So The Warehouse has revised their price match terms again, and now they don't price match any grocery items online, including items like shampoo & body wash. Basically, it's almost impossible to price-match anything online now. I used to price-match items like shampoo, toothpaste, and cleaning products online after they removed food & drink, but now it looks like I won't be price-matching anything anytime soon.
They also changed terms about shipping costs at retailers must match
To price match products (except grocery) online, the product must have the same barcode, be priced on the same day, have the same freight costs, be from a NZ based retailer with a valid NZ website and be delivered from within NZ only.
What retailer charges $6/7 freight to match with lol, they clearly worded it not to match anyone that might undercut them.
Hmmm.. sounds a bit dodgy really. Must be lower than total price including shipping maybe, but even then, shipping isn't actually part of the product cost (if it was it'd be built in).
Often stores get unique bar codes and products, so it is impossible to price match. I was specking to a rep of a big product brand, and they said that they just repackage the identical product to different chains of retailer, but the product gets assigned a slightly different model number or barcode, which prevents the customer being able to price beat it.
It’s a hassle but I just make the time to go in when I want something and I get it in bulk!
Same, even though The Warehouse is pretty close to me, I hardly ever price match anymore because it's a hassle and not worthwhile to price match a few items at discounted prices. I only go now if something is so much cheaper than the competitors, so I can buy in bulk.
Only problem is when they only have a few of the items in stock. Haven’t asked but I’m guessing they only allow you to buy what’s in stock and not get more in for you?
To a maximum of 10 units. More than that and it's counted as purchasing commercial quantity.
@wowbigdeal: Yes I know that’s in there but I’ve price promised multiple times well over 10 and have never been questioned. Have you been pulled up on it before?
@Joshyss: I have on more than a couple occasions. My local has become so strict on grocery price promise I don't bother any more.
Some employees make it seem like the price difference comes out of their own pocket.
@wowbigdeal: I just had them try ‘the item needs to be from the most local pak n save to their store to price match’. I argued and showed them their T&C’s which state ‘NZ retailer’ and they said ‘we will do it this time…’
@Joshyss: Good for you. I wonder if they'll update the T&C's to say 'must be a local store'. I hope you maxed it out by getting 10 of said item.
@wowbigdeal: Oh I wanted to but I don’t need that much of it! Other items would have been different.
Tory street is still closed since midyear this year
Shares are down to half of what it was last yr
https://app.sharesies.com/invest/watchlist/whs
Closing Xmas Club;
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/300970961/the-warehou…
Shitty pay rises:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/the-warehouse-workers-to…
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2308/S00311/warehouse-work…
Meanwhile they're getting solar:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/hundreds-of-the-warehous…
Will be interesting to see whats changed since beginning of the year from this:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131570155/jobs-go-as-wareho…
Basically all the things they've been doing it seems like cost cutting to keep their profit margins /higher up's payouts the same or higher
I worked for noel leeming for around 3 years including being on the road as a tech and being an installer.
The scheduling for the tech role was absurdly inefficient. I managed 12k km in about 3 months, Instead of Town A on monday and Town B on tuesday, it was Town A every morning and Town B every afternoon. It was far from uncommon to send me on 500km round trip for a $129 service call.
The way that renumeration is structured and the way that the culture is with the company means that people literally want to not sell you something unless you're buying an extended warranty or tech sol service. I personally wouldve likely let 10k walk a week in revenue on the grounds of 'thank god, that wouldve ruined my numbers'.
They substantially cut people's renumeration through external incentives. These used to be paid 'tax free (well, fbt, so $50 was $50)' outside of your payslip. Personally the change was our family's groceries 2degrees and power bill gone and replaced with earnings at about 1/5th or 1/6th of what it used to be. Id argue back and forward that the job was overpaid compared to back of house staff, but that was a hell of a lot of money to lose. I cant really go into specifics about the new schemes or what changed. But the job listings make it clear that you earn a commission.
They've removed heaps of interactive displays from stores. They dont range half of what they used to in stores. They dont get new product lines in, except for starlink which cant be profitable for them. If I were noels I'd have had oculus / meta quests with demos in every store, id have been trying something to get young people to give a shit about my boring boomer-centric retail experience. Get a steamdeck or nothing phone display or something! They've done a little in the gamer space but they dont have the range or the price competitiveness of pbtech. They dont even sell desktop PCs anymore…. They could have been the only place that has demo PS5s. Instead they get a token product that wont ever get traction, like samsung sero or hp reverb, they put them in a couple of stores and thats that. Brick and mortar retail is dying a slow and painful death. I had to fight my ex manager to get something to display phones. They dont want to pay for displays.
Their strength in the warheouse stores was their retail footprint, but they made it much harder to use their website than it needs to be by introducing third party sellers and seemed to have reduced their range (probably covid). They made our local from a wide - open store with a neat tech / book courtyard into another boring retail store. I was surprised at how nice the old warehouse was. When I go to the warehouse now, there are not good impulse buys. Its a sterile in and out. Without getting into the politics of it, their refits have introduced tereo signage around their stores, which is cool… but …. The actual signs themselves look 30 years old, the fonts hang off the bottom.
Warehouse stationery has been effectively closed in the south island.
Then there's the market club at the wareouse, which actually has nothing to do with themarket.com, it's instead through thewarehouse app.
Then there's the overall pointless-ness of themarket.com to consumers. Oh, I can't click collect high value items from your pickup locations? Well thats a shame.
They introudced grocery but their core lines are either more expensive than paknsave or they're just not cheap enough to warrant going all the way to the warehouse as well.
They introduced the extended warranty schemes to the warehouse and warehouse stationery and they're just bad offerings that mean that they'll probably get a big fine and negative press cycle every few years.
It's like the warehouse group have 6 different donkeys all pulling in different directions. They're posting poor results, the market cost them $18.6m or something for first half of this year, lots of upper mangament have left for jb hifi by tim edwards (thats very public). How their board is keeping the current CEO around is baffling. They're going so hard on a 'digitial transformation' but seem to forget that amazon's retail business isnt profitable.
Its like their competitors are running the show haha
Thanks for the insight but yeah it's baffling how many bad decisions they keep making,
And totally agree with the instore display things, like thats the whole point I'd often go into stores is to see what the products are like how they work before buying it there if they price match or online.
and yeah for the youth have a few consoles hooked up and VR setups (but console makers need to bring back demo disks for retails)
And that disconnect from TheMarket especially with thier own stores is the worst
They're gonna suffer horrendously next few years and then at some point a new person will be brought in to make changes.
I had a nonzero number of arguments with (one of) the stores that I worked in for noels about leaving TV remotes for customers. Management's position was 'get a oneforall generic remote and they can use that… we dont want to risk theft' and mine was 'leave the fancy remote out, you will sell more units'.
It was baffling to me, honestly, that having the matching remote in front of each tv is not standardised in their store development. Putting something in to people's hands is a core part of moving stock. It's such a minor thing in the scheme of it all, but youd see similar weird choices across the rest of the store.
If you need something to run a display, the store writes off the cheapest, nastiest endeavour tablet instead of an ipad.
Similar thing with their audio. Essentialy boiled down to 'the salesman can pair their phone'.
Similarly most stores are running their tv walls on the back of a 1080p source file on a flashdrive.
Similarly most stores will have a wall of computer monitors, running on the back of whatever hdmi duplicator they can find, they're normally ripped from the internet or are just a youtube stream so it's all blocky, compressed nonsense because youtube-mp4.co is used or whatever.
Or they'll have demo things like the 49" ultrawide monitors and sell almost nothing that can actually do that res/fps but yet it still gets merched
@Grandma: Yeah I hated this as the years went on, back in the 90s you could go in and the stores would actually let you test and help you compare so you can get the best, and it helped sales a lot, most of the time we bought from the store coz the sales service was good.
I remember being able to hookup an iPod to different sound systems testing out the sound quality.
Now it's like sorry we can't. Look at reviews online. 🤦♂️
Dont forgot the stock mangement. I think it has got a little bit better but previously say I ordered 10 items for $50 they sometimes got sent from like 3 or more stores. I never understood how they can make money packing and sending 3 different parcels for $50.
So much for competition in NZ Supermarkets. In the UK some supermarkets price match the competition. They used to do that in NZ too until the duopoly.
I asked them why the change and this is what they replied with:
“Thank you for your email. I am sorry that we are unable to price match grocery items at this time.
Our price match system is currently being re-worked to streamline this service and ensure that everyone is able to get a fair deal.
Keep an eye out in future for price matching updates.”
Is the reduction in traffic worth the slight loss they might make ? Idk, probably by the time they factor in labour, yes