It was exactly the same when I worked for PC World. Fortunately I managed to get out of sales pretty quickly and just hid away in the Tech Centre for 3 years....

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Attach

The bane of my life, turnover generally nobody cares about, profit they do, accessories make shed loads more money than just selling the product on its own.

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This attach thing is why I don't buy consoles on release dates. I got stung badly by GAME refusing to sell me an Xbox360 on it's own on release day.

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1 > 2 > 3 >>>>>>> 4 >>>>> 5

While I'll not lose any sleep over Game's demise I do feel sorry for the staff in our local branch. They're pleasant enough bunch and are all pretty stressed out at the moment. Doesn't help that they hear any updates with regards to what may or may not be happening with the company via the media and not directly from their employers.

Regarding the attach thing, it's everywhere - I was surprised the first time I ever did overtime on the phones at work to see that all of a sudden i'm forced to sell gooseberry fool to customers (even though I was covering handset faults, or handset support as it's nowk nown as) - "sorry your phone is broken and we have to get you to go to Nokia because you've had that phone for 3 years, how about taking out an extra data bundle for 5 pounds."

The guys on the phone even have targets on it, they don't get bonus or worse, are actually taken into performance reviews and disiplinaries if they don't hit certain targets for attaches, and they're not even strawberry floating sales agents

I bought a new mac a few weeks ago from PCWorld, tried to sell me software and cases and gooseberry fool - I just stood firm and said no, if they want to sel me gooseberry fool i'll go online and buy it there, guy quickly shut up and sold me just the mac

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I do question whether the extra sales they make can possibly be worth the amount they lose in customer satisfaction.

Depends on the business; the figures I've seen we make from attaches vs the revenue lost through poor service (Anything from customers calling back in upto escalating), make attaches worth the hassle - it's pretty much pure revenue, and a helluva lot of it (easily hitting 7 figures for a year in attaches last time I checked, but that was going back 3 years ago)

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Attahments make a hell of a lot of profit. Typically a laptop case will be higher profit (percentage wise) than a laptop itself.

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I popped into my local Gamestation this morning to get a play and charge kit for my 360. Took the box to the counter and the guy was like "We're out of stock... actually we're having a lot of trouble ordering new stock".

What confuses me is that there were several boxes for play and charge kits on the shelves. Shouldn't they take them off the shelves or at the very least mark them "Out of Stock"?

Now I don't claim to know anything about business or commerce but surely having valuable shelf space taken up by stuff that you don't even have in stock is really bad for business.

The only logical reason I can think of for doing this is that by keeping the shelves full even with stuff they don't have they project the illusion to the casual shopper that everything is fine with the company.

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From what I hear, GAME have been told to keep out of stock stuff on the shelves, pretty much just to keep the shelves full. They are supposed to put Out of Stock or Coming Soon stickers on though

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You should have reported that to someone. It's illegal.

I would have demanded compenstation or i'll report it to the mass media.

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Let them die, embrace the digital future.

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The Decline of Console Video Games is Upon Us

People with problems to the attach thing, while I don't agree with them saying you can't buy "A without B", attach or "add on sales" are common place through out retail and food services. You have things called "average customer spend" in most stores which is taken from obviously the average spend of a customer which is how profits are predicted and viewed upon for the following months. By people adding on one extra sale to a customer you can increase profits ten fold in their eyes. Also they are there to be reminders, it happens sometimes people will buy something say a PS3, then forget they need a new HDMI cable for example.

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I know there's a good reason for attachments, and some customers do appreciate them.

The problems come from retailers/sales assistants that can't/wont accept that some people simply don't want anything more.

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That's all ok but if I don't want anything else then I don't want anything else. I am quite prepared to walk away if I don't get what I want.

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Talking if attachment rates, there was this one Christmas period at Game where each staff member could gain themselves an extra £1 in their wages for every Gameware PS2 control pas sold. As you can imagine said control pads flew off the shelves.

Soon after, Game head office pulled the bonus incentive but demanded we keep selling all peripherals at the same rate. Naturally without any incentive in place sales of control pads etc dropped off by quite a margin.

Head office couldn't understand why...

And thats the reason most stores put "live" boxes on display. Whoever it was moaning about having a game sealed probably also moans when there is no game in stock even though the dummy boxes are on display, it does take a long time to keep things monitored if you are on about putting "out of stock" on everything, it would take 24/7 constant monitoring. When we sold games at work we would take the disc out of one product and put it on display so that at least we knew we always had stock to sell

Regarding the attach thing and whoever bought the mac, the guy has to offer you a bag, most people still dont buy stuff off the web remember and imagine who strawberry floated off you'd feel if you got home and realised you needed some other stuff for it and the person that sold it you didnt offer it.

Example, you buy a laptop and there is an offer on Office when you buy it with a laptop, would you be more annoyed if you didnt get offered it or didnt get the deal? And dont say you'd download open office anyway

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I've noticed in some stores/supermarkets games & other software will be brand new on the shelf but in a security case.

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This is pretty surprising really. Ubisoft titles more or less carried the 3DS launch for Game...

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