Just curious, does Micro Center even sell laptops online?
Found the laptop I want to buy. Micro Center has it, good price too. Same manufacturer but basically the newer version of my old laptop. They appear to be the exclusive distributor in the entire US. Got the money but they won't sell it to me. Says in store purchase only. Which is great, I'd rather buy in person anyways. Only problem, closest store in 1,600 miles away. I travel all over the western US as well but not a single store anywhere near where I travel to. Then I noticed, out of all 18 comparable gaming laptops currently listed for sale on their site, not a single one was available online. So it begs the question, do they even sell gaming laptops online? Should I just look at purchasing from a different company? Should I let the manufacturer know that the exclusive distributor refuses to sell to loyal, returning customers?
Comments
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If their website shows "in-store only", then it wouldn't be available for shipping. They're a retail brick and mortar store. Last I knew there is a location in Cali, really big store it looks like
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Updated: out of 69 gaming computers for sale, 0 are available for purchase online
Out of 363 total laptops available, 12 are for sale online
Obviously, Micro Center does not intend to be an online retailer.
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I would really like someone from Micro Center to weigh in here.
Are online laptop sales not part of the business model/focus?
Are you just low on stock on nearly every laptop and shipping availability should change in the near future?
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They are pretty clearly interested in being a retail store. If they don't want to ship out items/aren't set up to ship out items like it shows on their website directly, I highly doubt a "Community" message board for tech users is making business decisions for the company, lol.
Looking at their main site they are set up to be a physical store, it's only listed about everywhere about visiting one of the locations. You can look at the store locations they have on their main site which is on teh very top bar by the search https://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/default.aspx
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I thought this number seemed so wrong so I had to look it up myself (very easy to do on their main website btw), and it appears nearly 1/3, and not "12 out of 363" of their laptop offerings are available for shipping. Sure, it sucks they don't ship out the exact item you want, but no need to post clear misinformation.
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You are not helping the conversation. Are you a hired shill for Micro Center?
The information presented was true at the time of posting. This has since changed, as you noted. Not sure if my observation had anything to do with it.
That being said, at this time 109 out of 365 laptops are available for sale online. Less then 1/3 indicates that the focus is to drive traffic to the physical store, not sell online.
I've also noticed that my question has been shadow banned on the community forum. I guess someone didn't like the questions I was asking.
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Just checked the moderation queue, a little confused by what is going on here. I can see that the thread itself was moved from New Members to Store Information & Policy (which would be a more accurate category for the discussion) however I am not sure why the first bolded sentence was removed. Our moderation team is looking into it. In the meantime, I can assure you that no shadow ban took place, nor do we plan to do so. The original thread met our code of conduct.
I will ask you kindly to refrain from calling your fellow community members "shills". Nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other, we just gotta make sure we are remaining respectful while doing so.
As for the topic at hand, you are correct in the understanding that our goal is to drive traffic towards the physical stores. There are many factors as to why we prefer the physical storefront over an online presence:
- Trained sales staff offer a better overall experience for novice or entry-level customers
- Better product handling (third party delivery services can be a logistical nightmare, especially when poor handling occurs in shipping)
- Better product overviews & physical demos (most of our stores don't mind opening products to let customers get a better look/feel of the product, as well as our in-store display models being available for testing)
- Easier to control product availability. We currently serve 25 stores (Indianapolis coming soon!), so making sure we have enough inventory to serve the few markets we are currently in is much more manageable than trying to maintain enough supply to serve the entire US market. We are still a relatively small company compared to some of our competitors. The reason why we can only offer 1/3rd of our laptop availability for online sales is because the remaining laptops are already distributed to stores and many of them do not have ample supply as is. Not to mention most of our stores are only configured to receive, not ship out.
Something not many of our customers know is that in addition to our Micro Center Online webpage, we have a digital Micro Center storefront on Amazon which at one point did sell gaming laptops, however I am not seeing any on there at the moment. It was mostly MAINGEAR laptops and our PowerSpec house brand. Here's the page for anyone interested: https://www.amazon.com/sp?ie=UTF8&seller=A1UVTGP6WV0D1P&asin=B07T4J6X1N&ref_=dp_merchant_link&isAmazonFulfilled=1.
I do know that the shipping issue is still a major concern. We do not have the luxury of having distribution centers in every state that can ship products safely in a smaller van vs risking poor handling through a third party shipping courier. I can say that for the PowerSpec desktop side of things, we have been looking into Instapak solutions in the hopes of being able to offer our PowerSpec systems to a wider range of customers online, but I don't have any ETA as to if/when this will occur. If graphics cards keep getting bigger, it only becomes more challenging.
I know it can be a bit of a bummer if you are in an area that we currently do not serve, however I would recommend starting a thread to request a Micro Center in your area. I know a lot of people think these threads go unanswered, but I can assure you that our executives do read these threads and take them seriously. There is a reason we are launching 3 new stores within the next 2 years alone. The more hype around a location, the better.
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Thank you. This was the type of response I had hoped to receive. To be honest, after the last response I was ready to never purchase from Micro Center again. You were thoughtful and addressed each of the issues. The thread being moved makes sense, just not sure why I was not notified if that is the case. You may want to make a policy of doing so in the future to avoid any confusion.
It appears to me that GoatForHire is a foreign, possibly Indian, customer service rep, posing as a customer. Knowingly deceiving customers is a major ethical problem. Transparency should be the goal. That is the premise that I'm working by but if that is not the case, I apologize.
As someone who works with companies professionally to develop customer service and shipping policies, I understand the shipping dilemma. So, you have a central warehouse and don't ship from individual stores. That answers one of my questions because I checked several stores and some of them seemed to have plenty available, even for online sales, and others, not so much. More employees if the volume necessitates it. I don't really buy that excuse but corporate structures tend to over complicate simple procedures so that doesn't surprise me. The problem of shipping from individual stores is such an easy one to tackle, it could literally be done by one employee at each store and possibly one at corporate distributing orders. But that's neither here not there.
Using the website to drive traffic to the physical store, I got no issue with that. Having less then 1/3 available online is indicative of a problem though. The hardest part of sales is getting customers in the door. In this case, the website is the store front. After they've entered, the hard part is done. Now you just gotta close the deal. It amazes me how many businesses get this simple concept wrong. I'd understand if 5-10% of the items were available "in store only", this is a common practice. Having higher percentages unavailable is leaving a lot of sales on the floor. What's worse is it's also telling customers not to come back. Why bother if most of the items can't be purchased anyway? This is a horrible message to send customers.
Before posting, I telephoned customer service. The phone number was not readily available which immediately was a big red flag but I persevered until I found it. I wanted to know if the item I'm interested in was for sale online, as I originally thought, and if the status had changed due to a marketing campaign or limited stock. I also would like to know if more are on order, if they will be available for sale online and what the time frame is? The answers I received were not very definitive. Is this something you would be able to answer for me?
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@ITSA96 While I'm not sure who exactly GoatsForHire is, I do want to mention that they are not an Indian customer service rep. All of our customer service and tech support is located at our home office in Hilliard Ohio.
While I'm not 100% sure of logistics in store to store shipping and shipping any item as a whole - I would refer back to @PowerSpec_MichaelB as he summed it up in a really good way. To give a bit of insight, we have a distribution center that ships to our stores - there is only one. That distribution center is responsible for getting all of the stock that we have in store and online to the right places. For simplicity sake, it's only going one way. From there, our parcel service (FedEx) will pick up and deliver the packages from a select few warehouses to deliver your items to your home.
For us to do store to store shipping we would have to introduce another party to pick up from any given store, and delivery it across the country in some circumstances. For some companies, they it's more manageable because the may have fifty times as many stores as Micro Center, so the distance from any given location may only be a matter of 10-20 miles.
That being said, we try to evenly distribute the stock between the stores from gate. You also have to consider that some locations just have more velocity than others. So it simply wouldn't be fair to the people driving out of their way to purchase something at one location, just to be told that they have to take the last item off the shelf and ship it hundreds of miles away to another store.
^This is all a very simplified way of putting it, but I tried to hit most points.
I know it's not ideal for some people, but as others have said before, at the end of the day, we are a brick and mortar store at heart.
*edited for spelling errors
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I'll add on to what @GavinT has already answered. We do have ICC (Inventory Control Coordinators) at each store that handle inventory coming into stores, but shipping out isn't exactly simple just based on the design of their receiving depot alone. Received goods are palletized and wrapped to help protect the product. None of our stores are outfitted with the means to properly pack product for individual parcel shipping. You also have to factor in how product is carried. When an online reservation is made, store employees go through the store and hand-pick product from the sales floor to reserve on behalf of customers. These must be scanned through our POS to remove the inventory from the website to properly reflect stock, otherwise you would have other customers looking for inventory that is no longer available. If we allow online orders to ship out through the stores, maintaining an accurate reflection of in-store inventory is going to be difficult. It's also going to drive up traffic in-store as more sales staff is tied up shopping on behalf of online customers. Ideally we'd have an off-site depot hold inventory to ship from (completely separate from in-store inventory), but I personally don't know enough on that subject to comment on the logistics. I do however share your opinion that I would like to see our online offerings expand.
As for the phone number not being easily available, I know this was a change that occurred around COVID. We were pushing to get more interaction through chat, email and the community forum to help customers avoid long phone queues since there was a massive surge in contacts during the work from home days. I can check to see if there is any plan to reinstate the number online.
The subject of products being available online and whether their shipping status has changed recently, that's going to be a bit more difficult to answer. Our phone support reps can't really see when the shippable flags change in the POS, these are defined by the buyers and there isn't really a notice when these change. If notice were given, there would be hundreds of thousands of emails coming through on any new products entered into the POS which wouldn't be ideal. We also have no insight into whether they will be available for shipping going forward with the tools we have available to us either. I can tell you from experience that if products are not classed as shippable from the start, it's extremely unlikely that they will be going forward. I do recall that we had tools to check if products were on order or EOL, but I don't think we had access to numbers or dates. As in, we could say "This SKU is on-order", but not "We have 60 coming next Tuesday". The reason that information isn't readily available is because purchase orders can fall through. This results in us receiving partial orders, mixed orders (X of one SKU, Y of another to compensate) or the PO is cancelled entirely in favor of newer product revisions. Technology changes so fast that we often do not forecast too far ahead so we can get the latest versions of products. There are certainly exceptions to products that do not change often (cables, chassis, tools, etc.) but for systems, it's by far the hardest to forecast. If a new CPU launches in Q1 and you sell a ton of laptops with that processor in Q1, you can't use those figures to forecast through Q3, as the hype will die down and people will be holding off on buying in favor of waiting for the next generation, if that makes sense.
All of this is why I am glad I am in the engineering field and not the merchandise field.
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Per the last paragraph, yeah, I get it, I've dealt with all of these issues as well. That's kind of where a good sales rep comes into play. They can look at the numbers, past volume and expectations, and say; "we have this many on order at the moment, expected arrival date is approximately x, based on my experience, x and y will be divvied out to this and this store, this many should be available online," ect, ect. A good sales rep knows how to read between the lines and look for red flags. This of course, is assuming such info is made available to the rep. You just make sure the customer is aware of the contingencies that could change.
Even an "email when available" button would be helpful.
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The "email when available" button is definitely some feedback I can get behind. I'll pass that along to the web team to see whether this is something that can be implemented with the current system.
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Is there any more specific online availability information you can provide me about SKU: 541573 ?
As it stands now, I have to assume there's only a small percentage chance I will be able to purchase it.
Many POS/shopping carts have this feature.
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I am not seeing any shipping flags for this notebook. I do see it's classed as a "top selling item" which means it is something we will likely be ordering to keep stock up. I can reach out to the buyer on your behalf but I can't guarantee this will be reclassed. In the event that it remains classed as in-store only, you might still have a few options to try.
- If a friend lives near a Micro Center store, have them purchase the system on your behalf and ship it. This would be the easiest solution, though it does require some trust with a potentially long distance friend.
- Attempt to see if a local retailer can match our price. While we prefer to avoid sending customers to competitors, sometimes that is what it takes in order to take care of the customer. Keep in mind that some stores may have policies to only price match local retailers or retailers with online stock available, so there isn't a guarantee that this will work.
- Lastly, you can private message me the state that you live in and we can see if the nearest local Micro Center store can assist. I'll forewarn you that this is not something we normally do, and the answer will likely be no, but it's always worth asking.
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It would be helpful to know if the model was available for purchase online at one time. I thought it was originally but noticed this change around July 1st. So I'm not sure if I misread the add or if status changed due to a new marketing campaign, limited availabilty, ect. The info I received from the phone rep was that more are on order and might become available online. I'm not very confident in the reliability of the information, if you know what I mean. I've already stuck it out 3 weeks waiting to see if the status would change.
I've looked into having a friend or family member purchase it. The logistics are difficult because they have to purchase it, I can't order and pay for it and have them pick it up. I'm really surprised this is not an option, especially since the stores have a will call procedure. It's such a common practice. Sending that kind of cash to a friend can be a substantial risk.
No other retailer carries a comparable model, as far as I've found. That's kind of the issue. I doubt MSI realizes all of their customers can't purchase this product, namely the GE78 with the RTX 4070. Honestly, this is way more computer then I probably need but it has a couple features that would be nice to have and the competing brands don't have a couple of the features I need. Which leaves me kind of stuck at the moment. It's either this or end up purchasing a cheaper model without some of the niceties. Honesty, there is nothing more frustrating for a consumer then finding what you need then not be able to purchase it.
I'm willing to PM, though I don't know how, lol. Any help is appreciated.
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No worries, I'll send you a message. For future reference, if you click my name, there should be a button that says "message" on the right hand side.
Keep an eye out for my private message.
As for whether this SKU was previously available online, I can't see that through any of my tools, but I'll ask the buyer if that was ever the case. They should know.
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