been a little while...

[raine_naoe]

Been awhile, been real busy with school. Just a reminder, I work in the connection center (cell phones) in wal-mart. I do my best to help out electronics and customers with questions about electronics but I do not know everything about the section and am not expected to.


Phone rings for electronics, he's on break so I answer it.
SC: Can you tell me the new movies that came out today?
Me: I'm sorry sir, I don't have that information, but the normal electronics associate will b-
SC: well, why don't you just trot on over there and have a little look-see, hmm?
Me: …

Now, I don't know how other wal-marts work, but while we do have an section for new releases, it includes not only the new releases from the current week, but for the last month or so as well. Since I don't normally put movies up and don't have the same information that electronics do, I don't have anyway of knowing which ones or new this week or not. But I don't want to try talking to the guy anymore so I just grabbed some random ones that I didn't remember seeing before and read those off to him. When electronics came back he said the guy calls every single week.



Woman the other day was angry because we had been out of stock of $5 headphones. Said they were for her mother and her mother NEEDS her headphones. There was a whole peg of $10 headphones right next to them, must not need them that much.



One couple was in asking about “How to train your dragon”. Now, both wal-mart and (I checked it later) the movie's official website list the release date as october 15th (this was the 13th), so we tell them that.
“But it's in all the ads as being out now!”

well, we don't have it.

“But target and everywhere else say THEY have it!”

well, we don't have it.

“Fine, we'll go there to get it. Just seems strange that everywhere else would have it before you.”

Now, unless there's something off and target did get an early release, I would've loved to have seen them when they got there and found out they didn't have it either.




Last note, this has been amusing me. You may recall me complaining in another post about people calling thinking "Connection Center" means connect you to another department. Well, I've started answering the phone as "(city) Wal-mart Wireless" Almost every person to call my phone direct has just hung up on me after I say that.

[wagegoth]

Lazy.

Cheap.

Stupid.

Trifecta win, er, lose. Sorry.


I do have to say that "Connection Center" does not make me think of cellphones, more like the phone services for the lonely, where you can spend lots of money talking to other lonely people.

[Imogene]

How to Train Your Dragon is getting national release on Friday. It's Dreamworks, they're nearly as anal about following release dates as Disney... if Target IS selling them already, they need to be reported.

[ExRetailDrone]

I used to work at The Bullseye. They most definitely will have How to Train Your Dragon listed in their weekly ad that came out on Sunday, October 10th because it does come out during that week. It will most likely be in a box by itself on the page with the disclaimer that it will not be available for sale until Friday, October 15th. But, of course, as we all know SCs never read anything that goes against what they want and only see the picture, so that obviously means it is available the day the ad comes out

Can you tell I used to work in the electronics department there?

[EricKei]

“But target and everywhere else say THEY have it!”

if Target IS selling them already, they need to be reported.

Even when I was still working at GameStore, Tar-jhay was notorious for breaking Street Date. Unfortunately, they fall under the aegis of "Too Big To Get In Trouble For It" -- iirc, the standard threat at the time was a hefty fine (5-10k per copy sold early) and the revocation of the ability to sell games from that publisher. For the Bullseye, that wouldn't even be a slap on the wrist -- New Games have absurdly low profit margins for the Retailers (often less than 10%) -- So, losing games wouldn't phase them much. For GameStore or a small indy shop, however, revocation of sales rights by even one publisher would be devastating. Thus, they are forced to enforce that "rule" internally.

[FenigDurak]

I closed tonight at the Big Red Bullseye and we had a whole end cap of "How To Train Your Dragon" at the front check lanes. It was there when I clocked in at 3:30 and remained there until I left an hour ago.

[wraiths_crono]

Even when I was still working at GameStore, Tar-jhay was notorious for breaking Street Date. Unfortunately, they fall under the aegis of "Too Big To Get In Trouble For It" --

Not to jack but, Wal-Mart released Halo 2 2 hours early, and got severly fined for it, they also were selling the preorder for a Zelda game (it was a GC disc with like 5 zelda games on it) for a "retail price" they got slammed hard by Nintendo for that.

[Dracalous]

I have issues with idiot callers as well. In my Wal-Mart, our Connections associates are cross-trained in Electronics, and we all know which movies are new. If you end up getting the idiot who's too lazy to just come in on release day, the newest ones are usually right on the endcap.

as for the jackasses about How To Train Your Dragon... dvd releases are always the same day in every retail store. If they claim to have seen it advertised as being released earlier in other stores, they're stupid.

[Rapscallion]

Lazy.

Cheap.

Stupid.

Trifecta win, er, lose. Sorry.

I read that and mentally added, "Choose two," and then realised that you could actually have all three! Bonus!

Rapscallion

[jerseyguy]

Wal-Mart not only broke the street-date on the Wii when it was first released, they also held a second wave of pre-orders in violation of Nintendo rules...and Nintendo punished them by shipping MY employer, Geoffrey the Giraffe Inc., the Wal-Mart allotment three weeks before Christmas. We were able to sell many many thousands of extra units, all because Nintendo of America actually stood up to the bully.

[EricKei]

Wow o_O I'm actually impressed. I had never heard of SD actually being properly enforced on the big boys before. Cool (Then again, we ARE talking about Ninty and MS here...They have the balls to do so, and the liquidity needed. Good on them! ^_^)

Now, why couldn't they have sent US those Wii's down at GameStore...>_< Ninty had promised us one hundred and twenty units for XMAS (just for our store..if that sounds like a lot, keep in mind that our average number of Madden pre-orders at our location was around 800 each year), so that's how many pre-orders we took that June. By the time December rolled around, the allotment had dropped to SIXTEEN. x_X It took us until mid-March just to fill all of the pre-orders for the blasted thing; meanwhile, the bigger places were getting shipments that actually had a chance of lasting more than half an hour...Once the pre-orders were all sold, we still never got more then twenty at a time, at a different, random time and day each week. None of the shipments ever lasted more than 20-30 minutes. Once or twice, they were all spoken for by people in the store *before the UPS guy could finish making his delivery to us* (they had seen him come in).

Naturally, Corporate made us leave up the "Nintendo Wii Now Available" stacks-o-boxes, over our vocal protests. One of my favorite days was when we started to tally up the number of phone calls we got asking for it --- 'twas a Saturday...We started doing so when we opened at 9am. We stopped bothering at Noon, once we had passed two hundred phone calls. Note that this number does NOT include walk-ins "requesting" the damn thing...