I always try to be very honest about stuff- if I see something marked wrong at a store, I’ll point it out to the people at the store so they can fix it.
So for months- literally… since November… there’s been an Accurate Miniatures P-51A marked at $16.99 at my local Hobby Lobby. All the others were $27.99. First time I saw it, I took it up to the front and let them know. They thanked me and took it behind the counter for re-marking… or so I thought.
So I’m back in December… there it is again. $16.99. I point it again. They take it behind the counter. Again.
January- it’s back on the shelf. So I think “OK… maybe it’s deliberate. Maybe they do like I used at the old record store and always mark one piece of some slow moving merchandise down lower to move it.” So I put a little mark on the price tag. That way I can see if it’s the same one.
February… it’s there. With my little mark.
March… it’s there. A person who worked there was walking by, and I pointed it out. “Oh… if we marked it wrong, you can buy it at that price.” I told her I was just pointing it out and she said thanks.
So I was heading up to Hobby Lobby today. I decided to print out the 40% off Internet coupon. Obviously it wasn’t going to get marked down. And if it was there I was going to get it.
Sure enough- there it was. $16.99. Had my little mark.
With my 40% off coupon, I paid $10.19 for a $27.99 kit.
Not long after AMT had released their 1/72 Ju-88S, I came across one in a Hobby Lobby. It’s price was listed as $8.00 which I knew couldn’t be right (I think the MSRP was something like 23 bucks). I took it to the cashier and explained I was interested in it but I thought it had been mismarked. She called the manager and I explained what my problem was and the manager took the kit back to her office for about 10 minutes, came back and handed me the kit and said that according to her data, the kit price was accurate. So I figured that I had tried, bought the kit and left. A couple of months later I was back in that particular store and they had three or four of the same kit on the shelves and they were marked $18.
Yup, I find Hobby Lobby to be very erratic on their pricing at times. Here is my latest find. I picked up an Academy USMC M1A1 Iraq 2003 kit w/the 40% off coupon as well. Before you laugh about the inaccurate Academy M1A1 2003 kit, here’s the kicker… someone had swapped out the inaccurately short turret for one from the new(ish) Tamiya M1A1/A2 kit. What a find. It was even marked down because the box was not cello wrapped or something. I paid less than $20 for it, all the other ones with it were priced at $36.99.
I got my Academy F-18C from there for $26.99. I asked if they would double check that price as I didn’t think it was correct. The supervisor looked and said to give it to me at that price. I didn’t argue.
LOL, I’m the same way, Mike! I like to think of it as greasing the skids of the economy! Matter of fact, if you want a deal, buy something the day after I do, they normally drop the prices right after they ring up my sale!
Jon, you tried to mend their way, more than once. Enjoy the kit, or if your conscience bothers you too much, PM me for my addy and you can send it to me! [;)]
Must be nice to have a Hobby Lobby close by. [censored]
The closest one to me would have me drive halfway across NJ, then all the way across Pennsylvania and into Ohio. Sadly, the cost of gas would cancel out any savings. Whyu oh why does New Jersey always get the short end of the stick?
This is one of the reasons I appreciate Hobby Lobby so much. They aren’t so tied up in bleeding there customers for every stinking penny. They have the good sense to realize that a big chain store isn’t going shrivel up and die because they occasionally mislabel a product. It’s much more customer friendly to say “Ooops, we goofed, oh well, enjoy the accidental discount.” For the average modeler, we probably wouldn’t be that offended if the clerk looked at a kit and said “Oh hey, I don’t think this is priced right, let me check on this” But think of some 8 yr old kid with his birthday money carefully counted out with just enough to get some great hobby item he’s been jonesing for or some 75 yr old woman on a fixed income picking up some crafting supplies. And then the clerk pulls that sort of thing. It’s simpler and better for customer relations to just suck up a buck or two of loss and make the customer happy. And don’t forget HL’s ‘regular’ price includes a lot of markup anyway.
Same here. At my local Hobby Lobby, I often find kits marked down 50-75% off of the shelf price in the discount aisle. Although I will admit sometimes a kit is marked down just a couple of dollars (like a $25 kit marked down to $23).