It’s been an odd year for the UK’s big games retailers. There’s the ongoing issue of digital sales stealing the share from bricks-and-mortar retailers and the general state of the UK economy meaning that the entertainment business is struggling to stretch its ends to meet. But the new console launches from Sony and Microsoft, coupled with a really strong year for Nintendo’s software, has meant that there’s an air of excitement around games retail too.
Game, re-emerging from their administration, have been appearing to do quite well but troubles around console preorders have had their customer service staff working overtime, while the stores themselves pretend that the only way they could possibly sell you a PS4 or Xbox One console is if you buy some high-margin games and Blu-rays along with it.
CEX, who have quite the history of price-gouging amid launch sell-outs, tried to court some positive publicity by giving a free console to an idiot who was duped into paying £450 for a photograph by an eBay scam artist. It might have been intended as a publicity stunt but it appeared to be rewarding the astonishing stupidity of someone who had seen little sympathy from the gaming community.
ShopTo had several separate customer service disasters in which they insulted, admonished and alienated their customers via email and social media, cancelled preorders and generally demonstrated how not to use twitter, before taking PS4 preorder funds surprisingly early and without warning and then throwing in a healthy smattering of public apologies every time they embarrassed themselves.
Blockbuster slipped back into administration and is in the process of looking for a buyer as the company unfortunately has to make large numbers of staff unemployed just before Christmas.
Amazon have enough spare cash that they can throw it into pie-in-the-sky, Tom Clancy-esque, schemes like a drone delivery service, but they can’t smoothly sell a launch allocation of PlayStation 4 consoles without some mistakes leading to unfulfilled orders. They also run their distribution centres where “despair leaks around the edges”, if a recent journalistic infiltration is to be believed.
Now we see today’s news that, in the wake of an embarrassingly idiotic mistake, Zavvi is threatening customers with legal action. In the letter, which was sent to customers who had been delivered an unexpected Vita in with their preorder of Tearaway, they issued a deadline of 5PM today for customers to contact them if they received the £169.99 bundle in place of their £19.99 preorder.
So, in response to their own stupid mistake, they decided to make very dubious legal threats against customers. Customers who may be emboldened by the Distance Selling Regulations that talk of unsolicited goods being treated as unconditional gifts. Customers with access to Twitter and Facebook and any amount of internet forums and amateur legal advisors. What could possibly go wrong?
I’m not qualified to comment on the legality of demanding that customers return the Vita they received in error. I wouldn’t want to – as many others doubtlessly will – give advice that could ultimately be incorrect and result in an individual getting into legal difficulties with the lawyers at Zavvi. However, I think that, by virtue of being a largely compassionate (I hope) human being, I’m perfectly qualified to comment on the letter Zavvi (operated by TheHut.com, who can boast significant profits. And they do.) sent to customers.
It’s not simply another customer service debacle from a company so wrought with fear at its position desperately close to the economic danger zone that it needs to claw back every penny it can from its own episodes of rank incompetence. If that were so, we could laugh it off and roll our eyes and loudly tut at their idiocy before moving on to a few weeks respite before the next exciting instalment of “big retailer doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing.”
No, the Zavvi letter is nasty. It’s the legalese equivalent of “if you don’t pay me back that tenner I dropped in your garden last week, I’m going to break your legs.”
These letters are arriving with customers a couple of weeks before Christmas and they make vague legal threats without anything to back them up or any specific allegation of wrongdoing. Zavvi appears to be hoping that, in the absence of any practical ability to reclaim goods, a nice old-fashioned bit of fear mongering will do.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs – legal or moral – of customers keeping goods that they know they’re not supposed to have, the mistake was Zavvi’s. Threatening “any and/or all legal remedies available to [them],” will doubtless panic some into compliance but it’s not a pleasant tactic. It doesn’t make Zavvi appear to be a company I’d like to do business with – even if I could ignore the simple fact that they were incapable of successfully and accurately fulfilling an order.
It’s difficult to have sympathy for a company that so quickly turns to these kind of nasty missives. So in a few weeks, when our finger hovers over that order button, we’ll remember this. And in a few months or a few years, if we see stories of Zavvi’s impending administration (again), we’ll remember this. But it will be hard to remember that there are people who work there that will be in danger of losing their jobs. People who do a good job and try hard.
Should they hit on hard times, we’ll remember Zavvi not as a collection of people trying hard to fulfil their promises to customers but as the company who couldn’t run their business properly and had a bit of a legal tantrum when it didn’t get its toys back. And we’ll struggle to care if the company lives or dies.
Thanks, DarkZero
Craig Dodson
If I got a Vita by mistake and they wanted it back, I’d be compliant up until the point I got a letter like that and then I’d dig my heels in.
beeje13
You forgot simplygames who tried to force existing PS4 pre orders to buy (non official) accessories or have their pre order cancelled.
Avenger
It’s funny how in the first sentence Zavvi try to make the customer the one in the wrong. They threaten legal remedies but they don’t say what the customer is doing illegally in hope of explanation. It’s a completely shabby abominable letter that i doubt will procure any threats. I’ve threatened legal action to companies before but I have actually stated the law on the matter.
Hopefully if customers have the right mind, they’ll threaten Zavvi with legal action in response to the above. If that letter is the 2nd one customers have received, Customers can threaten them with court action under the Harassment act 1997 unless correspondence stops; should frighten them more than any decline in publicity would.
Youles
That’s what I’d do. I suspect Zavvi have panicked and are hoping that threatening letters will be enough to concern people and make them return the goods. Assuming it wasn’t recorded, I’d claim that I didn’t receive the goods, and any such related letters – after all it seem they’re sending the wrong thing quite often! Doubt they would take people to court for £120…they’d look pretty daft in the press, especially seeing as it was their fuck-up, lol!
ron_mcphatty
They can’t have lost that much money on these Vita’s, surely? Maybe a few thousand quids worth are in the wild but I doubt its tens of thousands lost. Plus, it’s ridiculous to make a mistake like that and expect to get your goods back.
I’d love to see them ‘enforce’ any sort of legal action if any of the Vitas arrived back damaged, loaded up with pornographic images or smeared with spot puss. That’d teach them to be nice.
Youles
Yeah right…the Vita’s would most likely be opened and used, to pretty useless to Zavvi now.
Alos88
I hope you enjoyed my preorder for FFX HD Zavvi, because after this rude little letter it will be my last.
You had every right to ask for the Vita back, but to demand compliance or threaten legal action you have lost my goodwill and my support as a customer in future.
Bilbo_bobbins
Just reserving their rights, it’s nothing other than that. I deal with this all the time at work. Ignore and carrying on with life. If they take it to court, show it on social media and I’m sure they will back down.
Nocure-fd
Simple ecconomics point of view:
How much would it take before the legal fees of pursuing someone who recieved this bundle exceed the value of this bundle? knowing the legal system, not very much.
Realistically, it’s probably cheaper for hut.com to just write these off.
MA77_G0D
I had pre-ordered ‘Tearaway’ from the Zavvi Outlet on Play.com a month before it’s release. I did not receive the game until 8 days after it’s release day. I was not informed that it was going to be delayed and only after I contacted them questioning this was I told that they were ‘having difficulty getting the stock from their supplier’.
Upon, finally, receiving the game I noticed that my pre-order bonus content was nowhere to be found. I contacted them again to query them about this and I was told to send the game back to them and they would send the correct one to me. I contacted them, yet again, to explain that nothing was wrong with the item that they sent me and that I was missing just the code for the pre-order content. I heard back from them a couple of days after that and was told that there is no pre-order content for this game…
As you can imagine I was just a little fed up at this point. A few more emails have been sent, and received, and the current state is that they are ‘looking into it’ and will get back to me…
I have been extremely disappointed by Zavvi and then to see these stories of them showing up too… affirms that my decision to not deal with them again is more than reasonable in response to their incompetence in dealing with such a simple order.
Thought I would add my woes to this article. Something needs to happen as they do seem to be treating their customers extremely poorly.
– MjA –
parryman
Threaten them with legal action…
boeboe
Sounds very similar to my dealings with these guys, and I’ve been given that ‘looking into it’ email before too. I had to post on their Facebook page to get anything moving its just way too much bother. This Vita bull is pretty ridiculous, where they’ve actually threatened their customers. Sums it up.
Sad Panda
I think there have been a lot of own goals scored by the retailers over the console launch.
I’ll never buy from Game again following consecutive screw ups with 3 orders, the last of which was my PS4. Won’t use Zavvi out of principle after this debacle either.
I do have to give Amazon credit, their customer service has been exemplary with my brothers PS4. After My mum accidentally cancelled his preorder, they still got him a console out in under a week and their communication was first class.
hazelam
they always want it their way don’t they?
if they don’t have to sell items for the quoted prices when they misprice them, then people don’t have to give back these machines when they are zavvi’s mistake.
i know in retail the store has to remove an item to reprice it if it’s mispriced, i think it’s for something like 24 hours.
anyway, whatever the legality of the situation, threatening letters like this are not gonna create loyal customers out of anybody.
and when word spreads, and it will, people who aren’t directly involved are going to avoid this retailer as well.
it would have been better if they’d written the whole thing off and just let it go.
even if they make a u turn now and just tell everybody they can keep the Vita if they got one, the damage to their reputation is done.
i’m not going to write what i’d send to that feedback address if i got a letter like that, there might be children, or sensitive adults, or sailors reading. ^_^
DividSmythe
I’m going to boycott Zavvi because of these stupid threats. Not that I used them that much anyway but won’t be using them now.