Frys is now Price matching....

T

tangoseal

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 18, 2010
Messages
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As of my visit today and as far as I know Frys Electronics is now price matching the big guys online just like Mcenter does.

Just FYI.
 
They've been doing this for a few months now. They had huge banners in their newspaper ads stating that they were doing this now.
 
Since we're on the topic, someone please tell me: where I can I find the nitty-gritty of how they do price-matching? I want to know which price they'll honor, whether it's before or after tax, etc.

Thanks.
 
No combos
No coupons
Price plus shipping
Must be in stock
"Big" online retailers only
Price based on "in cart at checkout"

Still gotta pay tax
Mostly useless.
 
They wouldn't price match my I7 930 price at microcenter for $199 when the store was only 3 miles down the road. They said they weren't out to lose money so they opted out. I said ok, and left the cart there and headed to microcenter.
 
MrSneis said:
No combos
No coupons
Price plus shipping
Must be in stock
"Big" online retailers only
Price based on "in cart at checkout"

Still gotta pay tax
Mostly useless.
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I'll gladly pay tax to not have to wait for shipping if they were the same price. Most highly bought items on amazon or newegg have free shipping anyways. So basically you are paying tax for the convenience of getting the item now and easier returns.

The no coupons I would say is the part that sucks the most since most of newegg's sales are with coupons.
 
ive bought a lot of stuff there the last few weeks. tv's, gaming keyboards, gaming mice, games, lighting.

ive learned a few things about this policy. its pretty screwed up.

they are handing those flyers out at the door, but in doing so, they make their employees pay for it. i overheard (basically stood right behind) 3 employees talking about it. basically, when they price match the "points" come out of their commission spiffs for each sale. when something goes below cost, they have to make up for it with other sales. if they dont make their commission numbers, they get written up or terminated.

to make matters worse. you know those worthless loss prevention people they have at the front door that will stop anything but an actual shoplifter (cause they wont likely purchase anything to avoid talking to LP at the door)? yeah, well they are given spiffs now for throwing cashiers under the bus. when i bought my blackwidow ultimate the other night, i picked up a couple root beers with it. one for me, one for my girl. we talked with the cashier when we were checking out and completing our purchase. nice girl, had a really cool necklace and my girl was asking her about it. anyway, turns out, she forgot to ring up one of the root beers. so we get to the front after purchase, girl looks at our reciept, about 3 more LP people surround us. she informs me it wasnt rung up and asks me if i still want it. i was thirsty so i was like yeah well ill go pay for it. she directs my girl to a closer register to be rung up. then she looks at me, smiles, and yanks my fucking reciept out of my hand and then says "let me make a copy of this so i can show this cashier's supervisor".

so i approached her, trying to be nice and disarming as best i could. i said "listen, i dont want to be any part of some poor girl losing a promotion, getting written up, or being passed up for a promotion for 6 months because me and my girl talk too much at the register. i said id pay for it, my girl is paying for it as we speak. we dont really need to do all this for $1.50 root beer."

then this dumbass LP chick looks at me, smiles (and has the gall to do it with a look on her face like she won the fucking lottery) and says "OH! It's totally ok! I get monetary incentives for doing this!"

I'd never felt sick, or "violated" by a simple retail purchase in my life before 3 nights ago when this happened. btw, it was the anaheim store (the one thats space shuttle themed).

when i was in the parking lot it came to me what i should have done. i feel pretty guilty for not thinking of it in the store. but in hindsight, what I should have done was look her in the face and say "thats my property right? you just verified that i paid for it. well since its my property, you dont have my permission to do anything with it, especially make a copy. you give that back to me right now, or im calling the police.".

that company currently has policies where they pit the customers directly against the employees and the employees against each other.

take from this what you will, but these things (and the fact that the customer service manager also told me this week they dont turn on the air conditioners half the time because the managers think "its too expensive to turn on the a/c for customers" when i asked why it was so hot in the store) make it very hard for me to continue shopping at frys after this week. at the very least, the anaheim store. i shopped at best buy tonight for my new tv stand and home theater system. i just couldnt bring myself into going back into frys again locally.

im sure ill go back at some point, but not for a very, very, long time.
 
All "customer facing" segments are like this now. There's people that make money in figuring out how to get unskilled people to do a skilled person's work for far less cash...then to get rid o the skilled worker they used as a lab-rat for this, they have a person that creates bogus and unobtainable performance metrics so they can terminate the person with...that way the state won't jack up the company's Unemployment coverage rates.

There's lots of shady shit here in the US....get used to it, as it's going to get far worse before it gets any better.
 
I don't know why I keep going back to Fry's? It's such a sh*thole. I guess being able to buy stuff and take it home that day must be really appealing to me.
I recently bought a tv from there and had them pricematch amazon. The manager acted like a total dick and the salesman kept pushing the warranty to the point I wanted to leave the store. After I refused the warranty he tried convincing my wife to buy it. Looking back I should of walked out but at that point I had my heart set on that tv. The salesman never said thank you or anything. Maybe I'm a little spoiled but when you spend big money on a tv and 3d kit I expect the salesman to be a little appreciative.
 
Yeah I was going to say this is old news.......

But for the last year or so I have only needed to goto Microcenter... they have been besting a lot of things at Newegg.... since microcenter is only 5 mins down the street while fry's is 10 mins down the road.....
 
JJ91284 said:
They wouldn't price match my I7 930 price at microcenter for $199 when the store was only 3 miles down the road. They said they weren't out to lose money so they opted out. I said ok, and left the cart there and headed to microcenter.
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Same. They refused to price match Microcenter for processors when I asked.
 
How did you go to Frys today? They are closed for Easter. LOL Funny no one else caught that.
 
Yeah, I was in the Oregon Fry's the other day and an employee offered to match newegg on a case.
 
christianw said:
*snip*

that company currently has policies where they pit the customers directly against the employees and the employees against each other.
Click to expand...

Well i just talked to my dad about this (hes not an employee of frys but hes an operations manager)

Its to prevent the casheirs and inventory control people from working under the table. No motivation = inefficent work.

Though the lady that was scanning your reciept seems like a complete bitch.
 
My Fry's in houston has matched everything including Microcenter's CPU prices. They even matched the mail in rebate price of a video card on newegg. I got about 50$ off the store price this way. I didn't even ask for it.
 
w4ffles said:
They've been doing this for a few months now. They had huge banners in their newspaper ads stating that they were doing this now.
Click to expand...

+1
I figured this was fairly common knowledge by this point. Those giant banners at the top of their ads have been there for a while now. I've price matched a few things from Newegg and MicroCenter at a couple different Fry's with out a problem. Then again I've only been to the Fry's in northern California, so who knows.
 
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still makes me sick that every time i do it, that employee may not see a penny in commissions for the next 3-4 sales while they make up for it.

the whole thing just wreaks of whats wrong with this country.
 
Who cares about the employees? They chose the job and the terms of the job when they accepted the job....however...

180 for 2500k before tax at frys, extra for shipping. BOOM!
 
mdlam said:
Who cares about the employees? They chose the job and the terms of the job when they accepted the job....however...
Click to expand...

you should care at the very least because the people that work there are your neighbors. members of your community.

generally if you are cool to those around you, they will in turn be cool back. but when everyone in a community has the attitude of "fuck that guy, i dont know him" then everyone in that community is basically a dick.
 
christianw said:
you should care at the very least because the people that work there are your neighbors. members of your community.

generally if you are cool to those around you, they will in turn be cool back. but when everyone in a community has the attitude of "fuck that guy, i dont know him" then everyone in that community is basically a dick.
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I love everybody, but I don't feel bad for anybody because life is a product of life choices, regardless of circumstance...you just deal with circumstance. I'm very cool to the fry's guy, and I'm also going to be cool to the ARCO gas station guy, but as for extra respect or extra concessions to offset his sad job...nah (if i was that guy i wouldn't be wishing for a pity party every day).

FRYS 180 BEFORE TAX SANDY!!!! PRICE MATCH MICROOOOO WHOOOOO~!!! BEST PART IS YOU GET TO CHERRY PICK YOUR BATCH NUMBER.
 
christianw said:
still makes me sick that every time i do it, that employee may not see a penny in commissions for the next 3-4 sales while they make up for it.
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No. The consumer shouldn't have to feel guilty or bad about it. Corporate decided this. If anyone should feel bad, it's them. And if anyone should be angry, it's their employees. And I mean what kind of commission are we talking about here, and on what products? When I go to Fry's, I pick up items that I can walk right up to and take to the register myself. Or, if they're items like a CPU, all I do is walk up to a guy in the CPU department, he clicks a button a couple times on the computer which prints out a piece of paper with a number on it, and I walk to the register and pay for it. In the first case I'm doing all the work myself. In the second case, one guy is printing a piece of paper from behind his raised-desk area and handing it to me. And make no mistake, Fry's customer support is some of the crappiest in retail. They're all very nice people (for the most part), but not helpful at all.

So no, I can't say I feel bad. Their customer support has never been good, I'm doing most of the actual purchasing work myself, and I took the time to drive to their store and purchase a product from them. I love Fry's, but in no way is a couple of lost "commission" sales going to make me cry a river. Best Buy employees do the same amount of work, and guess what, NONE of them get any commission. Do I feel bad for them? Hell no. It's a crappy retail job, they can pick any one of them. They're all the same anyway. I know because I did those shitty retail jobs for a long time. Pick your poison, the only thing that changes is the product, your shirt, and maybe a 50 cent hourly pay difference.
 
@christianw

I have worked for Best Buy before and several employees have worked at Fry's before. They say it is the shittiest place to work and all noted that they used to make 50% or more working at Fry's but that it was not worth it and they'd never do it again.
 
Has anyone had any luck price matching procs from microcenter @ the Wilsonville Fry's location?
 
FYI, i overheard that recently some of the sale items in the fry's computer department were still paying commission and in a recent video conference they asked the district managers if that would continue and the managers weren't "happy" about it.
 
OmegaAvenger said:
FYI, i overheard that recently some of the sale items in the fry's computer department were still paying commission and in a recent video conference they asked the district managers if that would continue and the managers weren't "happy" about it.
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Bullshit, nothing on sale pays. I work there. Hell some of the stuff not on sale doesn't even pay crap. Fry's is basically pushing their sales associates over the edge. I work in components and still get hourly, they are pricematching online because as soon as u pricenatch the commmission hits 0. I sold a switch pays 56 bucks in commisssion but the guy pricematched and I got 0. That didn't make me mad what made me mad was that fry's still made 150 in gross profit and I got 0. I really don't mind price matching but whoever is running the company is running by fucking over their sales guys. Plus u are threatend for ur job when u can't get stupid fry's card that has like 30% interest. Its a rip off company that treats its employees like shit. I honsestly would never go to this place again once I quit after I am done with school. I would rather buy online at Amazon or something.

Almost every guy I talk to tells me how they hate having to force warranties on people when that is the only thing that pays them, and how they feel bad about having to lie to customers just to upsell them and make some money that they otherwise wont make. Trust me these guys in other departments that don't make hourly reply struggle and hate themselves at the end of the day. They are forced to hit their goals when it is literally impossible, plus these stupid store managers want their home network installation for 100 bucks. Even a cave man can do that shit.
 
Really dumb incentive structure :( I am in shock they would implement this companywide "promotion" and dick over their employees like this. Someone needs to say something to someone who pulls some weight over at hq. Then again their incentive system is probably stupid too.
 
Jon55 said:
No. The consumer shouldn't have to feel guilty or bad about it. Corporate decided this. If anyone should feel bad, it's them. And if anyone should be angry, it's their employees. And I mean what kind of commission are we talking about here, and on what products? When I go to Fry's, I pick up items that I can walk right up to and take to the register myself. Or, if they're items like a CPU, all I do is walk up to a guy in the CPU department, he clicks a button a couple times on the computer which prints out a piece of paper with a number on it, and I walk to the register and pay for it. In the first case I'm doing all the work myself. In the second case, one guy is printing a piece of paper from behind his raised-desk area and handing it to me. And make no mistake, Fry's customer support is some of the crappiest in retail. They're all very nice people (for the most part), but not helpful at all.

So no, I can't say I feel bad. Their customer support has never been good, I'm doing most of the actual purchasing work myself, and I took the time to drive to their store and purchase a product from them. I love Fry's, but in no way is a couple of lost "commission" sales going to make me cry a river. Best Buy employees do the same amount of work, and guess what, NONE of them get any commission. Do I feel bad for them? Hell no. It's a crappy retail job, they can pick any one of them. They're all the same anyway. I know because I did those shitty retail jobs for a long time. Pick your poison, the only thing that changes is the product, your shirt, and maybe a 50 cent hourly pay difference.
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Gotta agree. in the bay area i have NEVER been helped by a frys employee. never. ever. I have asked where something is, and they have found it, but they are in no way salespeople, they are employees who can get stuff for you. chances are they cant even do that, the running joke is whenever you ask someone at frys for something they say "sorry i dont work in this department" and then walk away.

The concept of them getting commission actually blows my mind, hopefully our frys are different and dont operate on commission, and everywhere else frys employees are helpful sales people.

To make it clear how our frys operates, you walk inside, there are zero employees on the aisles walking around unless theyre stocking shelves. There is one black "podium" thing in each of these sections: video games, TVs, laptops, and then cpu/harddrives/ram/mobos etc, thats a total of four. The employees stand behind the podium and basically chat to each other, they know almost nothing and dont greet you or anything chances are theyre just staring at the computer screen in front of them. Any remaining employees exist at the registers, return department, pc repair, door receipt check, or some are slowly walking around behind the cash registers trying to look busy,
 
0055 said:
Gotta agree. in the bay area i have NEVER been helped by a frys employee. never. ever. I have asked where something is, and they have found it, but they are in no way salespeople, they are employees who can get stuff for you. chances are they cant even do that, the running joke is whenever you ask someone at frys for something they say "sorry i dont work in this department" and then walk away.

The concept of them getting commission actually blows my mind, hopefully our frys are different and dont operate on commission, and everywhere else frys employees are helpful sales people.

To make it clear how our frys operates, you walk inside, there are zero employees on the aisles walking around unless theyre stocking shelves. There is one black "podium" thing in each of these sections: video games, TVs, laptops, and then cpu/harddrives/ram/mobos etc, thats a total of four. The employees stand behind the podium and basically chat to each other, they know almost nothing and dont greet you or anything chances are theyre just staring at the computer screen in front of them. Any remaining employees exist at the registers, return department, pc repair, door receipt check, or some are slowly walking around behind the cash registers trying to look busy,
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Sounds exactly like Circuit City before they got shit canned.

I don't see why Fry's would price match.. they always have the best B&M deals (especially for new PC parts) and I hate them for that because they have 0 stores in my (very popular) state. They should quit price matching, and use the extra bit of income used for this policy to open up more stores that give the same great B&M prices as we see online all the time (MOST ESPECIALLY, their combo bundles) ... that would equal hell of a lot more income than some shitty "price match" policy, without a doubt.
 
I recently built a new Sandy Bridge PC and purchased pretty much every single component from the San Diego Fry's (including price matching the 2500k to a Microcenter in Orange County without any issue from $220 down to $180), and honestly, it was pretty much the exact same price for everything if I had purchased it online, except that I saved on shipping costs. Yeah, I could have gotten it tax free from Amazon with Prime shipping, but honestly I don't mind paying taxes, and it was nice to physically have everything in my hands the same day I decided it was time to purchase the components.

Fry's is increasingly becoming a viable competitor to Newegg, Amazon, and other online retailers. Sucks they're not as good with their employees, though.
 
JJ91284 said:
They wouldn't price match my I7 930 price at microcenter for $199 when the store was only 3 miles down the road. They said they weren't out to lose money so they opted out. I said ok, and left the cart there and headed to microcenter.
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They price matched the i2500k for $179 for me. But I was also building an entire computer so they did it without any hesitation
 
I haven't seen it mentioned in the thread, but you don't save shipping costs by price matching with Frys. If there are shipping charges for the product, that is added in to the price match.

I price matched a MSI 6970 at the Sacramento Fry's and the ~$7 shipping or whatever it was got added to the final price. TBH I didn't mind, it makes sense, I still paid the lowest total price I would have been able to online, and I got it immediately.
 
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