There's a Demand
A classic story from DQ reader David Gloier.I have yet to locate a 360 and was out shopping for other things this evening. I decide to duck into the local CompUSA to see if maybe I might luck into a shipment. A salesman (boy, whatever), seeing me lingering around the 360 kiosk, asks me if I’m looking for an Xbox 360.
“Just seeing if you might have one or two floating around," I reply.
“No, but we get shipments in every Monday.”
“Really? Today’s Monday. Did you already sell them all?”
“We didn’t get a shipment in today.”
“But you said 'every Monday'.”
“If we get them, they come on Mondays.”
So I let that just slide, seeing as this conversation will turn into a cross between teaching my mom how to use the VCR for the 1,000th time and Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” routine. He then proceeds to ask if I have seen the recall, saying every single unit released would overheat within an hour of turning it on and they would actually melt the casing.
“Why would you keep selling it if you know they are going to overheat and turn into a giant steaming pile of melted plastic, possibly burning down a customer’s home?” I ask, knowing CompUSA would probably face some liability in selling a faulty product that could quite possibly kill everyone that bought the console, if they knew that for a fact.”
His answer?
“There’s a demand.”
Well…Johnny here obviously just finished his freshman economics class at community college, with, I’m guessing, about a C-.
Before I can even form a response, he adds, “You’re best bet would be to wait and get the PS3. It’s over 200 times more powerful than the 360 and is going to change things. It’ll be out by the time we get another shipment of 360’s.”
“That’d be on a Monday, right?”
“Probably.”
I haven’t been into CompUSA in over a year. For the past month they have been advertising revamped stores with product specific customer service so that the customer can intelligently compare products and make an informed purchase.
Apparently, the Austin stores haven’t gotten the memo.
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