Way back when and I ran a Tandy shop, Tandy had a thing called the Battery-of-the-Month Club. Every month you could go to any Tandy store with this little card thing, the current month would be marked off, and you had a choice of a ‘AAA’, ‘AA’, ‘C’ or ‘D’ cell free of charge.

It was a huge foot flow spinner, immensely popular (especially pensioners) and a lot of folk bought other product when they came in. It also created monstrous amounts of good will.

One year one Christmas Day (I was single then) I got in touch with a mate of mine on air at Perth’s then most popular station, 96fm#, and said to advise listeners that I was in my shop and if they wanted a free battery, they could pop by. So many who did wanted to buy them by the bucket loads (Christmas Day, electronic toys right?) and the shop made a mint!

Of course you probably wouldn’t get away with doing this today with the Fun Police checking our every move, so why do I bring this up?

Because it really gets me when a customer has spent a few hundred or even a few thousand to buy a camcorder, and when they get it home, they find that they can’t play back the footage they have shot with their new toy as there is no HDMI cable in the box. So back to the store they trudge hoping they have one (many don’t carry the mini HDMI in my experience). And hopefully, it’s not Christmas Day or another day when the shop is not open. WA in particular has arcane Sunday shopping hours for instance.

A similar, although admittedly rarer, is the buyer who needs an SD / CF or MemoryStick card to make the camera/camcorder work and again, these are rarely, if ever supplied.

The cost of these cables/cards at the volumes the vendors buy them at would be pennies. Surely the goodwill generated would far exceed the costs? I accept that only one HDMI cable will probably ever be bought, and there is a monster margin (pardon the pun) in them at retail. But memory cards are definitely a consumer item that people have multiples of. And getting them used to your brand right from the start makes perfect sense.

What say you vendors?

By David Hague

David is the owner and publisher of AusCam Online. He has a background in media dating back to 1979 when he first got involved with photojournalism in motorsport, and went from there into technology via a 5 year stint with Tandy Computers. Following that, he ran a software distribution company on the Gold Coast and was one of the first to recognise the potential of Microsoft Windows.

Moving back to WA, David wrote scripts for Computer Television for video training for the just released Windows and Office 95 among others, and was then lured to Sydney to create web sites for the newly commercial Internet in 1995, building hundreds of sites under contract to OzEmail including Coates Hire, Hertz Queensland, John Williamson, the NSW Board of Studies and many, many more.

He went back into full time journalism as the Managing Editor for Channel 7's 'Gadget Guy', Peter Blasina's publications VideoCamera and Pixelmag, before starting Australasian Camcorder magazine when these publications were shelved. He lives at Sydney's Avalon Beaches nearly on the ocean front with dog Budweiser and in his spare time is a nut for motor sport, road safety, fishing, science fiction - especially Dr Who - and technology.

David can be contacted via david@auscamonline.com