Trying To Buy Things at Physical Stores

[walkitout]

Today, T. and I walked down to the local hardware store (Ace). We love the local hardware store. We love the birds. We love the people. We love the stuff. They are nice and we buy stuff there. R. has a loyalty card.

Anyway. Today's outing had two goals: get keys made (and stuff to hang them on), and acquire a garage door opener remote that would fit on a keychain. I expected the first one to work and the second one to fail and I was right. It just doesn't seem like we should need that many keys, but it turns out somehow we do.

Anyway. Keys made, asked about keychain garage door opener remote, no one there (include the extremely knowledgeable and always helpful S.) had ever heard of such a thing. Okay, off to the internet, where I was not overjoyed about the third party seller options, but did go out to eyeball the opener to figure out what the brand was. From there, I went to the maker website, where I found out all kinds of things like, Yes, you can get a keychain remote and, Yes, you can get some hardware and an iOS app so you can open the thing with your phone.

Who knew.

But there is a lesson here about why physical stores operate at a significant disadvantage to online stores. In order for the physical store to offer the kind of knowledge that is available online, it has to ... be online.

Mind you, I'll keep patronizing my local hardware store. I love them.

Comments

some things you need to get at the store to get

[rolandgo.livejournal.com]

I first thought about ordering gallons of paint on-line.
Now there's something that USPS will be loving... not so much.
And then I imagined fulfillment of a 20 lb tank of propane.