OAR ACTION SQUAD: Your mission, if you choose to accept it... (1 Viewer)

[Brian Harnish]

EDIT: I found out today that distribution (outside of CompUSA's responsibility) is at fault -- not necessarily the ordering or stocking. I don't know how many were ordered exactly. It seems that it has more to do with what was shipped by the studios rather than what had been ordered. So it looks like it's time to petition the studios again!

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I was able to check the system at CompUSA this morning before we opened. We had roughly 70 copies of Harry Potter in full screen and only about 3 copies left (original order was around 10 widescreen copies) of HP in Widescreen. These are the hard numbers, folks!!

All of the P&S versions were stocked under the register and at customer service, ready to be sold by me (and the leads) to dozens of customers that had been waiting. From what people in the other thread said regarding CompUSA and HP Widescreen, it seems to be a company-wide policy. By the time I got there this morning, all widescreen copies had already been sold to other employees (and some customers). This really pisses me off -- why the hell are we (CompUSA) stocking P&S copies over widescreen?!?!

I wish I had seen this thread before today. I would have taken a photo of the cart containing P&S-only Harry Potter DVDs.

 

[RogerB]

Finding Harry Potter:
Went to CompUSA first. Called the store before leaving but hung up after 10 minutes on hold. Got there and the shelves were bare. Duh. Note to self: never EVER step foot in a CompUSA again.
Went to Circuit City next. Lots of pan&scan copies and ZERO widescreen copies.
Went to Best Buy next. Their big display was empty. I found a few pan&scan (maybe 10) and even fewer widescreen (maybe 5) copies on the shelf in the Family section. Bought a widescreen copy.
Next time I'm just going to pre-order online and save myself 30 minutes.

 

[Brad Eisenhauer]

I stopped by Circuit City to pick up their ad so I could get Best Buy to price match it. (BB just has a better selection, and since I planned on picking up something else, I went there.) I took a look at what they had. Circuit City had vitually nil in the widescreen category. Two big standup displays right near the entrance to the store and only one shelf (out of ~16) had WS. Best Buy was much better and appeared to be about 50-50, perhaps tilted a bit toward P&S.

 

[John Berggren]

Best Buy Durham: No widescreen remaining. Well over 100 cropped.

Circuit City Raleigh: 7 Widescreen remainting. Well over 100 cropped.

Walmart Raleigh: 10 Widescreen remaining on 1 row of a 4 sided display. Every other side & row was full of pan and scan or VHS.

Costco Durham: Plenty of Widescreen editions. Will provide ratios when I visit (this is on word from a friend).

Also, Costco Durham had several boxes of Ocean's 11 - and they only carried the widescreen edition.

I purchased WS Harry at Walmart and left a comment card thanking them for providing it - indicating that I won't buy unless it's widescreen.

I purchased WS Ocean's 11 at Costco last week (though I was lukewarm on the film) and left them a note of thanks for providing a commitment to widescreen. It's a nice change, as I'd earlier left a note complaining that they had only carried pan and scan when there were 2 choices.

 

[Steve Owen]

Two semi-pieces of data...
Wal-Mart - Shrewsbury, MA - 29-May-02:
Harry Potter OAR in stock - 2
Harry Potter P&S in stock - "dozens"
Borders - Shrewsbury, MA - a couple of months ago
Princess Diaries OAR in stock - 0
Princess Diaries P&S in stock - about 20 or so
I'll keep an eye out for others and report back...
-Steve

 

[David Lambert]

Swung by Walgreens today for a drug-store type item.
Their sign outside (one of the changable types up high that use letters like a theater would use) said "Tue May 28 Harry Potter DVD".
They had their flyer prominently posted near the door. It was spread open and tacked up page-by-page on a free-standing sign. At the top right was the page proudly showing off the Harry Potter portion of the ad.
It showed the VHS and the WIDESCREEN DVD boxes pictured side-by-side. The yellow stripe declaring "Special Widescreen Edition" plainly visible on the DVD box.
The prices where shown for each. The DVD version looked like this (close approximation):
$20 Sale priced! REG. $24.99
Special Edition Widescreen
So I go find the display, next to the photo counter. It is a 12-pocket (3 across by 4 down) cardboard "dump" with a row of VHS across the bottom.
The DVD's are 3 across by 3 down by 4 deep (36 copies).
All fullscreen. All marked $24.99 prominently, no sale stickers or anything marking the lower price.
We pay for the item we came to get, then spot some folks who are working with the home video and similar merchandise. So I show the ad to a senior employee in that area, asking for the "Special version" that is depicted in the ad, and is on sale. She tells me that the DVD version I see in the dump is the only one they got. Then she remarks that maybe it shouldn't be on sale, since it's not the same one as in the ad.
I reiterate that I want the special one they advertised, at the special price, and she repeats that they didn't get any version but the one I see.

 

[Martin Fontaine]

Yesterday at around 6-7...

First stop was Archambault Berri (Montreal)

I didn't check how much they had but they had quite a lot of OAR and P&S but they had them in english and french packaging with more french than english (So 4 versions) and I picked up the last Widescreen English one.

But the biggest problem was the french packaging, in both OAR and P&S they outnumbered the proper ones 4 to 1 or something. It's one thing to make DVDs accessible to people who can't understand english, but to actually force it on the rest of us must stop. Just like it made me think "Grr, let's use those gift certificates that my sis gave me for my b-day but never shop here for DVDs again!" when I heard the clerks telling people that it's alright to buy the french packaging since the disk also has the english version it made me feel good to hear people saying basically the same thing as I would have said if only french boxes were left for OAR: "I will not pollute my DVD Collection with translated boxes."

Then I went to Wal-Fart Place Langelier (Montreal)

I guess their reputation is still as low, no OAR at all... Didn't do a count but they seem to have plenty of english packaging at least but only in P&S... Since DVDs was not the reason of my visit there, I didn't take the time to complain about that but man they suck!

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Went to the Tower and Borders in Davis last night so checked the stock of Harry Pothead and the Stoned Sorcerer at those stores; Tower had a bunch ALL widescreen, Borders had a ton in 3 different parts of the store, 2 sections were all widescreen and one display had less than half of the pan and scan version. From where I've been so far you'd have to go out of your way to get the pan and scan version if that's the one you wanted. Breathe a small sigh of relief...

 

[Steve Owen]

Was grocery shopping in Stop and Shop in Westborough, MA yesterday... noticed that they had Harry Potter DVDs in a couple of places. So I counted...

Pan'n'Scan: 82 copies

And Widescreen... drum roll please...

ZIP! Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Yes, this was a supermarket. The most common of common denomenators. So either they sold out of Widescreen copies, or (a far greater possibility) they never had any to begin with.

The supermarket is going to catch the impules buy. The kids in the cart screaming "Mommy! Buy us Harry Potter!" Its situations like there, were apparently the "consumer" was given no choice that are going to skew the sales results.

-Steve

 

[Dick]

I've been told at Wal Mart numerous times that the store "has no control over what DVD's are shipped to them..." the racker or distributor or whatever does - some company that specifically purchases videos for Wal-Mart chain-wide and distributes them to the outlets. This makes our efforts that much further removed from the shelf.

 

[Ken Garrison]

That's what I do is slide the fullscreens in the back and the widescreens in the front. Kinda worried I might get caught rearranging it though. I did it to a dual release of JP3 and Oceans 11.

 

[Patrick Scott]

I've been told at Wal Mart numerous times that the store "has no control over what DVD's are shipped to them..." the racker or distributor or whatever does - some company that specifically purchases videos for Wal-Mart chain-wide and distributes them to the outlets. This makes our efforts that much further removed from the shelf.

Correct. A vedor comes in and scans movies that are out of stock or low in stock. This information is transmitted to Wal-Mart which in turn transmits it to the various studios. It is the studios that determine what quantities of what title are shipped to the stores.

Scott

 

[Ted Lee]

went to zany brainy (sp?) - a childrens educational-type toy store.
by the registers/entrance (prominent display) was a standee with approx 30 copies of pan&scan only dvd's and about 20 vhs tapes. no oar.

[EDIT] oh yeah...i'm talking about the harry potter dvd...

 

[Jorge Montes]

I went to Blockbuster today to pricematch Harry Potter and had an interesting situation.
I walked up to the display they have: all VHSs (mostly the regular version and a few spanish versions, as I always see in Miami) and one, I repeat, ONE DVD. The widescreen edition. So I grab it and take it to the counter. The lady price matches it no problem, but then she tells me to put the DVD back on the display because it's empty. Sure enough, they'd slit the plastic and pulled the discs out. Then she asks me: "You want the widescreen version, right?" I went "widescreen?" and she follows with "Yeah. You want widescreen. Whole picture. It's better." and hands me a widescreen copy from a box they had under the counter. Clever way to deal with theft without having to restrict things for shoppers. Plus, unknowing theives are already beat to the punch by the store itself.
I asked her how many widescreen copies she had as opposed to the fullscreen and she said it was pretty skewed towards the fullscreen in her box, but only because she kept getting people to buy out all the widescreen copies.
First they start renting out widescreen over the fullscreens again and now I meet one of the first ever EDUCATED Blockbuster employees in that particular store. I'm impressed.