Over the years, we have
heard people ask about purchasing accessories when they
were under contract for a cellular phone. The contracts
that you sign are for the cellular phone service and do
not cover cellular phone accessories. Many people
thought that they could only buy the accessories
exclusively from the store in which they contracted for
cellular service. This is simply not true. Such a
practice would go against anti-competitive laws, as
well as other federal laws. The fact remains that you
have a choice in where you purchase your products.
Let us say that you are
a high volume user of the cellular phone. You aren’t
an expert on cellular phones and you’re a small
business owner. You don’t have time to research what
is available for a cellular phone. Your battery dies
out and you call the store. The representative who sold
you the phone said they will take care of you and give
you a battery free of charge. They tell you this
battery is a bit different since you have to discharge
it all the way before you recharge. A different
charging procedure from your battery that is being used
now since it doesn’t have to be discharged all the
way before it can be charged again. But, it is free and
you are being taken care of now.
Wrong. What you have
been given is a Nickel Cadmium battery instead of the
Nickel Metal Hydride battery you were using. Either
way, you will still use the same amount of minutes on
your cellular phone but now you have to worry about
discharging your phone completely before recharging. It
costs the retailer a minimum amount of money to give
away the battery since they are getting a residual
commission on the cellular phone user’s high volume
of minutes. In reality, they have done you no favors.
This was an experience that had actually happened to a
cellular phone user. Why the retailer wouldn’t have
invested in a higher capacity battery was beyond us.
We have already
discussed the bait and switch tactic. This is where a
company will draw you in with advertising a great deal
on a product. You arrive to find the advertised item is
of the lower end of the product lines and you start to
look at other options available to you. The goal of the
retailer is to draw you into the store. You will find
this strategy used quite often by large retail stores
that sell business equipment like fax machines,
copiers, and laptop computers. Experience has shown
that once someone stops into a store, they will usually
find something to buy rather than walk out empty
handed. A store depends on traffic for its sales. Even
if they sell a pack of batteries, they sold them that
much faster.
