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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."
I don't get it, what is wrong with a store saying "Sure I will sell you this thing you really want, but at the price I want to charge. I will even include some crap you don't really want, but you still have to pay the price I want to charge"
Seems that if you don't want to pay the price you go elsewhere or you don't buy the product.
The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
LAWYER: What of the reports of the Rebel fleet massing near Best Buy?
GATES: It is of no concern. Soon the Rebellion will be crushed and young Sony will be one of us! Your work here is finished, my friend. Go out to the command ship and await my orders.
About time someone cleaned up those stores a bit. Dirty bastards with all that yellow and blue...nauseating.
Whenever Mrs. Fitch breaks wind, we beat the dog.
They put policies in place which make retail managers feel pressured to pump up their sales figures by "forcing" excessive bundles on desperate (and foolish) pre-Christmas X-Box 360 buyers.
Then, when they get heat for it, they respond by firing the retail managers, but keep all the largesse of the whole scam firmly in their pockets.
And we are supposed to take this as an indicator that they are interested in doing the right thing?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Best Buy had to sell the 360 at a certain price point, and that price was seemingly far below what the demand for the 360's was. So from a certain perspective, the bundles make sense if you're trying to make supply meet demand.
On the other hand, we told our son we'd get him an XBox for Christmas since the price should go down with the 360 coming out. I figured they would go down to $129 or maybe even $99 if we were lucky. And then what happens? They throw in a cruddy racing game and jack the price of the original XBox UP by $30 to $179! The racing game isn't too bad, but it isn't a game we would have chosen to buy if it weren't bundled with the system. I don't like what they did, so I can understand peoples' complaints, but I see very little difference between what Microsoft has done with the original XBox and what Best Buy has done with the XBox 360.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
BestBuy: good concept, bad execution.
The bundling was "forced" on buyers. The buy itself wasn't forced.
It's a "don't be an ass to your customers" issue.
Congrats to Best Buy for at least appearing to fix the problem.
"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.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
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.
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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