This Ordinary Life

After failing to acquire a used heart rate monitor (HRM) on eBay, a colleague made me aware of a London chain of cycle shops, Cycle Surgery, that will price match even web-shops.

Now the HRM I was bidding on was the Polar S725x and which sold for £166. I thought this was a great deal as they normall retail for £250 until I found one new online for only £176 from Affordable Supplements. As I had a triathlon the that weekend, I decided to take this price to my local Cycle Surgery for a price-match.

Now at first, this was a very smoothe transaction. I walked in and said "Hello, I would like to buy one of your finest heart rate monitors," (well, not exactly in those words, but you get the gist). I told them which model, which they had in stock or at least I thought they did as there were two boxes on display that were branded "Polar S725x".

Things were still going fine when I asked if they priced matched online retailers, "Yes, as a matter of fact we do, sir". I had checked their corporate website ahead of time to confirm this, so it was a loaded question. Actually, everytime I ask a shop to price-match to the web I produce a little pack to ensure they don't have any grounds to wiesel out of honouring their promise. However, Cycle Surgery really did impress me.

Now in the shop they had the S725x priced at £244.95, significantly more than the £176 I had found online. The shop assistant was fine until he noticed this himself at which point he said, "sorry, we can't price match that because it's a different model as the prices are so different".

In true Macguiver style I was ready for this and got out the pack "I had prepared earlier" and countered with "but how can this be, as the one I found online is the S725x and the box here says its a S725x..." This resulted in a "I'll have to call the stckroom and confirm that".

To cut a very long story involving a half hour of my time, a number of calls to the stockroom and a lengthy debate with the shop assistant, the outcome is they didn"t sell me the watch.

According to Cycle Surgy, there had been a grave error by there distributor and altough all the pckaging across the whole chain of shops stated that they contained S725x's they actually only contained S725's, the older model discontinued in November 2005 and now only available as part of an extremely expensive package including a power guage for £379. A likely story...

I got the same story when I phoned their head-office. However, irrespective of why they couldn't sell me the S725x, the reputational damage has been done and I won't be shopping there anytime soon. Actually, shorty after this altercation, I had a puncture and went straight to their fiercest competitor, Evans Cycles, and bought a new innertube from them. Their service was excellent and they even loaned me some tire levers and allowed me to fix my tire right there in their shop.

Moral of the story is, don't offer price-match to online retailer if you can't accept the fact that the savvy shopper may find a great price. Secondly, when confronted with a price to painful to match come up with a better story of why you can't like "My dog ate the original packaging"...