is there a supply for my demand?

August 20, 2008 2:09 PM

Why can't I buy the rental shoes at bowling alleys?

I would like to buy a pair of the crummy rental shoes they have at bowling alleys. I don't want to spend a ton on bowling shoes, and I think the rental ones are cute and super comfy (don't judge me). The places I've called say they don't sell them and then refer me to pro shops, where you have to buy them new. If they just use them until they're unusable and throw them away, why not sell me a pair before they get torn apart? Is there some kind of secret phrase that I can use with the employees to get them to sell me a pair?

I guess my question has two parts, the conceptual and the practical -- what's the deal with not selling these shoes? and, aside from walking out with them on my feet, how can I get a pair of cheap (used) bowling shoes?

posted by ramenopres to sports, hobbies, & recreation (23 comments total)

You're doing something weird and unusual, and they aren't set up to handle that, so they just say "No". It's pretty common.
posted by smackfu at 2:16 PM on August 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Does the bowling alley you go to require you to leave your shoes as collateral? If so, well, leave an old pair of shoes with them and leave with the bowling shoes. Maybe slip a $10 bill in the bottom that says, "thanks for the shoes!"
posted by nitsuj at 2:16 PM on August 20, 2008 [4 favorites]

My sister did exactly what nitsuj suggested. I'd say she's going to hell with some very cute shoes on her feet.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:21 PM on August 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

I think smackfu has the reason nailed - for the pittance the kids working in a bowling alley are earning, they're not likely to go above and beyond standard operating prcoedure.

You could try speaking with the general manager, and if that doesn't work, maybe nitsuj's suggestion would do it for you.
posted by owtytrof at 2:23 PM on August 20, 2008

Head to a Thrift Store, get some old sneaks and then leave the difference in the bottom of your collateral pair. Nitsuj has it.
posted by GilloD at 2:25 PM on August 20, 2008

as far as i can tell, bowling alleys tend to buy shoes in large quantities in one go—if they kept selling old shoes off, they'd have to buy new ones more often, and they're just not set up to work that way. and, you know: ewww, old shoes that hundreds if not thousands of people have worn! especially when you can easily buy a new pair for under $30.
posted by lia at 2:25 PM on August 20, 2008

They guess that you're not going to buy the ones at the pro shop (so you are not a lost sales customer for them), and they can make more money by leasing some set of shoes to you (because you are preserved as a rental customer) in combination with the revenue from renting those shoes to others. Do not presuppose that the sale transaction is worth more to them than the revenue stream from rentals.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 2:26 PM on August 20, 2008

Or you can assume that they're idiots who are just mired in their way of doing things! Which is not wildly implausible, but probably not what one should presume.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 2:28 PM on August 20, 2008

If you want to just buy a new pair of rental-type (i.e., garishly colored) bowling shoes, check these out.
posted by jedicus at 2:29 PM on August 20, 2008

The shoes at the pro shop are very different from the shoes at the bowling alley itself, unless you've got a fancy bowling alley, so heading to the pro shop won't even work in this case.
posted by muddgirl at 2:32 PM on August 20, 2008

I bought mine (to bowl in, don't judge me!) for under $25 at Kmart. Splurge, will ya? That's icky.
posted by CwgrlUp at 2:34 PM on August 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

i did exactly as nitsuj but also know that you can buy them for what i experienced as exorbitant prices in a pro shop.
posted by Soulbee at 2:36 PM on August 20, 2008

Bowling alleys most likely don't buy their shoes one pair at a time. Rather, they probably buy lots of them infrequently, and in the correct proportion of sizes that they need. If they start selling the shoes, they're going to sell mainly the popular sizes, thus mainly leaving them short on the very shoes that they need until the next time they place an order for replacements.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:48 PM on August 20, 2008

More likely (if the bowling shoes are like the ones in the UK) they're suitably garish so they know which ones are theirs. If you wander in with a pair that look like theirs, they're going to think you've stolen them, even if you sweet talked someone else into selling them to you.

Ie, if you outlaw refuse to sell the hideous bowling shoes, only outlaws will own hideous bowling shoes. Or something.
posted by twine42 at 3:01 PM on August 20, 2008

These were popular in my circle in the mid-80s. We used to steal them as nitsuj described.
posted by rhizome at 3:20 PM on August 20, 2008

Or you can assume that they're idiots who are just mired in their way of doing things!

Or you can assume that there is no business case to be made for accommodating weird requests from pampered consumers who think that the customer is always right.

Look, running is a profitable business is hard, and requires economies of scale. That requires focusing on providing a core product or service and providing it well, and turning other demands away.

This is especially true for renting vs. selling stuff, or selling very different items (e.g. beverages vs. clothing). If my core business is selling widgets, then my cash register, my accounting system, all my processes and procedures will be set up for that. I am not set up to rent you anything in my inventory. Or vice versa.

I am not going to set up a new SKU for this unusual item, I am not going to post it under "misc", I am not going to waste any time explaining to my accountant (or worse, the government auditor) why this is different or that is different, all for the sake of a few dollars.

I am just gonna refer you to someone else who does what you want.
posted by randomstriker at 3:54 PM on August 20, 2008 [3 favorites]

If someone refuses to sell you something, it is generally the case that you have not offered them enough money.

They probably get a discount for buying more than one pair of shoes at a time, but it's not worth the hassle or the liability to sell you one pair. However, if you offered them say a thousand dollars cash on the barrel head they'd fork over the shoes. So either negotiate more (bring cash) and find the place between what you've currently offered and 1,000 bucks, or go buy from folks who are set up for it.

If you want pre-worn ones, try Ebay. They've got over a thousand listings under the search string "bowling shoes".
posted by Jahaza at 4:28 PM on August 20, 2008

One other idea. It may be illegal for them to sell them to you. Cities and states generally have rules about selling second-hand clothes and such. It may require a special business license that they don't have to do so, or to sell second-hand goods in general, as I believe it does in New York City, for instance. The guy at the counter might not even know this is the case, just that there's a policy against selling the shoes.
posted by Jahaza at 4:30 PM on August 20, 2008

please note that if you do use nitsuj's method, the payment probably goes to the shoe handler as an unofficial 'tip,' not the person who actually has to replace the shoes. might want to put a money order in, too.
posted by lester at 4:51 PM on August 20, 2008

FYI for anyone else looking: Thanks for the K-Mart suggestion, but when I checked out the one by my house, all they had were $36 shoes that were white and strange and nurse shoe-like. Not that there's anything wrong with nurse shoes: I think they're cute, too: just not what I'm looking for.
posted by ramenopres at 5:39 PM on August 20, 2008

Or you could just buy rental bowling shoes online if you don't mind the word "RENTAL" stitched into the side ;) . They're $30.

(I don't advocate them. They were just the third result for "bowling shoes rental purchase")
posted by Gucky at 7:58 PM on August 20, 2008

Ooh, ex bowling alley employee here! (It was my summer / college break job up until graduation.)

The thing is that a pair of shoes doesn't cost much (under $50), but they're worth a lot to us. Part of the reason is that at peak times (especially weekends), we were guaranteed to run out of the most popular sizes. If we were out of 11's, we could give you a 10.5 or an 11.5. But when we were busy, those ran out too, so pretty soon you'd ask for an 11 and the closest we had was an 8. For insurance reasons, we couldn't let people bowl in socks or non-bowling shoes, so when we couldn't find shoes that fit you, you couldn't bowl. Not only did this disappoint customers, but it meant a loss of business for us, usually resulting in the whole group leaving. (Since it'd be a pretty dick move to all go bowling while your friend with a 'popular' shoe size sits and watches?)

The other half of it is that, for reasons I never quite understood, new rental shoes were always on backorder: we waited something like six months for our last batch. (Which meant that, as soon as it arrived, we needed more.)

And it sounds silly, but some of our shoes were under warranty, though typically only the newer ones. Thus some of the bowling shoes that were horribly damaged were "worth" the price of a new pair to us.

We did keep a box of broken/ratty shoes. smackfu was somewhat right: most people I worked with probably would have instinctively said no, as if you'd walked into a restaurant and asked the waiter if you could buy the table. If you can find a manager, they might go for it—we sold a few pairs. But even in the box o' crappy shoes, we weren't terribly eager to let them go: when we were really desperate for shoes, we'd sometimes pull out the least-bad of them. And when the box was getting full and it was slow, one of the managers would spend the afternoon trying to mend them, sometimes even visiting the cobbler. (Apparently, by the way, cobblers still exist. Until my boss brought a box of shoes back from the cobbler, I'd assumed that cobblers were something that went obsolete in my grandfather's childhood or so.)

If you intend to wear them bowling, insist on a receipt, by the way. For the old ones we sold, my boss made a big production of writing out a receipt for them and telling them to keep it in the bag with their bowling shoes in case they ever got 'caught' walking out with them or whatnot. Also, bowling.com has 'rental' shoes for sale.

Oh, and some people like wearing bowling shoes as sneakers... Just a quick caution that you can't wear them as sneakers and bowling shoes: the leather bottoms will lose their smoothness, and getting them wet can be equally as devastating. It doesn't take long to happen: I've chased after customers who started to run out to their car to grab something while wearing our bowling shoes, trying to stop them before they stepped onto the asphalt.

Wheh, </epic_novel>
posted by fogster at 8:18 PM on August 20, 2008 [6 favorites]

I've never worked in a bowling alley, but I did work as a cashier at a cafe/restaurant and if a customer had come up and asked to buy, say, a plate or a ceramic coffee mug, I would probably have said no, and been reluctant to find a way to make it work. We had a computerized POS system that tracked our transactions, drawer balance, etc. If I gave a customer a mug, and took their 5 bucks or whatever and put it in my drawer, chances are my manager would be fine with it, but then again, it's an off the book transaction and I could have conceivably got in trouble. Say that the customer told their friends and we get more people wanting the same deal, leaving us with a shortage on the bulk-bought mugs, for instance. A manager of a restaurant, or a bowling alley, does not want the grunts getting creative and messing with the overall system of the store. You might try asking to talk to a manager, who might have the pull to make it happen, but for the kid working there? So not worth it to try to work something out.
posted by MadamM at 10:32 PM on August 20, 2008