Hawkeye said:
rajendra82 said:
WiiStation360 said:
Ok. You win.
I should stock up on free Wii games while I can. Buy two, get one free at Target this week. Return the two I did not want at Wal-mart for full price. No cost to me. |
Since you seem to be bound by this emotional reaction to what I did and call it a fraud, and think I am ripping off Wal-Mart, let's take your suggestion to its logical conclusion and run the numbers. The Target sale you mentioned this week has 80 Wii titles to chose from, so let's say you bought 52 titles at $50 a piece and got 26 for free. Let's say games run for $40 wholesale to Target, so the store would make $10 profit for each title sold.
On the day of the sale you bought $2,080 worth of games, and Target made $520 profit. They gave you 26 games, which cost them $1,040 (based on $40 wholesale cost per free title), so at the end of the day, the promotion was a loss of $520 to Target.
If you did not return anything, you end up with 78 games in hand.
If you go ahead and return 52 of the games unopened to the Wal-Mart around the corner, and the manager accepts your return, you will get whopping $2,600 store credit in return. Seems like a big gain to you, and a loss to them right, well think again. Wal-Mart puts the games out on the shelves and sells them off at $50 a pop, so they get their $2,600 back over time. Let's say you use your store credit to buy some better games at Wal-Mart over the next few months, so Wal Mart gets your $2,600 credit back as well, and make a profit of $520. And you end up with a total of 78 games (the original 26 from Target, and 52 over time from Wal-Mart).
So in the end you get the same number of games, Target takes the same amount of loss whether you open or return them, and Wal-Mart gets a $520 profit over time to give you flexibility in what titles you end up with.
Does not seem like there is a single loser here.
|
Wal Mart loses. They make no profit, though they break even. Still, they have to pay to stock items/return them/pay their workers. However, you are liekyl to come back and shop again at wal mart after using your credit, becuase you will now like the store.
Anyway, I am thinking of doing this. Is this really considered fraud, or is it perfectly legal? If I told Wal Mart the item was from another store but its the same ting you stock, would they take it? Do they actaully care about the store?
|
Since the $2,600 they gave you is store credit, you are not just likely to come back, you are guaranteed to come back to spend that credit.
If you look at cost of restocking, that would be a a little added cost, that might be offset by the fact that hand you not returned your games, they would have had to order those titles from their warehouse anyway, and some would be putting them on the shelves. There is a little bit extra cost in terms of manning the return desk, and sorting the returned titles, but not a whole lot.
In terms of risk, Wal-Mart does assume some, because if the titles you returned are crappy, and don't sell, their $10 margin in discounting them down is not there, but you take on a big rsisk too. If the day after you got your store credit, you lose your wallet, the $2,600 is gone, and you end up with on 26 games on hand instead of the original (an planned to purchase 78).
