FLGS sucks

[Jedi_Solo]

I have no problem with the staff playing a video game when a customer first walks in. I've worked in retail for seven years (mass retail, not small business retail like we are talking about) and I know that you can be hit with lulls and I am someone who needs to be doing something or get bored quickly.

That said, the staff needed to be doing something that can be set aside at a moment's notice and a MMORPG is not one of those things. When I first walk in (assuming the place isn't a mad house with how busy it is) a staff member needs to say something along the lines of "Hi, can I help you?" After I say I'm just browsing they can go back to whatever they were doing. But if they don't try to start a conversation it isn't good customer service. Saying "Hey" isn't good customer service.

There is a range of attentiveness (after the greeting) between 100% ignoring the potential customer and handcuffing themselves to the "potential shoplifter". Many places don't get that and there are many threads here where I get the impression that posters don't get that.

I'll admit, it's a tough balance; some people seem to feel that if a staff member so much as makes eye contact after they have been browsing for 30 minutes means they are "hovering over your shoulder" while others seem to think that the staff needs to fan them with palm leaves and offer pealed grapes for the service to warrant a rank of "moderately respectable".

For me? The staff needs to make themselves easy to find if I need them and available. A couple of "finding everything you need" is great. Even it being a little heavy handed if the store is empty except for me is fine. That said, after saying I'm browsing a couple of times it should be clear that I want to be left alone; but I fully understand the issue of the staff member being bored and wanting to do their job. Checking up on me after a few minutes does make them "available" so I actually like them seeing if I have questions (to an extent). Focusing on a video game without a real attempt to strike up a conversation when I first walk in does not.

 

[wingsandsword]

I think a lot of the problem with bad FLGS comes from the sad fact that many FLGS are run by gamers with no business knowledge.

How many FLGS are run by people who have substantial experience managing a small retail business, or have a business degree, or know anything more about the gaming business than what they've learned about products as a fan of their favorite games?

How many FLGS hold on to merchandise that's many years outdated just hoping they'll sell it one day, one fateful day, at full price to that one guy out there who is just looking for some specific old book or a starter set to some long discontinued game? Wouldn't most non-gaming retail stores have marked it way down for clearance, cut their losses and moved on?

How many FLGS are little more than a hangout for the owner and some of his friends, and if you're not one of the in clique you get lousy service?

In the spirit of the thread, here's my FLGS horror story:

Almost a decade ago, a new hobby shop opened in town. It was trying to be a general shop of geekery, it was a fully fleshed out comic book shop, it had a decent sized anime section that did special orders and rentals. It had a pretty large collectable toy section (and the owner kept his own collection on display there under glass).

The gaming section, however, was weak. The owner apparently bought boxes and boxes of bulk gaming books at an estate/liquidation sale and had filled a bookcase with old WoD and GURPS books and 2e D&D books (circa 2001). He got a few copies of the new releases of the month from WotC and put those up for sale, but he didn't know much about gaming. When the Wheel of Time RPG came out, he looked at me as he was unpacking them from the box and asked with a befuddled look on his face if it was some new D&D setting or something. When I talked with the owner, he considered the store a competitor on equal footing to the other FLGS in town, since he figured he got in the same new D&D books as they did, and seemed to be generally clueless about gaming and figured selling gaming books was no different than selling comic books.

I stopped going there when three things happened all within about a month of each other.

1. My girlfriend had special ordered an anime soundtrack, to which he said it would be due in "next tuesday". He said that every tuesday for a month. My girlfriend gave up on that store and stopped shopping there, she randomly stopped by a year later just looking around, and the shopkeep remembered her and said that the soundtrack she'd ordered about 14 months earlier had just come in "last tuesday" and it was going to cost about $60 (about twice what he initially quoted back then). She said she'd given up on the order a year ago, bought the disc elsewhere, and even if she was going to buy it she wouldn't pay twice what she was quoted for it. He threw her out of the store and banned her from it for not paying for a special order.

2. I came in once and saw that the owner had bought a big load of old GI Joe toys at a yard sale and was piecing through them on a table in the back seeing what was broken, what was fixable, what was junk ect. I had a lot of those toys when I was a kid and recognized a lot of what was on the table. I was idly talking about it with him, and he wanted me to come in one day and do the sorting/cleaning/repairing myself. I asked how much he would pay me, and he got offended! He wanted me to come in and spend a whole day preparing merchandise for sale "for a friend". He wasn't my friend, he was the proprietor of a shop I visited, and apparently he saw me as free labor in addition to a customer.

3. The proprietor for the store was on the listserv for our gaming club on campus, by his own request. Whenever a new book would come out and people would discuss where to go to pick it up, or would talk about how they'd just ordered it from somewhere, he would e-mail them off-list to chide them for not buying from him. He even contacted the club officers wanting some kind of exclusivity deal where we'd only buy from him for all club purchases and to require or pressure our members into only buying from him. We weren't about to stand for bullying from him (especially since at the time there 4 FLGS in the town, and he had the worst selection and service).

He's still in business, but he completely dropped gaming from his store, and most of the anime and toy stuff, and is now just a comic book store.

 

[roguerouge]

It is unacceptable to not be able to see how the item works before buying it. It's why huge electronics stores have banks of TVs on. It's why you take a test drive of a used car.

And it's why bookstores don't have shrink-wrapped books on the shelves. Regardless of the size of the store, they let you skim them. Heck, they give you very comfortable chairs to sit down and read them in.

The only reasons I go to FLGS is to read the module a bit for campaign-compatibility before buying it and to support local businesses. As I am working class, I'm going to have to have both factors in play for me to spend hard-earned money.

 

[Greylock]

Shrink wrapped books - bad.

[snip]

Old, tatty product...

You don't see the connection?

 

[roguerouge]

And yet, somehow, bookstores carry on. It's a cost of doing business. In fact, it's a second reason to put one copy of popular books with the cover facing out. Not only does it increase the chance of it getting read, it's also the only copy that gets handled.

 

[rgard]

Former Game Store Owner's Perspective

For the OP:

The staff there should have at least stood up and asked you to find something. Assuming they hadn't recognized you from before, I don't understand why they would continue to play the game. It goes beyond good business sense...it's plain common courtesy.

As for the shrink wrapped books, I never shrinkwrapped mine except for the ones that arrived already shrinkwrapped; the 40k big black book arrived shrinkwrapped. As a result of not shrinkwrapping mine, I ended up with 30 or so books that were not sellable (at least nobody wanted them) due to wear and tear from folks reading them in the store. That wipes out the margin for 35-40 other books that did sell.

For everyone else posting their experiences:

1. Yes there is theft. Mine was negligible, but it does happen and it does annoy folks. They aren't stealing from some evil corporate big box store. They are stealing from the owner of the store. It can feel just like somebody sneaking into your house and taking your stuff.

2. The (F)LGS can't complete with Amazon and the rest based on price and that will be the death of the FLGS. It starts with the customer who buys a book from the FLGS at retail price. The customer then finds the same book on line with a 20% discount and now the customer thinks he or she was ripped off by the FLGS. The owner can try to mitigate this with frequent customer programs which give a discount, but that just cuts into the money available to buy new stock and pay operating expenses. It's a vicious downward spiral. Even when you do offer discounts (which I did) you still have customers who will read the books in the store, complain the book was shelf worn, decide not to buy it and order a shiny untouched one from Amazon. I know this as some customers will tell you this openly, even show you the book Amazon shipped.

I also had flak from a parent when I only gave a 10% discount on the Star Wars mini set that came out when the Revenge of the Sith premiered. The parent paid $11.69 (10% off the $12.99 retail price) at my store then found the minis at Walmart for $9.87 (or some other prime number weird price Walmart divines). She was pissed off and went on about how she was on a limited budget. I was polite, but didn't offer her a rebate. Didn't see her or her kids for 2 months after that.

3. The FLGS 'Gaming Experience' will keep some stores afloat for awhile but folks will move their shopping on line eventually. For my store the 'Gaming Experience' included lots of table space to play the games. I had 2400 square feet and about 1000 of that was devoted to gaming tables. I also had a paint station where folks could paint their minis. I provided the paints, they provided the minis and brush. We held weekly contests for store credit, e.g. build the most cool sorcerer character concept or figure painting contests. We had D&D fight club, with point buy characters where the winner received store credit as well. I had Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy and Warmachine completitions. Also, I was fortunate to have a regular customer who was a fantastic mini painter and he gave painting classes to folks who wanted to learn how to paint. I personally DM'd D&D and SW D20 in the store after hours. I was having fun and generating additional sales at the same time.

If anybody who owns a LGS reads this, I encourage you to do the paint station. It brought alot folks in and those same folks who painted their figs with my paint bought their own paint from the store. You do want to do this in an area that isn't carpeted as your carpet at the station will get trashed.

4. Most customers I had were great, decent people. You get your ration of jerks, thieves, penniless gamer types looking to cool off in your store on a 90 degree day, folks who are happy to read your stock, then buy it on line and tell other customers about it, but the vast majority were great.

I know I pissed some customers off. I had one kid using an illegal pdf of the 40k Space Marine Codex. I told him he couldn't bring the illegal copy to the store. He replied that he couldn't play without it. I showed him the door. He took two of his friends with him and I never saw the 3 again. I had other folks who took store stock books into the gaming area and were actually using the books to play D&D. I politely took the books from them, but they were angry with me. After that I had another customer start to copy a prestige class description from splat book by hand in the store part of the shop, so he could play it in the gaming area. He didn't finish copying it before I put the book back on the shelf. He then complained that his character concept was ruined.

At the end of the day I think the FLGS will die off. Some will survive who have good deals on their rent and that are already established. I think I did all the right things with the 'gaming experience', pleasant atmosphere and discounts, but I had to close up shop as after 20 months, I was still losing money and didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

It will come down to price. As long as Amazon and others are offering the discounts they do, the FLGS will get squeezed out of the marketplace.

That's just my humble opinion.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Andor]

Gamers steal from FLGS and damage their goods with shocking frequency.

To the OP. Did you ask if you could open the shrinkwrapping to take a look at the book? If not, I fail to see what right you have to be angry. For all you know they've lost hundreds of dollars in inventory to some idiot who likes to page through books while eating cheetos and chocolate bars.

Is playing a computer game great customer service? Nope. Is it terrible customer service? Only if they refuse to stop playing when you try to engage them. Otherwise it's no different from Tiffany at the mall popping her bubble gum and staring blankly into space.

 

[Scribble]

But it wasn't an unfriendly environment!

Maybe I'm just reading it wrong. Here's how the sequence of events looks to me.

OP walks into FLGS store. FLGS guys are watching WoW (at no point in time does the OP state anyone is playing it) and turn around and give him a hello. OP walks around the shop a bit, finds the books are wrapped, and leaves.

How is that an unfriendly or unprofessional environment? I'm being dead serious here - what could the employees have done to improve this?

I think it's a case of unfriendly being used in two different ways.

Not unfriendly as in they threw things at him or called him a loser or something.

Unfriendly in the customer service deifinition. Unwelcoming? Unhelpfull?

To be more helpful, they should have (at least one of them) paused their game, and moved to the register / an area where he/she was visably ready to be of service. Followed by an "If I can help you with anything let me know" type of line.

Doesn't have to follow him around or be annoyingly attentive. (thats poor customer service on the opposite end) Just make themselves obviously available.

At the very least they should have said something along the lines of "If you need any help let us know!"

But instead they gave a brisk "hey" and turned back to the game.

This gives the customer the impression of secondary to their own concerns. It sets the customer up with an attitude of, well fine, if you don't want my money...

Is their a law saying they have to be helpful? No. But if you're in business, you're asking someone to give you money. It's on your shoulders to either be helpful, or not make money. Your choice.

Does it always make sense? Nope. I've been in a number of Customer Service jobs... And Retail. Sometimes I just wanted to smack the customer. But again, getting a new customer or making a mad one happy again is WAY harder then simply keeping a happy customer happy.

In some of those reatil jobs I ignored the customer. I weas having a bad day, and I dn't always like people to bother me. But I wasn't thebstore owner. I knew the customer wouldn't have a great experience but I didn't care much. The owner probably would have though.


As for the shrink wrapped books... I think if they're going to shrink wrap them, they should either have a section of unshrink wrapped books for browsing, or have signs indicating they have copies for browsing... JUST ASK!

 

[Calico_Jack73]

... I was shocked to find that the store had shrink-wrapped every single book... even the old stuff.

My FLGS is the same way but they WILL open the shrink wrap if you want to look through it and will re-wrap it if you choose not to purchase the book. Since they have in-store gaming I think they want to prevent people from using their stock as reference material during the session.

I'm not too crazy about the store anymore. I can get my books cheaper at Amazon or Borders and the in-store gaming environment is dominated by Magic the Gathering players who tend to be very loud and quite a bit younger.

 

[Wormwood]

Why play WoW IN A HOBBY STORE? doesn't that tell you something? What hope does the store have of promoting their product if they themselves don't use it to amuse themselves.

Perfect!