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360 Bundles Lead To Best Buy Housecleaning
Groo Wanderer writes "At the launch of the XBox 360, there were reports of forced and unwanted bundling by several companies, most notably Best Buy. There were things said back and forth, and the usual corporate banter. They have followed through, this time, and a good number of people lost their jobs." From the article: "We are told a manager that started the procedure is no longer employed at Best Buy. At least one senior district manager is no longer employed, and some of the nailings are rumored to have gone even higher. The big yellow inquisition did not stop there, and several other managers and assorted white collar workers were given an escorted walk to the parking lot."
First, they advertised that they'd sell the thing you really wanted at the price they were supposed to charge. Then people got there and discovered that there were no Xboxes being sold unbundled despite the advertisements. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27963
Second, this policy was not approved by the upper best buy management, thus the heads of the lower managers who told the stores to do this rolled.
You may act all shocked that managers are getting fired, but I bet you'd do the same to any employees below you that made up pretend corporate policies.
The price of the Xbox dropping just wasn't going to happen. You know why? That hard drive they put in there, the one they moved externally and everyone attacked them for. Hard drives don't go down in price, just up in size. There's a minimum that they're going to cost, and that puts a higher floor on Xbox prices as compared to other hard drive-less consoles.
And a little thing to note - Forza is not a cruddy racing game, but actually pretty darn good.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I'm hiding as a coward for this one. I'm an ex-EB employee and still know a lot of the managers around my area personally. And yes, they do have a tendency to play with presell lists and call people who ordered more first instead of who ordered first. They also forced bundles on the customers. They do it because of pressure from the GM to meet the add-on numbers set for each store (which is pretty much impossible without breaking the rules.)
This is also how the featured game of the month works, also. No matter how bad it is, each store has to sell a certain amount, and people do get fired when they're not met (even when the game was Turok and the number worked out to 20 in an hour every hour, even though the store was lucky to get 20 people in some days.)
Managers that have stores that don't meet the numbers are first sent off to work in the crappiest stores, sometimes forced to demote themselves (with a threat of just being fired otherwise) and then promptly let go within a few months.
EB Games has to be one of the worst companies I've ever worked for. I'm glad it was just a job I had while looking for real work instead of a career like it is for some of the managers.
"They have to move those titles somehow..."
The titles weren't the problem. Best Buy left it open which games you could buy, and there were multiple games that everyone wanted (Perfect Dark Zero, COD2, PGR3, Kameo).
The problem was many Best Buy stores *forced* you to purchase certain accessories. One of the bundles included 2 games and a wireless adapter (waste of money) the other forced controllers and recharge packs.
You have to read all the articles, not just the attached one, but the three articles at the beginning of the referenced one. This wasn't just bundling, this was bait and switch.
Here's an example snippet from one of those articles:
TMCnet news reports similar events in Spokane, WA. Best Buy's Sunday ad offered the Xbox 360 for $299 dollars, but a sign was posted at the store on Tuesday as a "correction notice" to inform customers that they could only buy package deals starting at $569.93.
If best buy advertises something for $299, and doesn't actually have that item but has a similar one that's more expensive, that's bait and switch, and it's illegal in the United States. You cannot advertise one price for one model or package then sell another model/package that has more features but at a higher price simply because you never had that model. The ad said they were selling it so they better sell it. In fact, the law states that those people had the right to demand the higher bundle for the lower price, but I infer from the article that Best Buy obfuscated this enough so that few to none of the people scammed were able to catch that when they first went in.
And to top it all off, companies should and do go out of their way to avoid these mistakes, because the law also says that if a company does make this mistake, customers have every right to take advantage of it. This is to make sure companies don't up and use the "oops, That's a mistake in the ad we don't stock that. Gee, that's 4 mistakes in just one month, sorry, but I do have the higher end model for you if you like."
If it were a simple stock out that's one thing but some stores never even stocked one of the nonbundled console.
This smacks of a small time conspiracy but it's most definitely illegal. Best Buy is cleaning house to make it look like they care and showing good will so as to deflect any consumer lawsuits.
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As a former BBY employee here in the US, I can say that we were also not on commission. However, the only 'compensation' we got for selling more was keeping our jobs. If you didnt sell the arbitrary number of product type x, you were moved to a slower department in the store or some equally shit position until management could find a reason to fire you -- ie: coming in late on days where the schedule was changed without your knowledge.
Yes and No. The situation you describe is boderline legal at best. The fact that the car is still on the show room floor (it was just sold) is why its not illegal straight up. Laws preventing bait and switch were designed to prevent exactly what you describe from happening. In this case i suppose either no has filed a case with the FTC yet against your employer or your employer is succesfully nagivating the thin line of legality. In any case, Best Buy can't actually do that as they have no way to even pretend that they just sold out of the lower priced item. And even if they could legally skate the same line, there's no way they would want to in this case due to the PR hit they are taking right now.
A good friend of mine worked for GameStop for several years. It wasn't until after he left the company that he started to tell me the real dirt. Apparently there was one regional manager who was actually an inspiration to his entire team; a really super guy with an excellent moral compass. He did his damndest to protect his guys in the field whenever they stepped outside of the frequently evil corporate line.
This regional manager died, and when he did the last remaining shred of soul the company had died with him. Now it was just the store managers against an army of middle-yes-men. It didn't take long after that for the corporation to do some serious housekeeping on the 'trouble spots'.
As a result, there are few if any GameStops now that behave in a way that helps the customer under any circumstances. My advice (which you probably do anyway): DON'T SHOP AT GAMESTOP/EB GAMES.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
We have the same thing in the U.S., here it just falls under the large umbrella of "false advertising," which varies state by state but usually allows a person to sue for damages. However it's sometimes rather tough to prove damages and I have a feeling in this instance that the company can probably protect themselves (as they're doing) by firing all the people involved and swearing they won't do it again.
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But if you did run into blatant false advertising, the way to go would be to contact your state's Consumer Protection office, if it has one, or the Attorney General (who can file suit against the company on behalf of the state).
Here's an overview of Consumer Protection laws in one U.S. state (New York):
http://www.consumer.state.ny.us/clahm/clahm-false
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