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Do the stores that disallow Forgeworld products also disallow discontinued GW miniatures?
Because if I bring in my 1990s Imperial Guard army, all but 60pts of that can not be bought from them any more.

Noir wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Do the stores that disallow Forgeworld products also disallow discontinued GW miniatures?
Because if I bring in my 1990s Imperial Guard army, all but 60pts of that can not be bought from them any more.

Why would it not be allowed, the whole point of the ban is to sell 40k over 30k by showing 40k played not 30k.

Because the point raised repeatedly in this topic was that there's a downside to customers witnessing people using or painting products that cannot be obtained in the store.
30K vs 40K is much less of a pertinent issue when plastics are incoming.

This really isn't something anyone deserves to lose their job over, especially as single-man-store GW managers are up against it to keep theirs to begin with. Let's not get too pitchforks and torches here.

And yes, jonolikespie hit what I'm getting at, there.

Although I would argue it's less about the personal ego of who made the sale, and more that like eating a banana in a florist, if a customer asks what's going on, it's difficult to steer that into a sale.
Arguably something you bought in store two weeks ago is no longer making him or her an active profit, but it can be redirected into one.

Talys wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Because the point raised repeatedly in this topic was that there's a downside to customers witnessing people using or painting products that cannot be obtained in the store.
30K vs 40K is much less of a pertinent issue when plastics are incoming.

Even less of an issue of FW products can be ordered to/through GW stores.

They cannot here. You cannot use the FW website on their computers, either. It is blocked.
(As is my experience in August, through from 2014, I could be out of date if it's been rectified in September).

JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
This really isn't something anyone deserves to lose their job over,

The hell it isn't. The store exists to support the Customers who actually bought product. If the manager isn't doing that, absolutely, he should lose his job.

It absolutely is not. He is not endangering, insulting, cheating or otherwise causing harm to a customer. He is not taking money or time from them under false pretences, he is not damaging their possessions or impinging their actual rights.
It deserves an honest looking into by higher ups and correcting if it's not company policy.
To render someone unemployed is needlessly bloodthirsty over a strange and easily clarified decision.

Noir wrote:

 Bookwrack wrote:

Noir wrote:
No I'm pretty sure the point is the manager only wanting games played in the store, where if some would like to play that game. They don't have to go some where else to get them. Some may try to twist it but that is the point.

Playing 40k with old models still sells 40k.

So does playing 30K, given the number of 40K models I see people use in it.

If the OP is correct then not at the store we are talking about.

Nowhere in the OP does it say that players are not using 40K figures.
It merely says "some" are exclusively playing 30K. A second interpretation of phrasing is that "some" are exclusively using FW.

It is entirely possibly and often financially requisite for the average player to include 40K models in a 30K army. Especially as some units I am told, do not yet have a FW release.
You may stand by your post, but it is an assumption.

I'm merely saying we don't know for certain that folk were fielding a suitcase full of resin without a single current GW product.

Vermis, from what I'm peripherally aware of, and having seen our local manager blasted out of the airlock despite his increase in sales over the previous one, there is an intensely competitive push for sales in each shop, that reportedly does not take prisoners.
There is little interest in gradual audience building, only direct results, according to him as he was let go. Of course an individual does not necessarily represent anything but a single case.
Yea, the "bums on seats = sales" ideal doesn't fly, our store was never empty, and it did not save him.

However I don't feel that's solely what is at play here, so to speak. Without asking the individual at Bottle's store, there's no guarantee as to why this decision was made.


I agree with querying this idea that the player in any way can make demands of the play space.
The store does not sell FW items. It doesn't sell Early Learning Centre plastic trucks either. If they do not support either of these items in store, the only difference is that one fits thematically with the creations of the parent company.
Here's the thing: GW don't owe us a game of any kind in the building.
It's not a cinema, buying our toys there doesn't guarantee you anything else.
They owe us courteous service, a healthy environment if we are purchasing their goods, to follow trade laws and respect our consumer rights.

If the staff are not handling your money or your property, that is where their actual obligation ends.
The moment you sit on one of their plastic stools or put your figures down, we're in their playground, quite literally.

 Bottle wrote:
The manager is experienced from a number of previous stores, and seems like an alright guy. Maybe just stuck inbetween the rock and a hard place GW have created with crazy targets and no FW delivers in store.

Not naming and shaming my local one-man-store either, but the manager there had pulled something like a 20 or 25% sales increase on the previous guy in well under a year, and was still let go due to not hitting sales targets. Everyone was astounded. Considering we got a new manager every rotation, I can only speculate that those targets are not vastly adjusted to accommodate such things.

If this is true, then the pressures must be very hard on them.

I've always fancied working for GW, but I wouldn't view it as a long term career move due to how high the goalposts seemingly are.

Put your pitchfork away, Bottle has already said there'll be no naming and shaming of an otherwise amenable person.

This is not a transgression against someone actually purchasing from the store, and if it's hurting GW's bottom line, it'll come up in his performance review.

Wishing someone to lose their job in a recession over an online interpretation of a situation that we do not know both sides of is mildly ridiculous at best, and unpleasant at worst.

We are speaking as though Bottle's gaming group could somehow wipe out the economy of a store by leaving.

Say you have an active gaming group or two at a GW store, you're talking low thirties to maybe fifty people max, unless it's in a major UK city. My old local peaked at mid twenties for AoS evening events this summer.
Even if every single one of those people literally take their toys home and leaves, I cannot believe that it is going to kill a store. In the long term, that many people will likely drop out of the hobby locally across the year anyway. And to damage the store noticeably you'd have to assume that they were solely bankrolling it to begin with.

Where are these hypothetical new customers who will only buy 40k come from? Out of thin air?

Off the top of my head, Christmas, birthdays, parents, mothers and fathers in law, school leaving presents, folk like me who put online orders in using the store till to pay them a little homage... Folks who're working but like to drop in and pick items up. I'm sure that JamesY could tell us a little about the average demographic if he has time or inclination to revisit that thought-space.

Another threat to GW is damage to their image and reputation if people complain and it's misconstrued as that manager not holding up their ideals of treating customers fairly or warmly in store.
I have once put in a legitimate written complaint about staff (repeated damage to items entrusted to a manager), and it was taken very seriously. I would hesitate to invoke that upon anyone without good reason.

Just to muddy the waters further, you can currently return BL books and unopened FW kits to GW stores for store credit.

I accidentally ended up with two copies of a very pricy anthology (2nd was a present from a well meaning parent) and thought I'd have to truck it back to HQ. Nope. Local manager explained they can take in those products there.

...

I got nothing.

Hobbit and main line resins are not counted as FW items. They are "high quality resin miniatures" AKA Finecast with the name shed from the product.

Being sarcastic to the teacher is not going to get you what you want at playtime.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:


Being sarcastic to the teacher is not going to get you what you want at playtime.

Which was exactly my point, if it wasn't obvious from the CBG pic.

There often does seem to be an unfortunate division in understanding of witty versus acceptable (or fruitful) behaviour. Making a lot of noise to exorcise frustration in private is very different to doing it to someone's face. Especially a captive audience such as store employees.

Don't know if it's the gaming community at large or just young adults of the moment, but I've quite often had people say things to me that would possibly be hilariously snappy when written in their blog, but were actually just painfully uncomfortable or hurtful in person.