Anyone else notice The Warehouse seem to be using any excuse not to price beat anymore? Used to be easy but now they say "its on special so we can't beat it" etc.
Isn't the whole point of price matching to match a competitors special price?
The Warehouse Price Promise
0mfgroflmao on 02/09/2022 - 13:38
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I've noticed that every agent seems to have their own interpretation of the price beat policy. At the end of the day they need to adhere to what is stipulated here:
https://help.thewarehouse.co.nz/Help/s/article/Price-promiseThe only clause that has any correlation to not price promising a competitors item that is lowered in price is the one below. However, they way I read it is they will not match promotion type offers e.g buy two, get one free or buy a fridge and get a free microwave. In that situation they should still beat the price the competitor has on the fridge but wouldn't also give you the free microwave.
Products lowered in price cannot be combined with any other TWL or competitor’s promotion or credit offer, or with any trade terms, direct purchasing from the supplier, limited quantity offers or internet only retailers.
Happy to be corrected on that, it is very strangely written in my view.
As usual, price promise anywhere is a hit and miss, but from some of the comments on here and FB groups, I have a feeling that it's getting harder at TWH (though might still be much easier compared to say Mitre10). I haven't encountered any problems personally when asking for price promise there.
I've done ok out of Mitre10 price guarantees so far… They apply this rule that the competitor must be with same day delivery area (not sure if this actual policy though).
This was discussed quite a lot on a deal
To the point The Warehouse’s legal team is getting involved to investigate and clarify the wording on the price match policy to another user. There’s been no update from this user so far
That user would be me.
The comments I made are here and here on a post which to me was a pretty straightforward pricebeat.
So far no further response from The Warehouse but I'll update if I do.The key issue is a very poorly written price promise and equally poor interpretation from their online team.
Don't expect anything too soon as these procedural changes take a while to be implemented and it's likely to be subtly introduced.
I've got a bookmark on the Price Match page - note the date of last change was 12/8/21My man! Hold them to account
i still cant believe they get away with their dishonesty in price matching…
You can make a complaint to their management.
How? Is there an email address or phone number for that?
That’s the email address I used to lodge my complaint about the price beat wording and interpretation by their team.
Just ask for it to be escalated to the manager or higher.
Does complaining really work? I'm under the impression that it's a waste of time, they would either make it harder to price promise or just do nothing. I rather go to another store or try a different agent online.
Same issue with Mitre10 and Bunnings, one manager will tell me "oh no, we don't match clearance prices", another will walk over to the 15% poster to have a read and then tell me "yes, we can beat that, there's no mention of clearance in the T&C", another will gather a crowd of colleagues around the computer screen to make sure they are looking at the same products…haha
@akrotohur: If you don't complain nothing will change.
Don't assume this is policy. It's almost certainly individual employees applying their interpretation. Manager should be trained to know how to apply them correctly.
@akrotohur: Yeah this kind of happened to me once at Mitre10 so I went into Bunnings, bought the same item with the receipt, went into Mitre10, showed the manager that it's the same item. She finally price beat it for me, then I took the original item back into Bunnings and got a refund. Lucky for me Mitre10 is just behind Bunnings
yep, it is getting a bit ridiculous their random reasons. I think it depends on who's on customer service, worth going to the place where they are good.
tried to price match with EB game and warehouse agent said EB game is not NZ company cannot price match it lols.
I normally have no problems with price matching at the warehouse but once a warehouse agent tried to tell me Repco wasn't in NZ. After convincing them Repco had many stores in NZ they just came up with an other excuse why they wouldn't honor the price match. I price match with SCA online instead (They beat Repco price by 50c! Hardly worth the effort but wanted to collect instore) On an other occasion the warehouse agent only agreed to match the price and refused to beat as a electric tooth brush is apparently a technology product! despite the T&C saying no such thing. Management was supposed to get back to me but never did.
Even pbtech doesn't price match easily anymore.
Even if a retailer price matches, I usually prefer to buy it from their competitor - I figure why would I buy it from someone that was (originally) more expensive - I'd rather support the actual price-leader.
If they price beat that's different, or if they have other terms that make it better (free or lower cost shipping for example) then I would also go with a 'price match' as it is, in reality, lower.
PBTech have to price beat to cover the 2.5% (?) credit card charge too (no chance I am paying with a debit card), so they often lose out to someone else, unless I need it urgently, and nobody else has it in stock.
Yeah they're just like Noel Leeming now, I think we broke them
The Warehouse Snells Beach is closing down in January. Wonder if they'll do a clear-out.
https://www.localmatters.co.nz/business/warehouse-closure-im…So I had some price matched items in my cart from about the 18th December which expired a few days ago, so it looks like they will stay in your cart for about a month. Unless they just randomly go clearing out carts with items in them. Interestingly though, all 3 items are now on special so I wonder if a new special has wiped out the price matching on those items. I'm not sure. The current specials are of course not as good as what the price matches I had were.
Nice test!
As you say, it would be interesting to know whether it was a time based thing, or a price change thing.
Yes, I don't know. All 3 items were on sale when I had then price matched, the price match was cheaper. I thought the price match might fall off when the warehouse sale finished but it didn't. It gave me an option of adding them back to the cart which I did, but the price matches had gone.
Yes - I agree.
It's like it has moved from the commercial side (most of whom will be accountants etc who are wanting to maximise the bottom line, and won't care too much if it comes through as low margin, as long as it's cash-positive) to maybe the customer services team or maybe more likely product managers who seem to want to minimise low margin sales, maybe because their performance is measured on average margin percentages rather than aggregate margin dollars.
Hard to know without having an inside view though.
Alan.