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Wal-Mart selling DVDs before release dates

post #1 of 17
11/25/06 at 7:14pm
Thread Starter 
I stopped by Wal-Mart today to get some cleaning supplies, and was surprised when I stopped by their DVD section. Both "An Evening with Kevin Smith 2" and "Superman Returns" (HD-DVD) were on sale (both come out on 11-28-06). I thought something might of flagged purchasing either of these when I went through checkout, but I was able to buy both of these discs without any problems.

I've noticed before that sometimes Wal-Mart will put out some B-material straight to DVD stuff out on the shelves before the release date, but I can't believe someone on their staff actually put a pretty major release like Superman Returns out early.

I remember back when I used to work at Sam Goody and Hastings during high school and college, it was illegal to sell items before their release date, and both of these chains would never sell anything early due to any possible fines. I'm just wondering how Wal-Mart can get away with this.
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post #2 of 17
11/25/06 at 8:00pm
Don't a lot of places do this openly?
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post #3 of 17
11/25/06 at 8:35pm
I've seen copies of An Evening With Kevin Smith on the shelves for weeks at my local Wal Mart. It's sporadic, but I've seen it on the racks at least three times--I was kinda confused when I found out it was being released Tuesday.
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post #4 of 17
11/25/06 at 9:10pm
I was kinda confused when I read that someone bought it.
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post #5 of 17
11/25/06 at 9:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bloody Wanker
I'm just wondering how Wal-Mart can get away with this.
The same way they've gotten away with anything else. If this is their idead of healhty competiton or, something like that, its totally unfair to other companies who are honest and dont sell when they are not supposed to because the Man has his nose all the way up their ass, but overlooks wal-mart's money grubbing, illegal practices. Hell, someone tell warner Bros, quick so something can be done. Fuck, i'll do it myself.
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post #6 of 17
11/25/06 at 9:24pm
They're not doing it on purpose. The DVD comes to the store early, and it has a date on the side of the box. Wal-Mart Employee Monkey doesn't read the date and puts the DVD out. Mystery: solved!
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post #7 of 17
11/25/06 at 9:34pm
Wal-mart isn't the only place that does this. A lot of big retail stores like Target and Best Buy have put DVDs, electronics, etc. out early. I got my Nintendo DS from Target a good 3 weeks before it was set to launch from Target. As Devin said, it all comes down the the stupidity of the employees working there.

If you are interested in picking stuff up early, go to Wal-Mart at around 1-2 Tuesday morning when the night clerk is putting the DVDs out. There's usually dozens of boxes lying around open with stuff that isn't supposed to come out yet. Just reach inside and grab a copy of what you want, than make your way to the check out. There's no flags on the titles or anything like that, so you're good to go.
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post #8 of 17
11/25/06 at 10:23pm
Too bad they didn't put the PS3s out early.

I remember buying "The Matrix" two weeks before street date. I didn't complain a bit. They also had the new two disc Star Wars DVDs out a week early for a couple of days.
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post #9 of 17
11/25/06 at 11:13pm
I remember talking to a clerk somewhere else about breaking street dates and I was told that if a store found out if any other retailer had broken street date it was fair game for all the stores within the same area to do it.

Then again, the idiot worked at Blockbuster.
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post #10 of 17
11/26/06 at 12:13am
The K-Mart near me did this for a few weeks back in 2001.
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post #11 of 17
11/26/06 at 12:21am
when I worked for Borders and ran the DVD section, I pretty much would buy most of my movies before the street date, of course with big titles we'll always get them the friday before
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post #12 of 17
11/26/06 at 12:54am
I remember talking to the owner of our local EzyDVD franchise about this once . . . he basically said that although there are official release dates, if it arrives early from the studios, then they are absolved of any blame, basically. And since it's really the courier companies that provide the transport from warehouse to stores, it can sometimes all depend on the individual courer's travel plan. Apparently the local JB Hi-Fi got Spider-Man 2 a full day and a half before EzyDVD did simply because a courier juggled alot of this jobs around to make the WEEK'S travel plan easier to organise and cut out alot of backtracking and so forth. There was a huge shitfight about it between head offices, but at the end of the day there was nothing that could be done. Sometimes it works in either place's favour and that's how it balances out. <shrug>
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post #13 of 17
11/26/06 at 11:49am
When I worked for Turtle's (a music and movie store that some folks may remember), I had an asst. mgr. that had a hard-on for nailing other record stores that broke street date. One in particular was the 2nd Europe album (yes, this was back in the 80s). A store in the mall (Castle Music? Something like that.) broke street date by a week and put out dozens of copies of the new Europe CD, album, and cassette. My asst. mgr. went over, bought a copy, then called the distributor and faxed them a copy of the receipt. The end result was a fine for the record store, and for 6 months they got any other releases from that distributor either delayed or delivered on the day of the release instead of them getting there early. They wouldn't even let us buy stuff early when we got it.
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post #14 of 17
11/26/06 at 12:02pm
Man, what a hardass.

I wonder if he still worked in a media store today whether or not he would've stopped another store from selling this before street date.
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post #15 of 17
11/26/06 at 4:26pm
The Sam's Club here does this regularly.
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post #16 of 17
11/26/06 at 4:45pm
I saw Smith's DVD and Superman all over my local stores last night so I guess everyone broke street date. Hooray. Now I can watch a shitty Superman DVD.
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post #17 of 17
11/26/06 at 7:56pm
I just got Clerks 2 today. I work at Walmart and just walked it back to a register
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