, I explained to a customer why I couldn’t pay him $10 for his CD.  “Because that’s what we sell it for, I wouldn’t be making any money on it.”  He shrugged and said, “That’s your problem, not mine.”  No, it’s your problem, since I won’t be paying you $10 for your disc.

Another reason that people expected more money for a disc was rarity.  If something was considered rare, yes, we would generally pay more.  But who decides if something is rare?

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I remember a guy holding up a copy of Big Game by White Lion, saying, “This CD is worth over $50!”  Well, maybe somebody was asking $50 for it somewhere, and maybe somebody was willing to pay that.  So yes, to those two people, it’s worth $50.  But if you look, you could definitely find it for under $10, guaranteed.  Even in 1996.  All you had to do is hunt a little.  I did, and I got my copy for under $8.  It’s a title that was not in demand.

Some things that WERE considered rare:

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The Traveling Wilburys – Volume I.  We asked $50 for that one.  It was out of print for many years.  Out of print Bob Dylan is worth a lot more than out of print White Lion!

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Metallica – Garage Days Re-Revisited.  Also out of print.  We asked $50 for that one too, until it was reissued as a part of Garage Inc.  Reissues would usually kill the value of an our of print disc.

Some things that were NOT considered rare:

A lot of old soundtracks.  Soundtracks were a tricky thing.  You might be the only person in town that gives a crap about the Operation Dumbo Drop soundtrack for example.  Maybe it’s out of print, and maybe you collect soundtracks, but maybe I already have a copy priced at $5 that has been sitting there half a decade!

We tried to be as fair as possible, but it’s not always easy to see when I’m giving you $4 for a CD that you paid $24 for.  You can’t please all the people all the time.  Still, it was better than a garage sale!

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Part 56: Top Five Flops

This isn’t some definitive list or anything like that.  Just five memories that stand out among the others:  my Top Five Flops.

#5. The Rolling Stones – Bridges to Babylon.  I know this album didn’t sit well for a few people, but we just flat out ordered too many.  They started coming in used within days and before too long, we had so many used copies that they were starting to show up in bargain bins.  Never a good sign when you’re the so-called greatest rock and roll band on Earth.

#4. Van Halen – III.  Same deal.  We ordered 50 copies.  I don’t know why.  This one was going to be a flop even before it was released.  Gary Cherone had no marquee value whatsoever in 1998.  We ordered 50, we ended up selling (probably) 5.

#3.  Hole – Live Through This.  Yes, it was huge in 199x, but by the late 90’s, you would have been a fool to pay more than $5.99 for this stinker, such was the frequency of the trade-ins.

#2. Titanic – Soundtrack.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  One of the biggest soundtracks of all time.  Well, as soon as Celine put out her own album with “My Life Will Go On” on it, the trade-ins began.  At one point we were bundling it with DVDs and VHS tapes just to get it out of the store.

#1.  Spin Doctors – Turn It Upside Down.   I recall at one point we had something like 20 copies, used, in stock.  We couldn’t give it away even for $3.99.  I wouldn’t know from listening to it, but I am pretty sure that it sucks.   It sold so infrequently, that I would be willing to bet that there are still copies in the 10-15 year-old-range, sitting there unsold today.

Part 34: SPECIAL! “Bands That I Think Suck” FROM THE ARCHIVES!

I was cleaning out the closet two weeks ago.  I found a folder, full of old writing.  I found stuff that I had written with chums Danesh and Andy back in highschool.  But most interestingly, I found this.  This is not my first published work (that would be an article about turtles from grade 2 in the local newspaper).  This may be, however, my first published work along the lines of what I’m doing now.

Dating back to 1995, my second year at the store, I was already getting jaded!  This is my very first music article:  “Bands That I Think Suck”.  It was published in the University of Waterloo paper Scientific Notation as a comedy piece.  Thanks to Abbas Rizvi for doing so, wherever you are.

I still stand by most of this, but I have since grown to like Pink Floyd.  (See:  Part 28: The Boy Who Killed Pink Floyd). 

OK…ON WITH THE EMBARASSMENT!