TRUTHBUSTER.com

Seeing that we are in the heat of the Holiday season, we wanted to write about something cheerful– Customer Service!!! It’s that time of year when retailers stock up on CSRs (Customer Service Representatives) and turn their 10′ x 10′ call centers into a war room. If you have never been to a call center, it’s quite an experience.

To begin, if you’re here looking for phone numbers straight up, the best resource to find most major retailers’ secret stash of hotlines is DVD Talk’s list found here. And in case they ever take that site down, you can find them at the bottom of this entry. And of course, you should always check out the site that is now synonymous with getting in touch with live CSRs, gethuman.com. (Although they are missing quite a few notable companies.)

We are still new, so bare with us if you hear us use the word “bust” one more time. This entry is about busting open the truth about call centers. People think call centers nowadays consist of a group of foreigners, sitting in an abandoned building in India– not true. Some retailers, manufacturers, and tele-communications still have a call center or two located in the United States. Not all, but “some.”

The trick to call centers, as many of you know, is to find the flow to get to the CSR asap. Gethuman.com helps you out in that way, so we’ll skip over the “how-to” portion of this post. Instead, we will help you understand how it works, which may stir up some creativity on new ways to beat the system.

Read the rest of this entry »

We all know the truth about diamonds– only a select few can retrieve them and a smaller few that can legitimately sell the precious stone to mass consumers. We are not here to tell you that diamonds are bad. As a matter of fact, several of us here at TB.com recently purchased and/or received a diamond in the past several years, so to make this an entry describing the horrific consequences of blood and non-blood diamonds would hypocritical and just plain boring. Instead, we will bust out the truth about diamond shopping and hope to assist through confused souls who are in the market for a diamond and its illustrious setting counterpart.

[for some perspective, this entry is written by Buster I, a 20-something y.o. male, with an income between $60-85K/year]

This entry will be the first of a four part series because there’s a lot of information to bust out and we need to get it all right. So let’s begin…

The FIRST thing you need to know about diamonds is that all diamonds, whether you like it or not, come from the same regions as other diamonds. We can get into the politics and trafficking of these stones, but we know that’s not why you’re reading… just know that diamonds, for the most part, are all similar. It is the Four C’s (you may have already heard this) that really differentiate these stones: Color, Cut, Clarity, and Carat. If there is one thing that you get out of this first entry, it is that all stones are the same!

The SECOND thing you need to know is that other companies, retailers, and wholesalers know this and error on the side of an uneducated consumer. They expect that the schmuck that walks through the door does not know anything about diamonds… or he may have quickly browsed through an internal article or learned a little on Bluenile.com, but that’s all. Hopefully, people can learn from us and other valuable resources out there and help you get the most bang for your buck. Those in the diamond/jewelry industry are very savvy and will surely capitalize on uninformed consumers– they will make their diamonds seem more valuable than competitors, even when it’s the same exact stone.

The LAST thing you need to know before purchasing a diamond is that there are options out there. There are the safe, reliable options with the established jewelers and there are other options with lesser proven companies. We do not know your risk profile, so we’ll try to lay it all out for you to decide.

Before we close this out, we’re aware that some of you cannot wait for the following entries, so we will give you a quick shortcut of resources that may tie you over for the time being.

Happy hunting!

Diamond Resources:

http://www.pricescope.com
The best meta-search engine for diamond estimates. While not all online jewelers put their diamonds in the their database, PS gives you a very realistic idea of what you can get and what the stone is going for in the market. It has a lot of good info on diamond pricing in general.

http://facetware.gia.edu
The ULTIMATE diamond grade cut tool. However, only use this when you are familiar with all the other diamond terms. This will help you get that extra mile out of your wallet. It will help you differentiate the average “could’ve bought at the mall” diamonds versus the “prettiest diamond ever” for the best value.

http://www.diamondcut.gia.edu/06_estimating_a_cut_grade.html
For round brilliant cuts, you can mathematically find out the cut grade (fair, good, very good, excellent) by taking the angles, proportions and other numbers from the lab report. GIA is one the tried-and-true gem laboratories. The other is AGSL/AGS.

http://www.diamondcut.gia.edu/charts/index.cfm
If you use this chart estimator by putting in the table angle or pavilion angle, you can guess what the diamond cut grade will be. You’ll see that the jewelers assign the “ideal,” “very good,” etc labels themselves.

http://www.niceice.com/cut.htm
A good resource that explains the cut of a diamond. The Blue Nile tutorials are very educational too.

Jewelers:

Blue Nile
James Allen
Mondera
Whiteflash
Union Diamond
Kay Jewelers
Zales
Tiffany & Co.
Costco

The term “doorbusters” is a cache word used in the retail world. Here is Wikipedia’s definition of a doorbuster:

“a very low-priced, or even free, item designed to draw people into a sale, such as during Black Friday. As such, items being sold at a loss to the retailer are common during doorbuster events.”

A couple of us on the Truthbuster.com come from the corporate world of retail, so we would like to expound on the lovely concept of busting doors. We hope this gets you in the mood for a very, merry Holiday season…

In most instances, doorbusters are loss leaders (items sold at a loss or very low margin), but the retailers count on these to bring in foot-traffic or click-traffic (online) to their retail space. Now, if the Wal-Marts, Penny’s, Targets, and Best Buys in the world all let these people hit-and-run, their day-end sales would look horrible on Black Friday. But that’s not that case.

In our minds, if we’re shopping on days with doorbusters, we’re looking for a deal. The price is irrelevant– as long as there is a deal to be had, we’re in! However, that mindset is used against us if we are also the “time-value” sensitive shopper. If we come out of the store with “All-I-Got-Was-This-DVD-Player-Despite-Waiting-In-Line-For-Five-Hours” t-shirt, the deal may seem a bit unsatisfying. Especially now that Black Friday has come and gone, we can think back about the four hours of fighting through lines and piles of people for $3 DVDs.

We here at Trustbuster.com are not experts by any means, but we all believe there’s more that goes behind a great deal. The lines on days with doorbusters will inevitably be long, so while you might have that screaming $30 microwave oven deal in your hand, you’ll probably pick up a $7 t-shirt, some snacks, and a stocking-stuffer while you’re at it. So while your doorbuster might have slimmed down the margin, your basket size of additional items will surely increase that margin to something more palatable for the retailer. Hopefully, both people end up winning. The consumer gets more bang for their buck, but the retailer, by luring you in their space, draws more buck out of you. If you’re okay with that, so are we. We’re loving our new $1000 1080p HDTV.

And for those who like to play with numbers.  The average margin for an electronics item like an HDTV is anywhere from 10-20%, depending on the brand, life-stage of model.  Margins for soft-goods like apparel and linens are much higher… ranging from 30-70%.  Even if a retailer sold an item for near at-cost (i.e. cashmere sweaters for $10, 5% margin), your additional items of scarf ($10, 30% margin), microwave ($30, 10% margin), and DVD (ten titles at $4 each, 15% margin) will increase the average margin to a healthy 10-15%.  And since the sheer quantity of items sold during doorbuster events during Christmas time are insane (retailers often expect 40%-60% of their sales from Nov-Dec alone), the retailers are living fat and happy.

Care to disagree? Feel free to leave comments for our team. Until next time…