Worldwide Wii stocks discussion

[kn]

Bodhesatva said:

kn said:

Bodhesatva said:

kn said:
Here's a question for the U.S. types: Why won't EB/Gamestop take preorders for Wiis? It seems silly that they would turn away a sale but they won't do it. For all they know the buyer could find one at Toys R Us, Wal Mart, Target, Best Buy, etc. and they will lose no only the sale of the console, but any accessories and games to go with it. At this point taking preorders would allow them to capture an otherwise possibly lost customer...

We did take pre orders about 4 months ago. The word got out fast: we had a queue of 200 people within four days. That was enough to keep us sold out for almost two months. Let's imagine we kept that queue open for, say, three more weeks. Based on that average, we'd have a queue of 1000 people. See the problem?

Were your pre-orders pay full price in advance? I.e. pay fully for the system plus tax or was it a $20 dollar deposit or just put your name on a list? Call me nuts but I can't imagine that many people paying 100 percent up front but maybe I'm wrong.

Absolutely, they were not. They were, in fact, paying 0. Are you suggesting that we take the numbers of thousands of people, only to have 50 percent (or more) tell us they'd already found a Wii, but thanks for calling anyway? I want to stress that this would take days of labor and hundreds if not thousands of dollars from my store. This isn't a joke: calling 4000+ people would take 4000+ minutes, which is 65 hours+ of labor. That's 600 dollars+ of man hours alone, not to mention any other possible costs (what if the people don't pick up the phone? What if they agree to come in but don't? What if people get angry at us and vent?). More likely, this would cost my store over a thousand dollars to keep track of. Why would we do this, if we're absolutely sure the systems would sell out anyway?

 Sorry I confused you Bodhesatva.  What I meant was do you think that the preorder list would be manageable if and only if the process was the buyer had to come to the store, fill out a pre-order, pay for the system 100% with tax and everything, and then wait for a call when their system came in?  Maybe that would still be Waaaaaaay too many people but that was kind of the question.  I can't imagine trying to manage a preorder list where all you did was basically make a list of names with a phone number.  That would be a complete waste of time for you, the store, etc.  I'd even go so far as to say the "preorder" had to be a package deal -- say system, one game, and one extra remote and/or wii play.   Having to front the full 100% for the convenience of knowing in 2ish weeks you'll get a system by just walking in and picking it up (paid in full of course) would certainly be worth it to some folks.

I'll agree, though, that selling out with absolute certainty pretty much puts a fork in this idea for the most part.