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RE: WM return policy/process?
I gotta say that I wouldn't feel terribly bad about sticking it to Walmart a little given some of their business tactics and practices.
They play hardball with suppliers and use free-rider techniques of avoiding paying for healthcare , and price things lower in markets where they want to destroy any possible competition.
Its just a matter of what tactics are honest enough ways of beating them at their own game and which ones aren't
I gotta say that the idea grew on me a bit.
Even though I don't particularly like a lot about how Walmart does business I do know they have a better idea of whats happening under the lid of their own shop that most other corporations.
Say a slightly meaningful number of people bought 10 cds on store pickup then returned them. Say 300 people did that. Thats 3000 albums that would be stocked on shelves that wouldn't have been otherwise. If they all sold within a week that still wouldn't be enought to get get the album back on the billboard 200 in anything other than the duldrums of summer.
Now, like I said I'd give walmart credit enough to notice an anomoly of both orders of 10 of the same album and especially returns of 10 of the same album 300 times over.
The gambit is, that if they noticed and said "wtf is this all about" they'd also be on the ball enough to look at the follow through. "Did we lose money or did they sell ?" . If they all sold they're focussed enough on the bottom line to think about stocking more of the album in other stores (although the buyers for that department would have years of experience in what types of inventory they got stuck with.. they're risk adverse too as they don't like to have stale inventory for both shopping environment and profits per item issues.
Still, I think it might be a bit of an assumption on any of our parts that the albums would just be flying off the shelves if they were there now. I've noticed that not everyone is quite as enamored with her music as I am.
And, that gets me back to the numbers.
I really don't think there are hundreds and hundrdeds of people who are going to pay upfront for ten albums then return them for a refund after they come to their store.
I think the real hope would be that the thing was crazy enough to catch the attention of managers rather than actually being of a magnitude that created sizable sales.
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