I'm not sure that Lowes is open at 12:01 AM. The inventory system may not be in real-time, but it should be relatively accurate in that it won't let 100 people buy an item they only have 10 of. Stores should receive order notifications in the morning at which time you should be able to pick up the item within the first 20 minutes of the store's opening as per Lowe's 20-min. policy policy.
These aren't door-busters. Door-busters sell out in the first 5-10 minutes. Some items sell out in the first couple of hours.
But items like those that I posted and discussed are unlikely to sell out quickly. Well, maybe the $30 Shop Vac might. The others should be present in ample supply.
These items should also be available for shipping, but who wants to pay shipping when they're available for free in-store pickup?
In-store pickup won't help with door-buster deals. But it will help for those times when you check online, see there are a couple left of an item in-store, and head to the store only to find that someone *just* bought the last one.
Order the item online is not a guarantee either, though.
I remember shopping via Lowes.com last year and the year before. The weekend sale starts on Thanksgiving morning and lasts the weekend. But a lot of the items, such as the Maglite LED flashlights, sell out online very quickly.
Stores will seek to discourage ordering for home delivery. They want you to step foot inside the stores where you may potentially be enticed to buy more. Because of this they might make greater numbers of products available for in-store pickup. That way the consumer gets the deal and the store gets the consumer inside the store if even just to pickup their item.
But for door-busters, forget it, if you're not at the store when it opens, you're probably not going to get the item no matter what. These items are usually not available for online purchase at all.
Wait, I digressed a bit didn't I? Sorry. I'm not sure if items are made available for delivery regionally or nationwide. But let's say one particular store has 75 items in-stock that are listed for purchase online. Every time an item is purchased, the quantity should adjust automatically. When all 75 are spoken for, the item should not be available for in-store pickup anymore. When the store opens, or just before, employees have an update about online orders and grab the items off the shelves to hold at customer service for pickup. If they cannot find the item or run out due to an inventory error, they're supposed to call the customer within 20 minutes.
What can be done is that stores should be able to reserve a certain number of products strictly for in-store purchase. I know that free open-source online store and inventory tracking software can do this, so the backend of Lowes and Home Depot should be able to do it as well. e.g. HomeDepot.com reported that there were 23 Leatherman Wingman available at the stores in my area. Once the displays went out, you could see that there were 32 products in each display. 23 were available for in-store pickup, 9 were reserved for in-store purchase.
If Lowes has a similar reserved stock protocol in place, which they should, even if the inventory tracking is not real-time and lets a few extra orders through, they should have the extra stock to fulfill those orders.
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