Feb 23rd, 2008
Bacn Almost Got Me
As a follow up to my previous discussion on bacn, Friday morning I received a piece of bacn from Performance Bike, where I’m (at some point) going to order more tubes. I go through a bunch of these each season, even if I patch them (which I hate doing), and I’m about out. It’s considerably less expensive for me to mail order these than it is to get them locally, so I’ll be ordering about 20 of them.
One of the bugaboos of mail order for me and my neighbors is shipping. When you live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you sometimes get ridiculous shipping quotes (I was once quoted $10,000 shipping for a 2.5 inch hard drive), so when I got a “Free Ground Shipping On All Orders $75 Or More”, I was tempted.
I was tempted enough I tried to figure out how to pad my less than $50 order to $75; I did need a new jersey and some new bike shorts, which were on sale, and I found a 10% off coupon online. I was at the point of placing the order until the free shipping code wouldn’t work for Hawai’i.
I almost got hooked by bacn.
The whole point of advertising is not just to make more sales, but to make people spend even more. If I add onto my order because “I can get free shipping with $10 more!”, then the bacn did its job.
It almost did.
I’ll still get tubes from them, but not quite yet. Hoping for a better deal, and I don’t need them right away. Of course, there is the possibility that the price will go up, but if it goes up enough, I may as well get them locally anyway. But in the meantime… be wary of bacn! It can get you just like it almost got me!
20 tubes!? Wow! What’s your annual mile count? I probably go 20000-3000 and I’ve yet to burn through one tube. I’ve had one flat so far which I patched. Do you use tire liners?
I know about the free shipping over $XX problem. Usually I put things in the shopping basket. Then I sleep on it. And the the next day I don’t order anything anyway. It’s a waste of time but at least I don’t waste any money.
I probably ride (hard to say because I’m in fits and spurts) about 3500 miles a year at this point. I typically go through a tube a month or so, even if I do patch (I’m a horrible patcher). Of course, we have horrible roads here and I am not a small guy…