Rationale
Powertool City is founded as an Internet Virtual Store. As such, to compete against Bricks and Mortar Stores, it must offer a point of difference to emulate the Internet commerce model in order to be successful. This point of difference is to be as price competitive as possible.
Policy
1. Powertool City operates as a subsidiary of Hamilton East Hardware, and shares the infrastructure of that Bricks and Mortar store for its operations. This infrastructure consists of storage and despatch facilities, Staff time, and Internet costs.
2. While this infrastructure is shared, it does come at a cost for every transaction, as part of general overhead. In order to minimise this cost, little is held actually in stock, and otherwise unproductive staff time is used to process orders. Similarly, Staff time cannot be used unreasonably to complete time consuming research for clients. We ask the co-operation of our clients to do this research themselves, and in return, we will offer the lowest possible price on the item ultimately ordered.
3. Pricing of any item is kept as low as possible in order to cover the above costs, and inwards freight, and apply a minimal profit margin to make the transaction worth while doing..
4. Due to the minimal nature of the profit margin, prices published are extremely sensitive to change in our buying price, and will be absolutely subject to alteration at the time of purchase. Changes, if any, will be notified before any transaction is completed, and confirmation asked for.
5. Quotations will be valid for a reasonable time, but due to the volatile nature of the Business, may also be subject to change at any time.
6. The Internet Commerce Model requires that overheads be kept to a minimum. Although we will always try to "go the extra mile" for our clients, we do ask that requests for additional service be kept to a minimum and that the system for ordering etc, be adhered to. Doing this will ensure our system runs as efficiently and as lean as possible. In return we will keep our discounted prices as sharp against regular store prices as you have observed them to be.
Copyright Powertool City 2003