Saturday, October 25, 2003

More About The Chestnut Hill Mall.

It's small to begin with, and the store tend to be a little more upscale than is typical, or rather there are fewer of the less than upscale stores than you'd find at a typical mall.

I have no idea what they're going for but it's not working.

The mix just seems wrong. I don't know how to describe it. They sometimes play classical music in a central area and it seems like a funeral to me. Sort of a memorial to all malls everywhere. I guess that's what I'm talking about.

This place is wrong the way that no amount of right can ever correct. I spent my childhood in malls so I can pick up on this sort of thing and it's a creepy.

I think the mall is in physical pain. Where there should be happy little stores there is only retail scare tissue.

It's like the type of society party where no one dares not to show up and any pleasantry is sarcastic and superficial.

If the mall were a person at a bar it would be drinking to forget.

It's an old, established family that ran out of money long ago and now works to keep up appearances, even after the partiarch has shot himself in the head.

4:05:34 PM  

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Nothing bad has happened to me this weekend but it's off to sort of a sketchy start. Awhile ago Jenn bought an office chair through her work at a fantastic discount (a chair that would normally cost significantly more than $1000.00 for about $150.00). We don't have any decent furniture and we both spend a lot of time at our desk in our broken down apartment so she bought the chair.

It came during the week and on Friday Jenn brought it home. That went ok. The plan was to eat dinner out somewhere because we had access to a car (which is a rarity for us nowadays). On the way we were going to stop at the Apple Store to pick up a copy of Mac OSX 10.3 (Panther).

The Chestnut Hill Mall was quasi-on the way so we headed there. This is an awful mall. It really is. More on this in my next post.

Anyway, this is a small, unfortunate Apple Store (and because of that it fits in perfectly at Chestnut Hill). There was a line of maybe 50 - 75 people waiting outside the door when we arrived just after 8:00 pm (the OS was released officially at 8:00 pm). The line moved slowly and the store manager handled "crowd control" at the door. We were held before going in right at the entrance next to this woman who felt it necessary to make polite conversation. It was uncomfortable.

This woman was the archetypical Apple Retail Store manager.
Mid 30s;
Medium everything... absolutely nothing remarkable about her;
Perfectly pleasant but not very nice at all;
Ignorant regarding technology;
In general I would say that she is a perfect reflection of the Apple Store itself. Unpleasant in a way that you just can't put your finger on.

Anyway, the store was crowded with people milling around and for the most part not buying anything other than OS X. Apple had an unannounced (but forecast by the rumor sites) 10% off of everything sale (with the purchase of 10.3 or a new Mac). I question the strategy of making people stand around doing math to figure out how much they're going to lose if they later purchase something that they weren't intending to buy when they showed up. In other words, a surprise 10% seems like just the right discount to not convince people to make a impulse decision to buy now and also to make them think twice about buying the same thing at full retail next week or next month.

For ex. if I knew about the sale ahead of time I might seriously think about buying a $2000.00 computer to save $200.00. But I'm probably not going to be able to put a lot of thought into the decision standing in the store (for ex. I wouldn't be able to evaluate the purchases impact on my budget) so I would most likely leave without making a purchase. Later I would be hesitant to spend $2000.00 for something I could have purchased for only $1800.00. I would probably either delay my purchase significantly or buy from a different reseller, willing to make either the same offer or some other offer that is not directly comparable.

Anyway, the surprise sale didn't help speed the line up any and it didn't add to anyone's experience at the store. At least not in any way that was obvious to me. I was there for maybe an hour and I didn't see anyone with a computer.

A little advanced notice via email would have been a good idea, and a little incentive for people to register products/opt in to Apple's promotional mailings etc. A coupon for the same 10% discount would have been a much nicer gesture, especially when everyone in the store was there to get fucked out of another $129.00 from Apple for an incremental OS upgrade.

Oh and you can't use the 10% discount and an educational discount.
And they don't have the OS available at the education discount in the store.

Apple does a lot of stuff that comes off as petty and cheap. Like making a cake for someone and then ruining the gesture by being overly insistent on getting the plate back.

Anyway, I was there to buy the Family Pack (5 license pack for $199.00) of Panther. They were sold out though you could have killed yourself tripping over single license boxes.

This just seems like more penny ante retail trickery. You announce the 5 pack and the single license product. As Apple you know that people who are going to buying the 5 pack are people who have 2 or more Macs in the same household (the terms of the license). These people are probably avid users and are more likely to be looking forward to the new OS than someone with only a single Mac. So in order to take maximum advantage of your loyal users you conveniently forget to stock the 5 pack in sufficient quantity (if at all) and then you wait for them to show up, be disappointed and walk out with at least one copy of the single license product anyway because they were planning having access to the new OS and of course would be disappointed to leave empty handed. If they have more than one Mac they'll either buy more than one single license box now or buy one for now and then be back for a 5 pack later. The worst that happens is that they leave empty handed and come back later for the 5 pack. With 2 or more Macs at home it's unlikely that these people aren't coming back. Of course you could instead decide to be fair to your loyal customers, people who have bought 2 or more computers from in the recent past, and last years $129.00 upgrade and software, peripherals etc etc. Being fair to customers isn't Apple's style.

Anyway... I left without Mac OS X and what's more I did buy a copy of Roxio's new version of Toast for which I did not receieve my 10% discount because I didn't buy a new Mac or Mac OS X 10.3 (even though it was Apple's fault that I didn't buy the software after having invested over an hour in the attempt).

Why did I buy Toast? This is another very annoying anecdote. I'll get right to the point with this one. The new version of Toast isn't free to owners of the previous version (fair enough). The full price of the software is $99.00 (which is a joke, sorry Roxio). Upgrade pricing is available but only through a $20.00 rebate offer (so we both have to work for me to get the upgrade I'm entitled to because you hate your customers so much that you're going to try to squeeze an extra $20.00 bucks out of them?) What percentage of people actually follow through on rebates? I tink it's under 5%. And, the rebate is only available on retail boxed copies of the software. It does not apply if you purchase and download the software. Nice ecommerce strategy there Roxio.

Then we went out to eat (at the Olive Garden in Framingham) and headed home.

We had wanted to see a movie but all of the movies that are out at the moment SUCK. So no movie for us.

Hey Apple and Roxio, thanks for nothing.

3:57:55 PM  

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It's Saturday and just now 2:00pm. I'm in the Boston Public Library (Bates Hall). Jenn is out with her friend Amy doing something. We didn't really make plans for where we'd meet. Hopefully she'll be back the library closes at 5:00 pm. I wish I had gotten something to eat before coming here. I had a cup of coffee in the Starbucks at the CambridgeSide Galleria this morning at about 9:45 am and that's it for the day so far. I'm getting a headache (I tend to get headaches when I'm hungry). Oh well.

2:07:54 PM  

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