Best Buy Improves Its Pick-Up Line
Written by Evan SchumanPrepping for the holiday season, Best Buy has tried polishing its pick-up options. It has made some interesting improvements—such as no longer requiring customers to pick up purchases personally—but the chain might want to consider rephrasing some of its enhancements.
For example, Best Buy’s new promise for the buy-online-pick-up-instore option is that the order will be ready “in as little as 45 minutes after placing it.”
Despite one prominent retail media outlet reporting that the pledge was a guarantee of product availability in fewer than 45 minutes, Best Buy’s pledge is actually the opposite. It promises that an order will not be ready in 44 or fewer minutes. Guaranteed! Might be as little as 45. Could be 3 hours. But it absolutely, positively, won’t be fewer than 45 minutes.
This change is actually a very strong improvement, but Best Buy’s phrasing could use a little more of the Hallmark touch. ” Friends & Family Pick Up: Place an order online and have someone else pick it up, avoiding an inconvenient trip to the store or giving an out-of-town relative immediate access to a purchase.”
That’s great. Avoid “an inconvenient trip” for yourself and instead make a friend or family member endure that inconvenient trip. After all, during the holiday season, what else are friends and family for?
As for the out-of-town relative, what’s the advantage over what Best Buy has offered for years: Buy a Best Buy gift certificate and E-mail it to that relative. That said, the ability to select someone else to make the pick up is a good idea, assuming fraud precautions are taken.
Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code.
-Marc
