A store in Australia is charging patrons who are showrooming five dollars. Apparently they really hate it when people take up valuable real estate and don’t buy anything. Redditor Barrett Fox posted a picture of this Australian sign informing patrons of a new fee at a specialty food store in Brisbane.
The sign is pretty self explanatory, but it states:
Dear Customers,
As of the first of February, this store will be charging people a $5 fee per person for “just looking.”
Why has this come about?
There has been high volume of people who use this store as a reference and then purchase goods elsewhere.
These people are unaware of our prices are almost the same as the other stores plus we have products simply not available anywhere else.
I have a lot of issues with this; hypothetically if you have items that are “simply not available anywhere else” how are people showrooming in your store and then buying the items SOMEWHERE ELSE?! While that is plaguing my mind, my biggest issue is – how do you enforce this? I’m not usually one to analyze logistics, but do I have to give you $5 in cash to walk into the store? In the age of plastic money and the disappearance of cash all together aren’t you ridding yourselves of a lot of potential customers who can’t pay the fee just because they don’t have cash? What about all of the people you’re offending who just walk away because of the apparent greed of your owners?
I’m not the only one dumbfounded by this policy; it’s being ripped apart unanimously by the commenters in the Reddit thread where it was originally posted. A few of the nicer ones were:
“This store seems desperate to go out of business.”
“I can just imagine it now. ‘Hey want to not buy something for $5?'”
What do you think? Would you pay the fee, or walk out?
Sidenote – People are always asking me “how do you know this stuff?” Hello?! I start 3/4 of my blog posts with something to the effect of so I was reading this blog/newsletter/email and I came across this story. Every morning I have about 50 emails, aside from general work stuff, that I sift through to find something interesting/ridiculous/industry-related. Stories like this one are the reason I sift through the junk mail. [For the record – this one came from one of my daily emails – “10 Things You Should Know This Morning.” I wrote a blog post on IFTTT a few months ago, this is one of the ways I use it. That’s how I learned about Google Glass, the 17-year-old who sold a startup to Yahoo for $30 Million, and the father who hacked Donkey Kong so his daughter could have a girl character that saved Mario instead of being the damsel in distress… The list goes on and on. If you haven’t checked out IFTTT yet, you should, here’s the recipe for “10 Things You Should Know This Morning”; and if you haven’t heard of Google Glass click the link and have your mind blown!]
t-decoration: underline; color: #ffffff;”>Google