Forum - View topicDear TRSI: Your New Holiday Sale Method is Boning Canadians
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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First, season's greetings to my favourite online anime/manga retailer. I'm writing you this letter at ANN because 1) I know some of your reps post in this forum and 2) I'm curious how my fellow Canadians feel about your new holiday sale method.
To recap for those who may not be familiar with the way things used to work, at one time TRSI's holiday sale unfolded over 13 days with new items unveiled every day. However, once an item was listed, it stayed listed at that price for the entirety of the sale. At some point, the 13 days got stretched to pretty much all of Decemember. But the principle stayed the same: once an item was listed, it stayed at that price for the entire sale (with the exception of limited time offers which were always identified as limited time offers right from the get go). This year, you are trying something new and it really blows for Canadians. This year, items are listed for a week at a time. At the start of a new week, those same items MAY continue to be available or they may not. At the start of the new week, they MAY be available at their original price or they may not. And unlike limited time offers which are clearly marked as such, we the consumers have no idea what will be what until a new week starts. Now, if we Canadians got free shipping starting at $50 this wouldn't be an issue. We would simply make a series of small orders. But as you know we don't get free shipping starting at $50. We don't get free shipping until we buy $250 worth of stuff which just happens to be my personal budget maximum for the sale. There is no point in my buying a sale item at a great price if I turn around and pay normal shipping costs for it. The cost of shipping wipes out any savings from the actual discount (most of the time). Psychologically, it is very hard to commit $250 to any given week of the sale because I'd always think... what if the next week has items I actually want more? And naturally, if I did wait until the final week of the sale, no doubt I'd end up kicking myself for not committing to one of the earlier weeks. I get why TRSI has gone this way. You are "encouraging" people to place orders sooner as opposed to waiting until the end to see ALL the items that will be offered. Especially if you are making the holiday sale a 30 day event, I can see why you'd do that. But it is boning us Canadians who, no doubt, don't make up a huge chunk of your sales. So I guess probably nothing can be done. But I just wanted you to know how this works out from a Canadian perspective: not well. |
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4609 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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Many company's "sales" involve a short term "free shipping" promotion. I wonder if Right Stuff would at least consider adding a lesser free shipping threshold for foreign buyers during their holiday sales.
Blood, Do you think you'd be more likely to buy more than once from the Holiday sale if you only had to pay $100 to get free shipping? |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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Oh, definitely. It's a cool suggestion, but I suspect impractical from TRSI's viewpoint. Years ago the free shipping to Canada trip wire was set at $150 and it got bumped to $250. Clearly they were losing money at the $150 level. Plus, they probably wouldn't want to confuse the issue by having one trip wire for the holiday sale and another for the rest of the year.
I'm curious how Americans who aren't really affected feel. Did you guys prefer the old system or this new weekly rotating system? |
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Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3876 Location: New York state. |
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At least for me, I would wait and see what was offered from each daily sale and wait for enough stuff of interest to be discounted so I can buy stuff in a batch to take advantage of the free shipping. In past years, that model tempted me to buy more from the Holiday Sales. This new approach, with the discounts changing each week per batch, still has me wanting to snag stuff. But because the opportunity window is now more limited, I am not as interested in wanting to buy so much from each weekly batch. I am more likely to just take whatever is of most interest for me from each week and buy whatever gets me up to the $49 threshold to get free shipping. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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@ Ggultra2764 - your comment makes me think TRSI is on the right track (for American customers) with the new approach. As you yourself say, in times past you were more likely to wait and only order once you had identified enough stuff you wanted. Now, you are more likely to start ordering earlier, even though probably in smaller batches than before. I think that's what they are trying to encourage rather than have people sit on the fence until everything has been listed.
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
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I was expecting to go hog wild for this xmas at RS, but nope. Prefer old system. In the past I would wait to hit the $50 free shipping mark then order and then wait for the next batch of items to hit the mark again. Therefore I wouldn't necessarily wait till the end to order everything, especially since somethings might go out of stock or if it was a megadeal, but I would never be ordering every week because some years what's on sale is not as good as others. I also have priorities in purchases. I may wait and see if a normally high priced item that I want badly is discounted and if it isn't then I may buy lower priced items that are lower on priority list. Much of this is because I maintain a budget something which RS would prefer I break. Plus I already have a lot of the classic stuff, so the newer approach may work on consumers who are newbies to anime as they may buy weekly and have catching up to do. I don't need Cowboy Bebop, etc I already own it. Another thing is I feel this is all about forcing impulse buying on consumers, just like when you get inundated with emails telling you to hurry up and buy. Amazon's lightning deals or deal of the day? No thank you, I have things to do. It annoys the heck out of me. It doesn't want to make me buy more. Instead this new approach makes me focus only on must haves or not buying at all. To be honest RS has become less relevant to me as they've tried to ape more of the larger retailers. Got Anime discount is no longer a full 10% across the board, the price for it has gone up, it doesn't apply to certain stuff and frankly I've been getting better deals for some items in other places. In addition I've been starting to import more with the result that I have less budget for RS. Most years my purchases from RS accounted for more than 50% of all my anime and manga purchases, I think this year may end up being closer to 20%. Let's see...I fall into has budget category, will import for better quality or cheaper prices, doesn't buy everything that comes out, already has a lot of the classics, not a newbie...I guess I'm not their target audience anymore. (shrugs) |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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@ One-Eye: I hadn't realized the cost for GotAnime had gone up. From $12 to $18... that's quite a jump. But it's interesting to see that even you as American aren't crazy about the new system.
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One-Eye
Posts: 2261 |
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If it had been that by itself it wouldn't bother me. But when the discount is no longer a flat 10% and its instead "up to 10%" that's a different story. Maybe there's a $100 item that might have netted you $10 off back in the day, now it could be $3, $4 or $5. Do they have partial shipping anymore or is it sometimes? They seem to have changed their stance on that a few times. They weren't allowing us to use multiple codes from overlapping sales making it easier to reach free shipping. Are they still doing that? As you can see I haven't bought anything from them in like 6 months so I don't know if they have made any significant changes that I missed. Its like death by a thousand cuts, individually some of these changes don't seem that much but taken together it just doesn't hold as much value to me anymore. However, that's not to say it wouldn't work for other people like newbies who want to buy a lot of stuff and are happy to get any discount, or if you have large disposable income that you can indulge yourself. The $250 that Canadians have to reach for free shipping though...ouch. If that was the same for me then I would see myself only making 2 or 3 big purchases a year from RS and if one of them was normally the xmas sale and it had changed to the current system then I might be less inclined to buy. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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While I would love the Canadian free shipping trip wire to be lower, at least TRSI offers one. They are the only non-Canadian online retailer that I know of that does this.
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7983 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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US Customer here.
The stuff I have had in my "Save for later" section of my cart has not changed price since I added it during the Black Friday weekend. I already had or wasn't interested in any of the Mega Deals or Limited Time stuff, so it didn't effect me as of yet. So far I've only made one holiday sale order, but I definitely would have enough stuff there to make the Canadian free shipping cap if I was Canadian. Unfortunately I have rent and medical bills and even if I wanted to I couldn't afford to plug down $250 in a week on my meager salary. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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@ Kruszer - you are very fortunate that the stuff in your save for later section hasn't changed price since the Black Friday weekend. Some of my selections have stayed the same (so far), but other haven't. Basically what I'm doing now is not checking the new items. I'll wait until I know there will be no more new items and check then. That way, at least I won't be aware of what deals I've missed.
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4575 |
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I definitely prefer the older system, and to be frank I'm still waiting until everything's listed for the most part (except for the original Black Friday thing). I know some prices are being bumped a few percentage points, and probably a few things are being delisted, but I honestly can't be bothered to go through everything multiple times and puzzle out what to prioritize. I'd rather just do it in one fell swoop at the end. In any case, most of the deals aren't mind-blowing enough to make me feel an immediate urge to throw them in a new order. For Sentai's stuff in particular, their own in-house sale has far better deals (and even that's mitigated by the fact that they seem to put the same stuff on sale every month or two), and even FUNi's more limited offerings had some noticeable savings on certain titles. At this point I own an absurd amount of stuff I haven't watched, and for all I know never will, so I don't feel nearly as strong of an urge to impulse-buy as I once did. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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@ Top Gun - yeah, I'm basically in the same boat. My physical backlog is huge and I have subscriptions to virtually every legit streaming site so even if I had a strong urge to see a particular show, I could just stream it. However, there are some beloved titles (like, say, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Season 1 or Hyouko for example) that just need to be in my collection. Definitely have become more selective.
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 2209 Location: Springfield, MO |
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From what I've noticed the items actually stay on sale after the week they're first discounted, but they go up 3% in price, which is rather small. The items that go completely off discount are clearly marked as such: "Mega Deals" or "Limited Time Offers" (they've been doing those in previous years). Granted, it's frustrating when I would rather wait to see what I can combine in orders, but if I still had to get something past the initial discount week, the price is still much better than it would be off-holidays (only a difference of a few dollars or maybe even cents from the initial discount).
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Pretty much the same for me. |
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