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Stores: Futureshop.. Possibly a bunch of thieves?
Mon, 09 Jan 2006

Update Jan 9 2006: I win! See below.

And so it begins, another wonderful saga between a lone consumer and a greedy corporation whose snake-oil salesmen will take your money and brand you a crook when you try and return the faulty purchase. I imagine some number of people might just take this, but me -- I'm at the end of my string with taking crap from Corporate America -- I'll make as big a stink as I have to in order to get real service. At best, they'll try and be helpful and return my hard-won money. At worst I'll be out of pocket a few bucks and a few minutes preparing a website, and hopefully a few thousand people will hear the story and deprive Futureshop a few sales. As a consmer, what else can you do?

Pleasingly, theres already a website it looks like; now thats service. Check out FutureShopSucks.com

(I realize this is a mere $50 purchase, but such is my rage. How many times a year do companies try and rip you off? (hell, I've blogged about 2 or 3 companies in the last year, and thats only the ones that really annoyed me.))

I'll post updates as they come; I'm that sort of anal guy ;)

More...

The story so far..

I don't buy software near to Christmas.. you never know what'll end up under the tree and best avoid some awkward gift scenarios. I have since learned the stores shelves are completely barren in the aftermath of Boxing Day, and so I hunted around for SOCOM for the Playstation Portable for the last week or two to no avail. I was denied my couch-bound sniping. Just as well, so I could just plain old relax over the holidays.

Today on the way home from work I popped into Futureshop (no link, as I deny them that courtesy) and Lo!, a SOCOM/PSP on the shelf. It wasn't there the other day - yes, I have the shame to admit I checked in earlier in the week. Slick.

Got home, opened her up and booya - a Wayne Gretzky game is contained within - a veritable onion with a spiders-nest in the core. I've never owned a sports game in my life and no way I'll begin now, so I rush back to the store ready to stand in the lengthy Unservice Line. By the time I get to a human an entire 64 minutes have passed since the original purchase. Fine.

The polite clerk can offer no help - store policy is not to exchange or provide store credit for opened software (and there are no more SOCOMs on the shelf anyway.) Naturally I request a manager so I can climb up the pole of justice; he too is polite (though aggressively so) and insists there is nothing they can do. He goes so far as to nearly (but without saying in so many words) suggest that I have a scam going.. buying the game and putting some other game in the box and returning it, to get it for free. He notes the Gretzky game was bundled for giveaway earlier in time, and also notes the disk is all scratched up (evidently used.) Mistakes do not happen, he insists.

Funny that -- I inform him how I receive not one, but two broken Sliders DVD season packs that contained duplicate DVDs instead of the full season as advertised. Mistakes do happen, of course, and I proceed to give him The Shit. Certainly, in their database they can see I didn't buy any PSP bundle at their store and so have no freebie Gretzky. But no way a store can get away with suggesting the customer is lieing!

I go so far as to suggest that an employee here at Futureshop or the distributor or manufacturer is running the scam.. screwing innocent customers by swapping their used games.

I do get a little heated .. I'm a gentle fellow so thats not saying muchy, but it does force me to flame a little .. I own a house, I'm not some 12 year old who needs to go around scamming stores for videogames. Hell, I'm a respected software developer who even dabbles in game development and has a dozen friends in that industry. Hell, I even have several websites with which I will ensure as many people hear about things as possible.

In the end, the aggressively non-useful manager refuses to help nor make exception; I empathize with his position in upholding broken store policy, but his suggestion to call Sony isn't useful -- like that'll help.

Giving him a breather, I walk away and call Sony up - yes, the cell phone has a use. The nice man in San Diego politely notes that he's not sure he can help -- he'll have to do some "research." We all know what that means -- at best I'll get a game in 3-6 months, but I imagine not even that will occur. Sony is famous for bad support.

I harass the poor Futureshop lad some more - countering his suggestion with the old 'there, I called them and they weren't so helpful as to promise to send me a game in 3-10 days like you said', and got his managers (a third level up now) phone number. Tomorrow morning that fellow will get an enraged software developer in his ear.

Vengeance will be mine!

Update: Jan 9 2006

Deep in the chest cavity of the monster there is a human; she was decent and all thats good in a sales and support person, so one can hope her internal fluids spread through-out the corporate culture. It would be nice to not have to climb through 6 people to get to such an individual, but its good to know they're there. I should call her manager, I was so impressed. (Mental note .. use a credit card and not a debit card next time, so payments can be retracted.)

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