HMV... not allowed to buy DVD

faded_flowers

Popped into HMV today to pick up the Big Bang Theory boxset reported on HUKD the other day. Found one, took it to the till... he took it off me and said 'where did you get this from??'

Well... the shelf... in his store.

Apparently they aren't allowed to sell them yet as the offer doesn't start until the 19th. Despite the fact they are out and stickered on the shop floor. Silly me!

Brilliant bit of customer service. Amazon it is.

Jakg

If the store isn't allowed to sell them, what do you expect them to do?

Often retailers will have a certain product exclusively for so long, but other retailers will get the item in a few days before they are allowed to start selling it... obviously someones just not realised it's a special item and put it out anyway.

ThumbRemote

Jakg wrote: »

If the store isn't allowed to sell them, what do you expect them to do?

If the store has put it on the shelves, marked at a specific price, I'd expect them to sell it to me.

Saying they can only sell it at the reduced price in a few days time is ridiculous. It's not like it's a complete misprice; they acknowledged that next Monday the OP will be able to buy it.

An easy way to lose customers, and for what benefit to the shop?

John_Jizzle

drop your pants and curl one out on the floor. sell that!

pjcox2005

I think Jakg is trying to say the benefit to the shop would be to not get sued.

Example being, makers of the DVD agree with Amazon that they can have a priority release for a one week period ahead of other stores, Amazon pay a premium for this offering.

Should it then be reported that HMV sold the DVD to customers in this period then Amazon may look to get the premium paid back as they didn't have an exclusive period, DVD maker then may try to claim the lost revenue from HMV.

In that case the impact would be significantly more than the £15 made from selling the DVD and keeping a customer happy.

Granted it shouldn't have been on the shelves, but mistakes happen, and when they do it's right for the person on the counter to correct the position, even if that causes annoyance to the customer.

Forwandert

If it's not released yet the store can't sell the DVD, its the same for computer games etc. If the store did sell even one unit early and got caught the specific store would end up on a 'black list' with the distributors and would never get another title ready for release day. It was part of my management training for another retailer the other problem was if a store was caught selling pre release and the manager moved to another store that store too would never get titles for release day. I was basically told it follows you around like a black cloud.

elvis86

faded_flowers wrote: »

Popped into HMV today to pick up the Big Bang Theory boxset reported on HUKD the other day. Found one, took it to the till... he took it off me and said 'where did you get this from??'

Well... the shelf... in his store.

Apparently they aren't allowed to sell them yet as the offer doesn't start until the 19th. Despite the fact they are out and stickered on the shop floor. Silly me!

Brilliant bit of customer service. Amazon it is.

As others have said, this sounds like a genuine mistake and I can understand the reasons for this.

So unless the staff were rude to you, and provided they apologised (though, to be fair, it's not like your were massively inconvenienced, so a gushing apology wasn't really necessary), I can't really see what you've got to complain about?

NiallB

ThumbRemote wrote: »

If the store has put it on the shelves, marked at a specific price, I'd expect them to sell it to me.

Saying they can only sell it at the reduced price in a few days time is ridiculous. It's not like it's a complete misprice; they acknowledged that next Monday the OP will be able to buy it.

An easy way to lose customers, and for what benefit to the shop?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3277262

But yes, a good way to annoy customers.

faded_flowers

I expect a store struggling to keep customers to work a little harder on its customer service. If they won't compete on price, what are they going to offer instead?

Where I work we always honour wrong ticket prices. It isn't the customer's fault we made the mistake, and we'd rather have a happy customer than a !!!!ed off one.

bluenoseam

There's a difference between honouring a price & avoiding getting sued! HMV could have essentially P'd off one of the major labels in their market if they sold that product at that price - however it could have been easily dealt with but would also have meant a hit to the company.

Jakg

ThumbRemote wrote: »

If the store has put it on the shelves, marked at a specific price, I'd expect them to sell it to me.

Saying they can only sell it at the reduced price in a few days time is ridiculous. It's not like it's a complete misprice; they acknowledged that next Monday the OP will be able to buy it.

An easy way to lose customers, and for what benefit to the shop?

What if the DVD (book, game, whatever you want to use in this example) isn't due out until Monday? Most shops get their "release day stock" a few days early to guarantee that they will have it in time, but they can't sell it until the release day (for obvious reasons).

Would you still expect them to sell it to you, because they accidentally put it out?

faded_flowers wrote: »

I expect a store struggling to keep customers to work a little harder on its customer service. If they won't compete on price, what are they going to offer instead?

Where I work we always honour wrong ticket prices. It isn't the customer's fault we made the mistake, and we'd rather have a happy customer than a !!!!ed off one.

Not exactly the same situation - ones a small price discrepancy, the other is breaking an agreement with a supplier / distributor which *could* have much larger consequences.