Feldon I’m not late on this announcement at all!
From the EQ2 Forums:
Get double Station Cash® when you redeem SOE Game Cards from any participating U.S. Best Buy store for Station Cash from Friday, August 16 to Sunday, August 18, 2013. You can purchase your SOE Game Cards from participating Best Buy stores any time, but to get double Station Cash you must redeem them before the offer ends at 11:59PM PDT on August 18, 2013.
Reminder: You only get double Station Cash when you redeem SOE Game Cards from a participating U.S. Best Buy store between 12:00AM PDT on August 16 until 11:59PM PDT on August 18, 2013.
If You Can Find Them…
Echoing similar StationCash offers at Walmart stores, it seems many Best Buy stores do not carry these cards, or were completely unaware of this promotion, thus they did not order any cards to take advantage of the offer. This rather defeats the purpose of these deals, and mostly leads to customer frustration.
Incidentially, suggestions to buy the cards on BestBuy.com‘s website miss the point that cards must be redeemed before the end of this weekend.
WWFD? (What Would Feldon Do?)
If I worked at SOE in the Marketing department, I’d have a valid e-mail address for a manager at every Best Buy store and send them an e-mail release a week before these types of promotions encouraging them to stock these cards. Yes, there are over 800 Best Buy retail stores if you include Best Buy Mobile. SOE routinely e-mails nearly 2 million Station accounts so sending out 800 e-mails is not completely daunting.
If every store sold 10 extra cards, that’s $120,000, with SOE seeing probably 1/3 or $40,000 of that. That may seem a pittance, but sales of StationCash cards during promotions is an inevitable gateway to non-promotional sales. Better availability of cards would lead to more impulse buys year-round.
what feldon said
What constitutes a participating store?
For a second I had high hopes.. I’ve had the EQ2 itch for a few weeks now but refuse to pay $80+sub to get back in the game.. if I could at least save a little by using station cash it’d be more palatable.
America only tho, guess I’m waiting for the new xpac still.
As sad as it may seem it usually only takes one email to the SOE vendor manager at Best Buy, but the lead time would need to be longer; 60 days perhaps.
I would expect that these retailer specific campaigns are as a response to the retailer’s requirement to keep SOE branded stuff on the shelf. Whether by contact condition or low orders from BB SOE runs a promo to keep the peg space. The profit from the sale of those cards is secondary to SOE and likely below 20%. Online top ups is where they cash in; no cards to make or ship, no middle men to make a profit.
If SOE brings people into the store for any reason they are seen as valuable. If the retailer is hiding your product then sending “hungry” customers to look for them (and abuse shop staff who are unstocked and clueless about the product) is also good way to get them to dig them out of the warehouse, too.
Thank God I don’t work in marketing or procurement… it’s a game unto itself. 🙂
Best Buy would be bankrupt if it took 60 days to advise stores to reorder in advance of a promotion. They’re an electronics retailer not a fabric store. 😉
I know Best Buy is legendarily incompetent but surely they have some mechanism to take advantage of these types of situations. 10-14 days should be more than adequate.
I agree that reorder should be very quick…probably at the same interval that their trucks make a visit from the warehouse.
The 60 days comment was based on them doing something that’s not BAU (business as usual). From my corporate experience (not in the U.S. for more than a decade, so to be taken with a grain of salt), they wouldn’t want anyone contacting their stores directly about promotions and other purchasing or advertising ‘stuff’ (they pay people for that…much more). So, if SOE advertising wants a coordinated ‘sale’ with their suppliers…
1. SOE sends a notice to their vendor manager in their respective company.
2. Allow a day (perhaps two) before it’s acknowledged.
3. After that, the person in Best Buy procurement would send it over to the business analysis team to will perform an inventory check.
4. The analysis team determines which stores have insufficient (Nil) supplies of the cards as compared against historic high sales for the store. (This would probably take a few days because they’d have to request an update to the corporate data warehouse, then supplement it with some other assumptions to result in something that’s inconclusive).
5. Where a gap exists, the BA will note them, probably in an Excel spreadsheet or equivalent in-house system.
6. Another person is notified that the order spreadsheet is ready, probably via email (behind a stack of emails) which they pick up in a couple of days…maybe more if they’ve had a heavy workload placed on them due to the massive downsizing and outsourcing.
7. When the buyer reviews the list, some of the values appear counter intuitive, so they spend a couple of extra days doing some validation before they order a boat load of plastic cards that they’ve never heard of.
8. Finally, the buyer comes up with an assembled list of purchases and distribution, so they fill out an acquisition form (electronic or otherwise) that initiates the team to place an order with SOE (probably via the person who SOE contacted initially…or someone in their team).
9. The purchase order is finally issued by account, probably a day or two after the request and sent to SOE.
10. SOE received the order, which is acknowledged the next working day.
11. SOE fulfillment processes the order, and sends the paperwork/request to their warehouse that begins processing of the order, probably a business day later.
12. The shipper receives the order after 3pm on the day, so it’s shipped the next business day using 2 day deliver to the several distribution centers for the retailer.
13. Meanwhile, the BB folks have tabled and decided that they may run a special on gaming keyboards during the SOE promotion, so they put in a request to their marketing department to produce a new plan-o-gram placing the cards near their uber ‘dragon slayer’ keyboards.
14. So, about the time the cards reaches the warehouses, the plan-o-grams are issued to the stores where they are scheduled to be put up on their rotation next week.
15. Distribution centre pulls stock, and ships it out to the stores where sits on the receiving dock for another day.
16. Plan-o-gram day comes around where the section is reset, and the inventory makes its way onto the floor.
17. The weekly team meetings cover any promotions for the day, so info to inform the BB staff of promotions and likely questions are rolled out during the next briefing.
Now, assuming that there are only 5 business days in every 7 calendar days….that’s all I’ve got. *lol*
Anyone with a calculator have a count?
(I wish that I hadn’t worked for a company with a similar process….but I’ve worked for two. *facepalm*)
That said, your point is taken Feldon. It SHOULD be:
1. Email to affected stores
2. Cards shipped direct to stores
3. Done
** Sorry for the stupid long hypothetical rambling…but being able to type on a keyboard instead of my phone….has made me type-happier than usual, even. 🙂 **
striinger has it pretty might on the head. Having worked in retail many times, there is a method to their madness. If SC cards are not selling well, they will be boxed up and stored away or shipped to other store where they might sell better to clear shelf space for things that will actually sell. Along comes one of these deals, which SoE puts on without letting the retailers know. Suddenly there is a surge of people at said retailer looking for the cards. What does a good retailer do when customers suddenly start asking for something in mass? You find a way to get more of that item and get it on the shelf as fast as possible while it is in demand.
Nice promo only if best buys in Vegas sold SC card they dont even know wtf EQ2 is
I was able to buy a card at the local Best Buy and it’s not a big town at all. But I had to look all over for it. They weren’t in the Sony/PlayStation section or near any of the other game cards I found.
Ask them for Planetside 2 game cards?
Not a single SOE card at the local Best Buy. So much for the promotion this round.
So maybe some of the local stores were not participating stores. It’s just that simple. Sony does not control Best Buy store management.
Another possible reason players cannot find the cards is they may ask for Everquest or EQ2 cards. The cards have been marketed as SOE or Sony station cash cards for how many years now, 3?
Also a number of store, any store, employees do not not know the name of Everquest. Neither do they know the name Rift, or Oblivion, or LOTR. To many WOW is the generic name for an online game. iPhone is the generic name for a cell phone and iPad is the generic name for a tablet. Unless words are presented digitally most people today are functionally illiterate. Taking time to read printed words and/or flipping a card over to read more words is not taught today. Again, not Sony’s problem. Users could actually open the forum announcement and show the store employee the picture of the card. That is why they picture is in the announcement.
A player called ahead to locate cards and was angry at SOE because the cards were not available when the player arrived at the store. Sony was not at fault for the player not asking for cards to be held in their name or taking the opportunity usually offered by Best Buy to prepay for the cards to insure they would be held for them.
Much of the grumbling on the forums is user error and the inability to accept responsibility for user action or inaction.
This blaming Sony for everything reached the saturation point long ago.
The purpose of any sales promotion is to change customer behavior.
Customers have learned that availability of SOE cards at retailers is spotty at best. As a result, they just buy online. So if Best Buy doesn’t give a chit and won’t make any changes to improve the situation, and apparently SOE is helpless to do anything, then why even have these promotions?
What seems to happen is, customers who would never normally look to Best Buy for these cards drive 20-30 minutes to one, or call them, or e-mail them, trying to seek these cards, have a bad experience, and now have a negative feeling towards SOE.
The very best outcome of these promotions is, a customer goes to Best Buy and buys a card that they would normally buy through SOE.com. Best Buy stores that already carry them will possibly re-order. All other Best Buy stores will shrug and not even think twice about ordering the cards because the communication doesn’t get through to anyone in management.
What’s the upside of these promotions again?
Betony NAILED IT!
I am on the AB sever and a lot people was asking to buy these cards on the sever due to they couldn’t find any BB in there Area. I live in a big city and we got 3 BB around me and not 1 of them had these cards for sale it also the same for Wal Mart. Can’t SoE do something about this and make sure these retailers have the cards before the Sc event happens
Sony could send a shoebox full of SC cards to every BB and Wal-mart in America, but unless it also includes some payment for them to put them on the shelf (in the way of pure profit or enticement payments) said cards will never see a customer.
Retailing shelf space is valuable real estate, and products have to ‘rent it’ through their ongoing income generation, or magnetic draw that brings cashed up shoppers into their stores, ready to part with it.
Perhaps I’ve underestimated the sex appeal of SC cards?
Placement of cards is interesting. Many cards are located by check out stands. Those cards are generally promo cards for restaurants, cell phone time, Facebook games, local and/or chain stores, etc.
Game cards are generally located in the electronics sections of stores. Where in that section the retailers decide to place the cards is up to the individual store manager. Some stores have game cards under lock and key.
Many retailers are suffering empty shelf syndrome for many products and are getting creative when re-arranging shelves. Employees may not know from one day to the next where items are.
Again, players need to be proactive consumers in the real world. Proactive does not mean rude and demanding. One wonders how many gamers are told what they want is not available simply due to attitude.
After all when Ford or Toyota have a sale at PARTICIPATING DEALERS is it prudent to walk in the dealership, not immediately see the car you want and walk out? Do you then get online and tell your closest 1000 online friends that the dealer is cheating you, they don’t know their business, etc. etc? What happens if you live in a county that due to some archaic law does not allow promotions? Is that Ford’s or Toyota’s fault? No.
Yes, I know I’m speaking to closed minds here but like the ‘haven’t marketed for 10 years so let me give you 17 points’ person above, sometimes I just need to comment.
Sorry for the excessively long storybook post. I just could not stop myself!
Thank you for not having a char limit Feldon, yet.
I realize that logic doesn’t have a very high standing when it comes to the gaming community, but I’ll try anyway.
Easy solution:
Go to all local game card selling stores once or twice a year. Buy a handful of Station Cash cards during non-promo times. Keep the receipts wrapped around them so you know which ones come from which stores. When that store’s promotion comes up, use those cards. Sometime after the promotion ends, go back to that store and restock for next time.
Again, I apologize for the attempt at logic, but every once in a while it does reach someone somewhere. 😉
Is that sorta like using SC cards as a savings account? With such low interest rates today, perhaps trading in cards on promo days is like “selling high”?
…I like it! 🙂