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My store runs a preorder program. It's pretty simple. You put a deposit down on a game that will be coming out (generally in the next few months) to guarantee a copy for yourself when the release comes. These copies are held for only 72 hours, even if paid in full. That's usually a large enough window to allow most who preorder to pick up their games.
If you put a deposit down on a game you are entitled to get it back at any time, for any reason. Let's say you pay a $60 game off in full and two months later you lose your job and need that $60 to cover a bill, you can cancel the preorder and get the money back.
(as an interesting side note, my company is holding $1000s in unclaimed deposits and never once in my time with the company have I seen any effort made to contact these people and make them aware we still have their money. In some cases $60 games paid in full have sat unclaimed for over a year).
Now here's the problem: Corporate doesn't like it when you cancel and neither do we (though we are not supposed to mean about it, some stores have been known to not treat a customer who cancels very well). We are judged on our net preorders. This is calculated as follows:
New preorders - cancelled preorders = net preorders
The thing for me is that we have NO control whatsoever over a customer who wants to cancel. Sure we can beg and plead with them to keep the preorder or switch it to a different game, but I would say 99 times out of 100 they either just want their money back or want a different game (which while it does mean business for us does still require a preorder to be cancelled).
Last week I had a young guy cancel 6 preorders so he could use the money from them to pay for Modern Warfare 2. I tell you I was this close to BSing some reason why I couldn't do that because I knew it would tank our numbers bad.
Ultimately though I realized this is his right as a customer to do, we can't hold his money by force, he can have it back if he wants. So I kept my mouth shut and processed the cancellations.
I really wish the system was not set up to penalize stores and store managers for loss of preorders, especially now when loyalty is largely to price and not businesses. I can't tell you how much business we've lost because of Wal-mart promotions and 2-for-1 deals at Target. It's not like we get in trouble if our returns for the week are high, some weeks people just return a lot of stuff, it happens. It's the same with preorders and yet with the preorders management seems to like to blame us for not working hard enough to keep the numbers up.
If you put a deposit down on a game you are entitled to get it back at any time, for any reason. Let's say you pay a $60 game off in full and two months later you lose your job and need that $60 to cover a bill, you can cancel the preorder and get the money back.
(as an interesting side note, my company is holding $1000s in unclaimed deposits and never once in my time with the company have I seen any effort made to contact these people and make them aware we still have their money. In some cases $60 games paid in full have sat unclaimed for over a year).
Now here's the problem: Corporate doesn't like it when you cancel and neither do we (though we are not supposed to mean about it, some stores have been known to not treat a customer who cancels very well). We are judged on our net preorders. This is calculated as follows:
New preorders - cancelled preorders = net preorders
The thing for me is that we have NO control whatsoever over a customer who wants to cancel. Sure we can beg and plead with them to keep the preorder or switch it to a different game, but I would say 99 times out of 100 they either just want their money back or want a different game (which while it does mean business for us does still require a preorder to be cancelled).
Last week I had a young guy cancel 6 preorders so he could use the money from them to pay for Modern Warfare 2. I tell you I was this close to BSing some reason why I couldn't do that because I knew it would tank our numbers bad.
Ultimately though I realized this is his right as a customer to do, we can't hold his money by force, he can have it back if he wants. So I kept my mouth shut and processed the cancellations.
I really wish the system was not set up to penalize stores and store managers for loss of preorders, especially now when loyalty is largely to price and not businesses. I can't tell you how much business we've lost because of Wal-mart promotions and 2-for-1 deals at Target. It's not like we get in trouble if our returns for the week are high, some weeks people just return a lot of stuff, it happens. It's the same with preorders and yet with the preorders management seems to like to blame us for not working hard enough to keep the numbers up.
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