Wii Bundles and Consumer Rights

[casualgamer]

I received my Wii from Wal-Mart Com and was ecstatic as I began to play.
However, there were several games in the bundle I never really wanted.
Wal-Mart has the same policy as Best Buy, Toys-R-US, Gamestop, EB GAMES,
Target, Amazon.com and every large retailer. The bundle can only be refunded as a bundle. No exchanges or refunds of individual items. This clearly violates
every one of these retailers store policy.

I filed an online complaint with the California Attorney Generals office. There is precedent for this. In November 2005, Best Buy was forced to offer refunds and exchanges for their $1000 XBox 360 Bundle. These stores can't afford bad publicity during their peak season. Since almost every WII owner had to buy a bundle, I suggest do a Google search and file an online complaint with your State Attorney General. If anyone has the time or initiative to go on G4 or CNET to talk about this issue, we should encourage them to do so. The Big Retailers can only push us around if let them.

Reggie said he's about kicking butt. I say Wii owners need to kick some retail butt!! Let's move from the complaining stage to the action stage. These people made a ton of money off of us, then treat us as if we have no rights.
FIGHT BACK!! If we can the attorney Generals of several states to file lawsuits and call press conferences we can succeed.

All of us are busy enjoying our new consoles and don't want to be bothered with this. Reply to this title and let everybody know what you're doing
doing. The Wii was supposed to be affordable, remember?

 

[csiguy4u]

If you didn't want the bundle you shouldn't have bought it. You could have easily waited until January when the stores will be flooded with Wiis. Return the whole dang thing and let someone who really wants their Wii have it now.

 

[casualgamer]

Wii Master, you are so wrong. Of course, I wanted the Wii. The Bundle is the problem. The dumb rednecks at Walmart put together a bundle that no one would want. I had no problems with the other stores. Your attitude is as bad as the stores. Every Wii owner was coerced into buying bundles. The number of consoles offered made it a sellers market.

I'm betting the state Attorney Generals will be on the consumers side. Best Buy found that out later. The Wii does not come with any games except Wii sports. Those bundles are created by dealers. I refuse to listen to anti-consumer people like yourself. I say FIGHT BACK!! Wii owners have
the same rights as any other consumer.

 

[savoirvivre]

Yea, the bundle idea is bad. If you don't want it, don't buy it. But the whole idea of some people waiting on line from 3am, store opening and then being shoved a bundle in your face is absurd. If they included one game, maybe it would go fine but they shove the most ridiculous games and some extra stuff in the fine print more than half the people don't need or want.

It would be nice if people would just not buy it. I mean boycott it. But its hard, some people just give in. companies have ethics books for this, it shouldn't be right.

 

[k20dc5]

not true about Toys rus, I bought my wii as a package with 3 games and protection plan, but returned all of the items except for the wii and one game that i wanted.

 

[dan99iel]

Cmon guys, lets do it! I LOVE LEGA LAW FIGHTING lol

 

[ftcmark]

I would consider buying a bundle with a couple games I didn't want, as long as I got the wii. It shouldn't make any difference to them though. You should be able to refund, good on ya for stickin it to the man.

 

[coolg35748]

Dude, did they hold a gun to your head and say BUY IT? No they didnt. I bought my wii without a bundle. Its your option to buy or not to buy.

 

[Xanthan]

problem is, these so called "bundles" aren't sanctioned by Nintendo. Stores can add whatever they want to a bundle, even 3rd party crap. It defies logic, I mean when you see a bundle you expect a package discount for buying multiple pieces at one time. But this isn't what stores are doing, in fact some smaller stores are actually tagging on hidden fees for absolutely nothing. This might be happening less now that more Wii are going out to the public. But it was definitely happening alot around the 1st release week.

Example I called a local game shop called "play and trade", asked if they had Wii's coming in tomorrow. They told me 2 systems and a demo system (not for sale). The he tells me but the Wii's we are getting tomorrow we are selling as bundles only. So I asked what does the bundle include, he was like "a couple games" A couple I asked? 2-3, already I'm like screw these people you can't tell me an exact package. So I ask him how much is the base console normally? He tells me $249, I say ok and 2-3 games, lets just say 3 games. What else does this "bundle" come with? He said thats it, I questioned that's it? No extra wiimotes, nunchuks etc? Nope. So then I asked him, whats your bundle cost, he said uhh like $450-$550.

Maybe my math isn't what it use to be, but that doesn't add up, and any bundle should have an exact price, not someone fishing to see what youre willing to pay. If you figure 250 + 50 x 3 = $400 Bundles are supposed to give you someone extra for free, or some saving off each individual product. These bundle sellers are screwing themselves, because I decided I wont buy any games from stores that were pulling this bundle crap.

 

[Wolvey]

It wasn't that bad over here (England) Forbidden Planet/Play was the only store making you buy games with it, f*** that...Game store, I love em! Buy what you want and preorder, they rang two days before to say I could pick it up on the release day. I ended up getting three games Monkey ball, Wii play and of course Zelda. Just don't like being told I have to so they lost my custom.

 

[vagrant]

1) Noone forced customers into buying the bundle, I haven't even heard of anyone buying it until you said so.

2) You're just pissed that you bought the bundle intending to take the games back and found out you couldn't. Well if you actually did the research, you would have found out that wasn't going to work. The bundle is considered 1 item, not several items. Hence the term "bundle."

3) You are claiming wal-mart was scheming you....when you intended yourself to be sneaky and just return all the games from the bundle you didn't want so you got a preordered wii?

I would consider buying a bundle with a couple games I didn't want, as long as I got the wii. It shouldn't make any difference to them though. You should be able to refund, good on ya for stickin it to the man.

You don't find that a bit dickheadish to the people who actually wanted the bundle? It's bad enough familys are snatching up multiple wii's to resell.

Yea, the bundle idea is bad. If you don't want it, don't buy it. But the whole idea of some people waiting on line from 3am, store opening and then being shoved a bundle in your face is absurd.

FYI, the bundle was purchased online, as he stated in his OP. "COM" meaning wal-mart.com. So noone was waiting in line and had the bundle forced on them.

Since almost every WII owner had to buy a bundle, I suggest do a Google search and file an online complaint with your State Attorney General. ?

Almost every wii owner? You do realize they hardly had any wii bundles for sale at all right? And you filed a complaint? Ya good luck with that considering Wal-Mart actually has it in there policy stated that anything bought as a bundle can only be returned as such.

 

[BrandonMcAuslan]

The bundle deal is a lot of bullsh*t. It's not too big a prob in the UK/Scotland. I think game were making you buy it for £220 with Zelda. But I'm not 100% sure about how the US legal system works... I'm on my last year of my LLB here in Scotland (we have our own legal system). And to cut a long story short you can return any item undamaged any reason within 14 days - Sale of goods act blah blah.

BUT...

Often going through the motions to do this is not worth the cost. Basically the manager of your local store will know less about consumer rights than most customers - but will be brainwashed to the extent that he/she believes company policy IS law.

 

[vagrant]

You can return items to wal-mart perfectly fine. The only thing is, this is a BUNDLE purchased ONLINE. They aren't going to want you taking parts of the bundle and returning them. So in this case the "ITEM" is the bundle itself. Not the individual games that came with the bundle.

What if they had a bundle that was like $50 cheaper together than it would be with everything seperate? You could just buy it, and return the items seperately and make profit. Doesn't that seem a tad tarded?

 

[Kryptenx]

What you speak of here is ethics. Is it ethical for Walmart to sell you the bundle? No. Is it ridiculous to only offer a bundle full of crap-tastic games? Yes.

But is it legal? Yes.

The only way anyone is getting refunded is if the store handed them a ticket showing the Wii at $249.99 and then was forced to buy a bundle.

You knew exactly what you were buying, and you shouldn't get a refund for it. You could've waited for a Wii to show up in another store. From a business perspective, Walmart is just milking their Wii stock to actually turn a profit. Shady, I agree, but legal.

 

[vagrant]

What you speak of here is ethics. Is it ethical for Walmart to sell you the bundle? No. Is it ridiculous to only offer a bundle full of crap-tastic games? Yes.

But is it legal? Yes.

The only way anyone is getting refunded is if the store handed them a ticket showing the Wii at $249.99 and then was forced to buy a bundle.

You knew exactly what you were buying, and you shouldn't get a refund for it. You could've waited for a Wii to show up in another store. From a business perspective, Walmart is just milking their Wii stock to actually turn a profit. Shady, I agree, but legal.

Once again, he bought the bundle online, not in store.

And how is it not ethical for wal-mart to sell bundles? Target, EbGames, Bestbuy, Amazon also sold/sell bundles. And as he said, they all have this same policy. It is common sense really.