Worldwide Wii stocks discussion

[Bodhesatva]

kn said:

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.

It's cool. <3

Let me list the problems one by one:

1) They pay nothing. Problem: My company is forced to spend several days labor to keep up with these people, many -- if not most -- of whom won't be buying one from us anyway. Or do we really believe that person number 1565 in line is likely to wait 10+ months to get one, and not look anywhere else? :p

2) They pay in full. If they did this, we'd probably have a queue in the hundreds instead of the thousands. Still, person 500-600 in line would be waiting 9+ months, no question. We can't realistically expect people to wait nine months for this product. People could EASILY be waiting until after Christmas, and any unexpected hitches or bumps in shipping could cause enormous issues. What if we don't get any for a month? All that takes is one or two shipments stalled or delayed. The possibilities for disgruntled customers are enumerable with this strategy. 

3) They pay in part. This is actually the worst of the three possibilities, because it would have the problems of both the other two: many people would be waiting 9+ months to get the system (because they feel they're "stuck" buying one from us, since they put a deposit down), while others would try and back out when they find another system somewhere else. They'll want their deposits back. Handling that is awkward and often produces grumpy customers. It also takes even more time to process -- we'd probably be talking another day+ of labor required.

Overall, the problem is simple: taking pre-orders from 60-100 people for Halo3 is no big whoop (note, this is software), but taking pre-orders for Wiis from 1000+ people is a much bigger deal (note, this is 250 dollar hardware). It's messy, complicated, and expensive for the company. And as we've already agreed, since our company is going to sell them all on day one anyway, it's not worth our time right now :p