Why Is Borders Such A Mess?
Found a couple gift cards for Borders, the tangible alternative to Barnes and Nobles and cloud-based big brother, Amazon. Decided to put them to good use. Grabbed the trusty Powerbook and tried to execute basic database commands on their lame site. No straightforward capabilities existed to find inventory or price or purchase online. I had to:
- Call the number on the back of the gift card to discern balance.
- Get online, where I had to first search for locations.
- Search for the book, at which point it gave me a simple “Yes” “No” or “On Order” without any price – which, clearly stated, fluctuates based on location.
- Search online to find the number for the nearest location
- Call them, wait for automated system.
- Talk to a service rep who then checked his computer for a simple Yes/No then walked to the shelf to double check and reserve, and only then could give me a price.
And now I’m expected to drive out and stand in line and drive back.Amazon is leaps and bounds ahead of the game, but you’d think that with over a decade to catch up you wouldn’t be lagging this far behind both of your near peer competitors. BN still loses on pricing but at least has a useful Web 1.0 website.
On a related note: One thing I’m waiting for is an Amazon Prime – free shipping for a year based on a single fee – type scheme for Half.com; if you could cut the shipping costs of the secondary user market, you could make a killing.
-Shlok
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