Shopping & Shopping Scams - the New World Dept Store

Department stores are fascinating.  Products are grouped by brand rather than function.  Which means to choose a television, one has to walk from the Philips section over to the Panasonic section, over to the Sony section.  The same for rice cookers, irons, telephones.  It’s impossible to do side by side comparisons, or for a salesperson to help you compare.  When you’ve chosen on one, you can’t stick it into your trolley and pay later at the cashier.  You have to take the item number, walk it to a cashier, pay, then return and collect your goods.  So if you buy 5 different things, you’ve got to go to the cashier, and return to each of the 5 areas to collect your goods.  Bit of a waste of time.

 

And so I was surprised and overjoyed when one time a saleswoman told me I didn’t need to pay at the cash desk.  I was buying a belt.  She told me that there was a discount on it, making it exactly 96 kuai.  Fair enough I thought, and I gave her 100 RMB.  She gave me the change, and I asked her for a receipt.  Amazingly, she burrowed around in a shoe box, and after a while, found a receipt she’d been keeping aside for exactly 96 RMB.  Genious.

 

Usually, what happens after you’ve been to the cashier, is that you go back to where you came from, and give them the receipt and counterfoil that the cashier gave you.  The salesperson keeps the counterfoil, and you take away the receipt.  Many people I guess don’t bother taking the receipt…. Which creates an opportunity for goods to be sold for cash, and a receipt still to be given.  Presumably such a practice creates stock discrepancies, which could be written off as shoplifting.

 

The belt I bought was pretty ghastly.  I’ve been looking for a simple, modest looking belt for some time.  They’re really hard to find.  Whereas a diamond crusted fake Gucci belt is relatively easy to find.  If you like wearing that kind of thing… great.  Belts, spectacles, cuff links and men’s leather shoes, I’m putting into a list of ‘things to buy abroad’.  

 

The department stores are good to walk around.  It’s good to wonder if they turn a profit – after all, who shops there?  How much margin leakage is there due to malpractice?  How well can they retain high value customers through their ability to deliver service?  And it’s hilarious to see the lookalike stores.  The Armoni store for example, in the menswear department, where the saleswomen will swear on their lives that the goods have just been shipped over from Milan.  If you’re in the New World, also check out the small ice skating rink they have, somewhere in the depths of the sports floor.  45 RMB for 90 minutes I think.  The ice is moderate, but the equipment looks pretty new.

 

Another funny event – we bought a basketball.  A reasonably upmarket store, we thought it better than buying a fake from the market, or from a university shop.  Sure it costed more, but hey, we figured that was the premium for buying real goods in the center of town.  Well, two days later the basketball went flat.  When we went back, the saleslady dunked the ball into a bucket of water.  Sure enough, it was leaking.  Oddly, it was leaking not just from one place, but from everywhere.  Hmmmmmmm.  She tried another ball from their stock – same problem.  She made a call to her boss, who refused to give us a refund.  She then had to go ask the department store management, who after a long wait, were able to give us a refund – hooray!  The irony is that in some instances buying fakes is better than buying real goods – because the real goods might sell so slowly that they are already beginning to deteriorate.