My wife recently purchase a nearly $200 baseball bat from Dicks Sporting Goods and decided to get the extended warranty upsell. That bat was making a noise and we wanted to see if we could get a different bat (we have since researched and believe that maybe the noise is no big deal). We then discovered that the extended warranty doesn’t come into play into after the manufacturer warranty. I’m sure the fine print spelled all this out, so this is our fault for not knowing what we were paying for.
However I would propose that instead of passing the buck and selling a high margin product that ends up being of questionable value and is annoying to use (you can’ take your item back to Dicks, you need to deal with the third party company) Dicks should offer an upsell that is essentially a “Dicks will take care of you if something happens and we’ll do it in a way that’s convenient for you.”.
Despite paying extra for protection we would have to send our bat to the manufacturer and be without it for 3 weeks or so during the middle of the season. This is the same level of service I would get at an online shop.
Dicks should do everything in it’s power to capitalize on the the location based advantage it has, which is customer convenience. But instead they take the easy margin dollars and make us jump through hoops. By all accounts the trends are heavily in Dicks favor right now, so this isn’t a death blow or anything. Just a huge missed opportunity.