Borders Baffling Business

If you are, like me, a "Borders Rewards" member then you are bombarded by waves of email coupons, mostly for things you do not want. Only every so often will they send something valuable, like a "40% off" coupon. Such a coupon typically reduces the price of any one item at Borders to the everyday purchase price at one of my favorite companies. Since I enjoy visits to bookstores and since I never exhaust my book list, a Borders store and good Borders Rewards coupons are supposed to create what you might call a "win-win."

Or so I thought.

A few weeks ago, the wiz and I found ourselves at ABQ Uptown, the shining local emblem of high-end retail and, intentionally or not, a modern day revival of Jim Crow in a typically diverse area code. Anyhow, there's a Borders! I'm a Borders Rewards member! In I go. After skimming through some cookbooks and some photo books, I consulted my wishlist at Amazon and then located Connected, which looked as good in person as it did on the web and thus my decision was made.

Oh goody.

Up at the counter I recited my phone number to the cashier as she brought up my member information.

"I'd like to use my 40% off coupon," I said.

"Do you have it with you?"

Umm... what? Of course I didn't; why would I print such a thing?

Thinking fast, but also thinking that it shouldn't have come to this: "No, but I can bring it up on my email." (some button pushing and finger swiping) "There it is!"

"Oh, sorry, our manager told us we can't accept coupons off of phones. But if you want, you can go next door to the Apple store, they'll let you print it, then bring it back here." At this point the adjacent cashier came to her defense with reinforcing opinions that this was a corporate dictum, that it really wasn't their fault, and so on. He was probably the manager.

After delivering some constructive criticism, I didn't purchase the book, and headed out. At the Apple Store, I asked one of the blue shirts if I could print out a Borders coupon. "Sure you can, the printer's right over there!" I thanked her and said that I actually didn't want to print it, that Borders had a chance to earn my business already and instead blew it, but I did ask how many people asked in a day for the printing privilege. She replied "every day, all day long."

Apple is simply clever top to bottom. By setting up a Borders coupon printer, they get a daily stream of new faces in the door. Borders, in stark contrast, insists on turning down customers at the point of sale to make sure that they head over to Apple. Color me baffled.

Slightly ironic, if only in an Alanis Morrissette kind of way, was that there I was buying a book entitled "Connected." If we swim in bits of data, then a corporation like Borders is submerged. They know who I am. They send me a gazillion emails. They know whether or not I've used my coupon, what I purchased with it, where I live, my swiss bank account number and the rest of it.  The physical coupon should be irrelevant. Yet they insist that a sheet of paper in my possession is more important than the cash I had laid on the counter. 

I guess I won't be surprised at all when the Borders CEO announces that they will be ceasing operations, citing overwhelming pressure from online retailers.

As for the book? I bought it. On my phone, I reloaded the Amazon app. Two clicks and delivered two days later, the transaction was complete.