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 BitWraith wrote:

Refusal to do business with a customer can be a hazy thing in America. There are several instances where it's not allowed (color of skin, religion, etc), and some instances where it is (sale of goods will damage business, what GW is postulating).

No, there are several ways it's not allowed and in literally all other ways it is.

You can refuse to do business with anyone at any time for any reason as long as it's not on a very short list of not allowed reasons. You don't even need a reason. You just have to not have a bad reason. There's not really anything to it. If GW wants to just refuse to deal with every 3rd person who asks, that is completely 100% legal.

It's not even remotely hazy.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Orktavius wrote:
Right.....GW hates independents despite their entire retail setup being designed around the idea of recruiting new hobbyists and shuffling em on down the road to independents to play games/pick up product.

They don’t want customers buying from the LGS. They want customers buying from them. From their perspective LGS’ are necessary but not wanted; something they have to deal with because in a land as huge as the US there’s no other way to get sufficient market penetration with their own stores alone.

You simply cannot be ignorant of the multiple stories of successful LGS’ and how they’re treated both before and after a GW store opens up nearby?

One of the small advantages of living in St. Louis. There are well over a dozen FLGS' here. GW stores wither on the vine here due to the INTENSE competition with the Fantasy Store (6 locations last I heard), Fantasy Games (more than one location), Game Nite, Miniature Market, Ogre Games, Wargamer's Cave, Star Clipper (at least two locations), and who knows how many others in the area.

People here generally buy where they play. And GW stores never have enough playing space to make it worthwhile - on top of generally being infested with mallrats (as opposed to gamers who are merely young).

 Valkyrie wrote:
So how are they going to enforce this insane new policy?

Retailers get special pricing. If they are found to violate these policies, they get less special pricing.

Realistically, this won't impact bitz places that buy via distributors, but I've heard it's harder to get limited-supply stuff if you order through a distributor as opposed to GW direct.

Of course, some companies are happy to place the most requested weapons and such up for individual order... (There's probably other companies I'm leaving out...)

 Balance wrote:
Of course, some companies are happy to place the most requested weapons and such up for individual order... (There's probably other companies I'm leaving out...)

GW is hiring a Bits Warehouse manager apparently, so you may be able to add a link to GW to that list...

 pretre wrote:

 Balance wrote:
Of course, some companies are happy to place the most requested weapons and such up for individual order... (There's probably other companies I'm leaving out...)

GW is hiring a Bits Warehouse manager apparently, so you may be able to add a link to GW to that list...

If this is a rumour you can add yourself to that list of yours (if your not already on it).

 Rented Tritium wrote:

 BitWraith wrote:

Refusal to do business with a customer can be a hazy thing in America. There are several instances where it's not allowed (color of skin, religion, etc), and some instances where it is (sale of goods will damage business, what GW is postulating).

No, there are several ways it's not allowed and in literally all other ways it is.

You can refuse to do business with anyone at any time for any reason as long as it's not on a very short list of not allowed reasons. You don't even need a reason. You just have to not have a bad reason. There's not really anything to it. If GW wants to just refuse to deal with every 3rd person who asks, that is completely 100% legal.

It's not even remotely hazy.

The Federal Civil Rights Act guarantees all people the right to "full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin."

In cases in which the patron is not a member of a federally protected class, the question generally turns on whether the business's refusal of service was arbitrary, or whether the business had a specific interest in refusing service. For example, in a recent case, a California court decided that a motorcycle club had no discrimination claim against a sports bar that had denied members admission to the bar because they refused to remove their "colors," or patches, which signified club membership. The court held that the refusal of service was not based on the club members' unconventional dress, but was to protect a legitimate business interest in preventing fights between rival club members.

On the other hand, a California court decided that a restaurant owner could not refuse to seat a gay couple in a semi-private booth where the restaurant policy was to only seat two people of opposite sexes in such booths. There was no legitimate business reason for the refusal of service, and so the discrimination was arbitrary and unlawful.

Of course it's freakin hazy, otherwise there wouldn't be mounds of court cases out there for rights to refuse service. It becomes hazy with GW because they're competing with their own retailers. They could end up in court if they push things too far. Why are you sniping at me anyway?

overtyrant wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 Balance wrote:
Of course, some companies are happy to place the most requested weapons and such up for individual order... (There's probably other companies I'm leaving out...)

GW is hiring a Bits Warehouse manager apparently, so you may be able to add a link to GW to that list...

If this is a rumour you can add yourself to that list of yours (if your not already on it).

It is a rumor and I did not generate it. It was sent to Faeit212.

 Rented Tritium wrote:

 BitWraith wrote:

Refusal to do business with a customer can be a hazy thing in America. There are several instances where it's not allowed (color of skin, religion, etc), and some instances where it is (sale of goods will damage business, what GW is postulating).

No, there are several ways it's not allowed and in literally all other ways it is.

You can refuse to do business with anyone at any time for any reason as long as it's not on a very short list of not allowed reasons. You don't even need a reason. You just have to not have a bad reason. There's not really anything to it. If GW wants to just refuse to deal with every 3rd person who asks, that is completely 100% legal.

It's not even remotely hazy.

It's just like a bouncer at a nightclub. He can tell you "not tonight" or say that "they are full", claim it's a private members night but he cannot give a reason that can fall into any discriminatory categories. GW can just say that they believed them to breach their trade agreements or that they weren't making enough money from the store to justify selling to them.

@Bitwraith what happened to the right to refuse a customer?

It still exists. It is just restricted by equality law. So long as GW isn't refusing to sell to a store because they are [insert minority here], then they are fine. Hell they can just refuse to renew the contract next year.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
I don'thow big the market on re-casters is, but i think that this is more a boon for those small companies that make non-GW parts.
If getting parts from GW is difficult there are enough other paths to take using "non-space marine" arms, heads, legs etcetera

Yep.

It's not like GW is running any tournaments anymore. Certainly no one OTHER than GW cares if you use non-GW parts when you play GW games.

 BitWraith wrote:

 Rented Tritium wrote:

 BitWraith wrote:

Refusal to do business with a customer can be a hazy thing in America. There are several instances where it's not allowed (color of skin, religion, etc), and some instances where it is (sale of goods will damage business, what GW is postulating).

No, there are several ways it's not allowed and in literally all other ways it is.

You can refuse to do business with anyone at any time for any reason as long as it's not on a very short list of not allowed reasons. You don't even need a reason. You just have to not have a bad reason. There's not really anything to it. If GW wants to just refuse to deal with every 3rd person who asks, that is completely 100% legal.

It's not even remotely hazy.

The Federal Civil Rights Act guarantees all people the right to "full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin."

In cases in which the patron is not a member of a federally protected class, the question generally turns on whether the business's refusal of service was arbitrary, or whether the business had a specific interest in refusing service. For example, in a recent case, a California court decided that a motorcycle club had no discrimination claim against a sports bar that had denied members admission to the bar because they refused to remove their "colors," or patches, which signified club membership. The court held that the refusal of service was not based on the club members' unconventional dress, but was to protect a legitimate business interest in preventing fights between rival club members.

On the other hand, a California court decided that a restaurant owner could not refuse to seat a gay couple in a semi-private booth where the restaurant policy was to only seat two people of opposite sexes in such booths. There was no legitimate business reason for the refusal of service, and so the discrimination was arbitrary and unlawful.

Of course it's freakin hazy, otherwise there wouldn't be mounds of court cases out there for rights to refuse service. It becomes hazy with GW because they're competing with their own retailers. They could end up in court if they push things too far. Why are you sniping at me anyway?

I'd have to agree with the "not hazy" veiw. A company does not have to do business with everyone. There are many companies I have applied to, and not gotten a wholesale account, and my stores have been around 25 years. Some companies only want to sell their products through certain markets, grant sales areas, non-compete clauses, and stipulate how/when/where you can sell their product. Either agree, or don't sell it.

GW isn't the first to do this. Many other game companies have terms of sales. And more and more these extend outwards from the Distribution chain. It is going to be much harder for someone to buy from a distributor now, if not abiding by GW's rules.

So, if I call Neal on my VOIP phone to place an order, could GW claim he's selling via the Internet and cut him off? ;-)

Valete,

JohnS

Well, it's like the BitzBarn guy said on another forum - unless they can tell where he got his bits they can't do squat to him. It's not like they serial number each piece.

 BitWraith wrote:
Well, it's like the BitzBarn guy said on another forum - unless they can tell where he got his bits they can't do squat to him. It's not like they serial number each piece.

Only true if he's not buying direct from them. And we've covered repeatedly that GW can't do anything to people not buying from them directly.

GW is hiring a Bits Warehouse manager apparently, so you may be able to add a link to GW to that list...

If this is true, it's amazing.

I can't help but wonder when we'll see the release of GW brand lubricant, as it seems that it's increasingly necessary in order to continue to bend over and sell or play their games.

pretre wrote:From Faeit212:

via the Faeit 212 inbox
GW to reenter the bits market?
So GW are advertising for a component parts warehouse manager, plus the ban on bits selling suggest GW may be planning to roll out the bits department again.

We had heard the rest, but a 'component parts warehouse manager'? That's new.

Am I the only one who keeps reading it as competent warehouse manager?

 BitWraith wrote:
Well, it's like the BitzBarn guy said on another forum - unless they can tell where he got his bits they can't do squat to him. It's not like they serial number each piece.

Exactly, no one would rat out there source and GW cant do bugger all other then show up and ask for sales transactions, which runs into several problems like 1) spending money to send someone to the store 2) missing employees that get sent to stores

Like I said, they're going to use this to make an example of one big store per year and that's it. It's too expensive to monitor this.

 jojo_monkey_boy wrote:

GW is hiring a Bits Warehouse manager apparently, so you may be able to add a link to GW to that list...

If this is true, it's amazing.

I can't help but wonder when we'll see the release of GW brand lubricant, as it seems that it's increasingly necessary in order to continue to bend over and sell or play their games.

Heck, I'd love to be able to buy a whole sprue of weapons from GW. I've bought a good bit of bits from third parties and they're not exactly cheap. Cheaper than buying a whole box of minis, but not what I'd consider inexpensive.

They could even make the whole sprue, cut it up themselves and undercut the bitz sellers. There's no reason for them to even resort to price fixing like this.

Price fixing? Who's saying there's price fixing?

Using the new plastic character mini moulds it would be very easy to do weapon and accessory bits sprues.

 pretre wrote:
Price fixing? Who's saying there's price fixing?

This policy shift is price fixing. They don't intend to stop online sales or bitz sales, they intend to make them more expensive by forcing them further down the supply chain.

This is being done specifically to reduce competition with their upcoming return of bitz sales.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
They could even make the whole sprue, cut it up themselves and undercut the bitz sellers. There's no reason for them to even resort to price fixing like this.

Unless you buy 50 bucks worth, they're going to charge you 10 bucks to ship for something they could easily mail with just a stamp.

It's a bit of a leap from 'hiring a new warehouse manager' to 'starting to sell bits again'... They store the various components for their models in a warehouse prior to boxing them up and shipping them out. That warehouse would be the 'component parts warehouse'...

They're not going back to selling bits.

 insaniak wrote:

They're not going back to selling bits.

I agree with insaniak on this. It might be a stretch to say selling sprues (bare rhino sprue, tactical squad upgrade sprue, etc), but that's highly doubtful.

stupidest thing GW ever did was stop selling bits...

All it did was force all us converters to spend money elsewhere,

ok maybe not supidest, but an epic fail boat in a sea of faliure to be sure

GW will never be able to ban bitz sellers, just like ford cant stop no name autobody shops from selling their car parts.

unless GW stops selling models entirely, or starts up selling bits again, it will always make peopel money to buy the sprues and then bit them out. as long as there is money to be made, then it will be made

Hey there everyone.

While a lot of people are pretty upset about GW prohibiting the sales of Bitz by enforcing that their products should be sold in the original packaging what really makes me worried is that its new trade terms prohibit USA and CANADA based retailers from selling online and selling for costumers based outside their countries.

Mind you I live in Brazil and buying online is the only viable option I have to get my models as we have no distributor or independent stockist down here. So with this new trade policies I have no way of purchasing miniatures other than through Ebay and GW online store itself.

The new trade policy is also pretty incisive in its definition of a "retailer" ( This new and improved Policy supersedes and replaces the old 2003 Policy and applies to all “Retailers” (defined in the new Policy to include both directly-supplied Trade Accounts and indirectly supplied retailers who purchase GAMES WORKSHOP products from Authorized Distributors) operating in the United States and Canada) so, unless the bits shops are purchasing their models at full prices in the end of the distribution chain they're bound to rethink their businesses.

 Gereth wrote:
Hey there everyone.

While a lot of people are pretty upset about GW prohibiting the sales of Bitz by enforcing that their products should be sold in the original packaging what really makes me worried is that its new trade terms prohibit USA and CANADA based retailers from selling online and selling for costumers based outside their countries.

As has been said multiple times this isn't new for the USA.
You can still buy from a US dealer, you just can't have a web cart to check out. Just like the past 10 years.

Hey RIgeld.

Well I have recently purchased from US based stores using web carts.

I know The Warstore had a different system in which you emailed them to get a quote and put in an order but even that avenue is now closed to me as, from June 15th onwards, any US and Canada based stores are effectivelly forbidden to sell abroad.

rigeld2 wrote:

 Gereth wrote:
Hey there everyone.

While a lot of people are pretty upset about GW prohibiting the sales of Bitz by enforcing that their products should be sold in the original packaging what really makes me worried is that its new trade terms prohibit USA and CANADA based retailers from selling online and selling for costumers based outside their countries.

As has been said multiple times this isn't new for the USA.
You can still buy from a US dealer, you just can't have a web cart to check out. Just like the past 10 years.

The cross borders thing is new. Since he lives in Brazil - he will have to purchase direct from GW as there are no in country dealers available and the EU/UK shops are prohibited from selling outside of the EU/UK.

Previously a lot of people in Asia, South America and Africa had been purchasing from US or Canadian stores because they got a pretty good discount and reasonable shipping rates (sometimes free shipping). Now, they will have to buy from GW US or GW UK or god help them GW AU.

It does a well and good job of stifling all competition in the various emerging markets where you often have expats living or people who are getting to the point where they have the disposable income to get into something like wargaming.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BitWraith wrote:
Well, it's like the BitzBarn guy said on another forum - unless they can tell where he got his bits they can't do squat to him. It's not like they serial number each piece.

They never could really do anything to the bits dealer...though they can go after the person who is selling them the bits. They wouldn't even need direct evidence - it isn't a legal case, they could just say we are sorry Neal...but we heard that you were selling to the BitzBarn so we are going to cut off your trade account with us.

Legal standards of evidence do not apply. If you read the contract, it uses the key word "unilateral". This word is used to skirt various vertical distribution and pricing statutes as it implies that the same rules will apply to all retail outlets and is not targeting anyone dealer due to race, gender, creed or location.

There still does remain a fair amount of haziness regarding several issues in the US, but most small shops have neither the time nor the money to file a complaint with the FTC or go through civil courts to have the contract adjucated. GW is well aware of this and will use the new contract as a hammer when they feel the need to.