The Dawn of the Wing commander revival, or a false start?

Man, and I thought my buying a Raedon 8500 with all pennies was evil... (I deliberately went to the bank and got $300 in pennies for the occasion)
 
Blockbuster has a lot of problems with people stealing the cards from the little racks they're on and then coming back and complaining that it was some kind of accident that their cards were never activated. So they're really specific about being sure to enter them and what-not.
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
Uh, so why did they accept the cards?
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One of those things that retail has taught me...
Store managers look good if their store sells lots of stuff. Store managers look really good if their store sells a gift certificate because they're basically getting money without moving product. Store manager looks REALLY good if those certificates go out, but don't come back to the store (i.e. something for nothing). Store manager breaks even if GC comes back to the store that purchased it. Store manager suffers somewhat if GC comes to his store that originated elsewhere.
It all has to do with the amount of money that the store makes. The Blockbuster corporation as a whole probably doesn't care that the certificates were used elsewhere so long as they were used. But the store manager of the store that they were used at gets a minor hit to his or her weekly sales because his store never got paid for the item that was purchased.
Silly, I know, but I've seen it at more than one chain that I used to work for.
 
Originally posted by junior


One of those things that retail has taught me...
Store managers look good if their store sells lots of stuff. Store managers look really good if their store sells a gift certificate because they're basically getting money without moving product. Store manager looks REALLY good if those certificates go out, but don't come back to the store (i.e. something for nothing). Store manager breaks even if GC comes back to the store that purchased it. Store manager suffers somewhat if GC comes to his store that originated elsewhere.
It all has to do with the amount of money that the store makes. The Blockbuster corporation as a whole probably doesn't care that the certificates were used elsewhere so long as they were used. But the store manager of the store that they were used at gets a minor hit to his or her weekly sales because his store never got paid for the item that was purchased.
Silly, I know, but I've seen it at more than one chain that I used to work for.
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Are you serious? That's a dumb freakin way to run a company. In the company where I work store credits, gift certificates and the like are simple cash in, change out. Credits/certificates are treated as change. Yes, technically the money is in our corporate banks, but it is not added to an individual store's bottom line until a person buys something with it. So it doesn't really matter where someone buys a gift certificate. Where it is spent is where the money goes. Furthermore, this is more in line without how generally accepted accounting principles work for companies in the US. For auditing purposes, major companies must treat this sort of thing differently from sales. Something like a gift certificate can sit on the corporate balance sheet as an accounts payable liability or unearned revenue item. It'd be really dumb if Blockbuster treated gift certificates like you say.
 
No, but to stay in business as long as they have they'd have to have some accounting knowledge.
 
Originally posted by ChrisReid
No, but to stay in business as long as they have they'd have to have some accounting knowledge.
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The important thing to the corporate suits is the amount of cash flowing into the company. Gift Certificates are nice, but in and of themselves, they're valueless. If you've got a GC, and the chain its for goes out of business, then your GC isn't worth the paper its printed on.
The important part to the corporates generally seems to be the point that YOU spend the cash to buy the GC. Even if the GC isn't used for 20 years, the sale has effectively been made at the moment that the GC is sold. My experience has been that the accounting systems used by the chains to calculate store margins take that into effect.
While I realize that a Gift Certificate is properly accounted for as a liability (I've had a couple of college accounting classes), there's always the chance that it will never be redeemed. For example, if you have a paper GC, and it goes through the wash, then the company never has to redeem it. Most companies have also gotten into the habit of printing on their GCs that the certificates are void after one year from the purchase date. The chains I've worked in have generally ignored these one year provisions (I've redeemed quite a few GCs despite the fact that they'd technically 'expired'), without catching any flack from the district offices, but if you hold onto the thing for five years, I wouldn't expect to be able to redeem it.
 
this thread is starting to freak me out now... i couldn't even begin to imagine how much this thread has changed subject...
 
It's called topic drift, it occurs, get over it.

Everyone needs to keep their exclamations of "Wow, this thread sure has changed" to themselves. It doesn't add anything to the discussion, it's just stupid.

If you want to bump your post count, make real posts.
 
Originally posted by junior


The important thing to the corporate suits is the amount of cash flowing into the company. Gift Certificates are nice, but in and of themselves, they're valueless. If you've got a GC, and the chain its for goes out of business, then your GC isn't worth the paper its printed on.
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My friends are always giving me the GC's and I can't stand them. It's basically money that you can only use at one place.
 
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