Game Reservations

[tamakun]

I looked at Penny Arcade's news post and they were discussing pre-orders on games. Read the second and third newsposts. I tried to paraphrase it, but I can't find a way aside from "managers have quotas to fill on pre-orders, and might even not sell you the game on the first day if you didn't pre-order it, to teach walk-in customers a lesson to pre-order in the future".

This makes me think. Apparently this has nothing to do with the companies themselves, it's just that the managers are forced to make a monthly quota of pre-ordered games to assure their jobs are not in jeopardy.

This is intruiging. I wonder if this same style of pre-ordering to meet quotas is practiced here in Canada. Considering that we can go into a store and pick up the latest Soul Calibur or F-Zero game, I figure that it's not as bad here.

But "teaching customers a lesson" by not selling the game to walk-in customers on the first day, or even first week? The only lesson I get from this poor practice is that I shop elsewhere. If I can't find the games I want, I move on. Plain and simple. Typically if the EB or Game Shack doesn't have the game, I go to a bigger store, like Toys R Us or Future Shop.

Now, I'm not one to typically wait in line at the break of dawn for games (although I have to admit I've done that with the past two Nintendo consoles, and I didn't pre-order), but that's just not right. I'm reading the forum topic about it and someone mentioned that a manager actually asked an employee to cough up $5 for a reservation on a game he had no intention of buying. That totally disgusts me. If I was working in that type of situation, I would've just quit right then and there. That's not business, that's faking numbers. If I did that in the Cash Office at Canadian Tire I would've done jailtime for theft.

All for a manager to keep their job. *rolls eyes* I would hope that I never have to work underneath a lowlife manager that uses those tactics to keep their job.

This particular post shows some of the logic that I don't understand. Are companies really willing to lose $60-70 a game just so that they keep their job? A company can't survive if they don't sell their stock... I guess it's more along the lines of managers just tying to save their necks at the risk of closing the store.

The end doesn't justify the means...

EDIT: Just discovered, someone's trying to sell a Australian (PAL) SNES for approximately $10,000US. I don't think an unopened SNES is worth the price of 10 AIBOs. O.o

Comments

[ex-wataame890.livejournal.com]

10,000$ US?! holy..

[angel-machine.livejournal.com]

americans= capitalist pigs.

sorry, but people have it right. all we care about down here is the bottom line. we care about that more than people's happiness, health, life...