newsletter

Retail Sales Are Expected to Begin to Rebound
More Diners Split Bills By Itemizing
Cheap Tipping European Diners?
Your Computer Is Infected With a Virus. Click Here!
Contacting pcAmerica

Retail Sales Are Expected to Begin to Rebound

I can sense what you are thinking: How does this guy know that retail sales are going to begin to rebound?

The National Retail Federation (NRF) publishes a quarterly Retail Sales Outlook report. According to the report (which includes retail stores but not car dealerships, gas stations or restaurants), retail sales will increase by 3.6 percent in the fourth-quarter of 2009.

Sales for the first half of the year are expected to decline by 2.5%.  Sales declines will begin to slow in the third quarter and will decrease by 1.1%.

The bottom line for retailers is that if the forecasts are accurate, you need to bunker down now and get ready for a good last quarter.

There are lots of reasons to believe the forecasts.

#1...Consumers are scared. They have stopped buying. Actually, consumers have overly stopped buying. We hear about doom from our President, Congress, news shows, and friends. Stock market prices have gone down. Everything is bad and consumers are on strike. The key is that consumers have overly stopped buying. Many people have the money, but are waiting for more optimistic times to spend some of their money. Once people start buying again and feeling more optimistic, the money will flow back to retailers.

#2...People who have stopped buying clothing will eventually run out of clothes and need to buy something new. TV’s, computers, and other electronic devices will stop working and eventually need a replacement. Once a car gets real old, people will buy new ones rather than repair old ones.

#3...You may believe that our President is right and support the stimulus plan offered by Congress or you may feel that the stimulus plan is a big mistake. It doesn’t matter. The stimulus plan will go through and billions or trillions of dollars will be added to the economy. I have no doubt that this flow of money will help retail stores.

I am not sure what this stimulus plan will do for retailers looking a couple of years down the road, but I am fairly sure it will help this year and next year. It’s very possible that the stimulus bill will cause future inflation, but for the next several years, things look good.

#4...Finally, and most important, is the psychology. We have leaders that keep telling us how bad things are. We are bad. The economy is bad. Everything is bad.  With all of this “bad” going around, who can feel good? Now, that our leaders have spent a couple of trillion dollars, they need to go around and tell everyone how they have saved the world and things are good again.

If everyone believes that things are good, things will be good. It’s all about psychology. If things are good and the world is good, people will spend money.

So, get ready. If you can watch your expenses and survive to the fourth quarter, your sales will go up substantially.

To read the article, Retail Sales To Improve In Second Half: NRF, go to:

http://www.twice.com/article/CA6636008.html?industryid=23098

More Diners Split Bills By Itemizing

It used to be that you went to a restaurant with a bunch of friends and you split the bill and tip evenly.

No more.

Diners are trending towards itemizing checks for each diner instead of splitting checks evenly.

So, now you receive a bill that says Person A owes $6.43, Person B owes $8.93 and Person C owes $7.12.

Imagine the poor waitress that brings a bill to a table for $52.65. Upon receiving the bill, the diners ask the waitress to charge each person for the items that they actually ordered. Next, the diners each pay with their own credit cards. So, put $6 on Credit Card A, $7 on Credit Card B, and I’ll pay the rest in cash.

Further, you have people that want to split their splits. What happens if you share an order of French Fries. I want Person A to be charged for 75% of the French Fries and Person B to pay for 25% of the French Fries.

The economy is making check splitting more difficult. Sharing a bill is not as easy as it used to be. Most restaurant customers don’t go this far, but far more people only want to pay for what they ordered.

People are just not as magnanimous and they were before our “recession.”

There are some restaurants that will not split bills. You get one bill and they expect one payment. Some restaurants will only accept a single credit card as payment. In my opinion, anything negative is not good for the restaurant. Take the money any way you can get it.

Recently, I ate with a group of about 20 people. We all happen to be Harley riders who arrived by motorcycle and our average check was about $50. We had asked for separate checks. The restaurant said that they could not do that. It was too complicated. We received a single bill and decided to split the bill evenly. More than half of the group wanted to pay by credit card. Once again, the restaurant said, “No can do”. A standoff pursued. We asked for the manager who needed to call the higher manager. Eventually, the restaurant gave in and accepted separate credit cards.

RPE (Restaurant Pro Express) sold by pcAmerica makes it easy to split to your most demanding customer’s liking. See our new Cash Register Express and Restaurant Pro Express video demos at:

http://download.pcamerica.com/forms/online_demo.html

To read some interesting bill splitting stories, go to:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/consumer/chi-split-checksfeb06,0,3622134.story

Cheap Tipping European Diners?

Not really. In many areas of Europe, tips are automatically added to the bill. Many Europeans who dine in the United States are not used to tipping and assume the tip has already been added to the bill.

Read more in an article printed in The New York Times at:

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/the-answer-man-low-tips-from-foreign-tourists/

Your Computer Is Infected With A Virus. Click Here.

I’ve learned a new word, SCAREWARE.

You have the latest up to date Antivirus, Antispyware and Firewall software on your computer. You never look at those dubious sites. You don’t open emails from people you don’t know.

One day, you are looking at the internet and decide to click on a free IPOD site. Or, you search Google for fishing rods. You go to the site and all of a sudden you get a popup message saying YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH A VIRUS. CLICK HERE TO REMOVE IT.

You’re smart enough not to click on the START icon. You know that the message is not coming from your normal antivirus software. So, you click on the X  to close the window. Oh, oh! Your now infected.

The X was not your ordinary X that closes the popup Windows. By clicking, it actually installs a virus or spyware.

These SCAREWARE notices entice you into clicking the popup in order to remove problems from your computer. The good ones run even if you try to close it.

If you receive this type of popup, right click on the title bar on the bottom of your screen and close the popup, or press <CTRL> <ALT> <DEL> and END the program from the Task Manager. Don’t click on the popup.

Unfortunately, there are lots of SCAREWARE out there. If you accidently click on one of these SCAREWARE programs, you are likely to be infected even if you are using a good Antivirus program.

If you do get infected, you should do a complete virus scan. Reboot your computer and do another complete virus scan.

Even I, the expert, was fooled once. Although my computer was infected, fortunately, Norton Internet Security 2009 was able to clean the virus off of my computer.

To read more about SCAREWARE, go to a very interesting article in Redmond (The Independent Voice of the Microsoft IT Community):

http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?editorialsid=2617