Saturday, April 23, 2011

Hannspree -- the world's dumbest store

Store owners in Beverly Hills will tell you their busiest time is Saturday afternoons.  The streets are filled with Gucci clad shoppers and tourists from Iowa.  So what does the Hannspree store do?  They close at 2:30 for an hour lunch.   That's like the Cheesecake Factory closing Saturday night from 7-8, or American Airlines going on Hiatus Thanksgiving week.

Hamspree is a store that sells TV's and monitors.  High priced of course.  You can get TVs inserted into frames that look like cows.  That kind of cute shit.  I recently saw a fold up monitor that would be perfect for my baseball travels.  Unfortunately, it was a Hamspree.

When the store finally did open, a leisurely ten minutes after they posted it would, there were two salesmen.  What the fuck?  I asked why one couldn't leave while the other manned the store?  Who closes in the middle of peak customer time?   The salesman said, "Well, if someone buys a big 55 inch TV we gotta get it out of the basement and it takes two people to do that."   "How often do you sell those?" I asked.   His answer:  "That's not the point."   So for the convenience of that once-in-a-blue-moon customer (can't keep him waiting ten minutes), they keep all the other potential customers out.  Brilliant!  Just brilliant!  And again, you're paying Beverly Hills prices. This is the city that laughs at Costco.  The salesman maintained that this was company policy although I question that too.

Needless to say, this sales whiz didn't have what I wanted, didn't know it existed, didn't even recognize it when I showed him a picture.  And of course couldn't order it.  Finally, he said, "Let me show you something close to what you want" and then proceeded to show me a TV that was so completely different from what I wanted that he might as well have shown me a toaster.

When it comes to Hannspree -- the inventory, prices, sales staff, and company policy is OUT TO LUNCH. 

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