Catalogue Shopping

In the mail today, I received a catalogue for a store that I shop at regularly. I have always looked through the catalogue and picked out items that I like, then go to the website and order it. I picked out several items that I wanted, went to the site, put in the item number of the first item only to find out they were out of all of the colors and sizes that I would order. Not a big deal since I had other items that I wanted. Item number two entered, again they were out of colors and sizes.

I looked at several other items on the site and again, all the sizes that I could order were unavailable. Then, however, I got into the highest priced items on the site. I picked out one item that was three times the price of what it would cost to buy in a local store. They actually had each size and color. This doesn’t really surprise me, since I’ve seen it happen quite often. Especially with the outlet store for the company that I was looking to purchase from.

I have to wonder why they do this. Is it to get people to buy the higher priced items? I think that it is, but why try to lure someone in with the lower priced items? I personally find this sickening. I will go to another site to buy items rather than buy the higher priced items. I do not understand why a business feels that they need to scam a person to get them to purchase items. Especially if they were looking for a specific item and they do not have it.

Do businesses need to do this in order to attract business to their websites? I don’t think that this is the case, especially if a company has good quality items and reasonable prices to go with those items. There is no reason that any company should have to advertise an item that they don’t have just to get a customer. That, to me, degrades the reputation of the company. This is especially true if this is an outlet store for several other stores.

I understand that they have a limited quantity of items left in stock. However, when you get the catalogue and look that same day for an item and it’s already out of stock, it leaves a question in the customer’s mind. At least it does in this customer’s mind. I question whether they had anything left in stock when the catalogue was printed to begin with.

So really, is there any advantage to catalogue shopping? Is it a scam to pull in customers to purchase higher priced items that they normally wouldn’t order. I know that I have made my last catalogue shopping list. If I want something, I will go to a local outlet and purchase it. At least that way, I don’t have to worry about finding that it’s not going to be out of stock when I get to the check out line five minutes later.