Games Workshop Store: Naperville, IL

[x19]

Hey All,

 

I felt I needed to relay a horrible experience that a couple of my buddies had in one of the local Games Workshop stores. I've never been a fan of that shop and tend to travel to the Chicago Bunker which is only a little farther for me, but this really takes the cake.

 

First some background:

 

My one friend has about 5500 pts of Sisters of Battle, and a nice amount of Battlefleet Gothic. My other friend has 4,000 pts of Slaanesh, Nurgle, and Iron something or another chaos (no overlap, so about 12,000 pts), 4,000 pts of Necrons, 6,000 pts of Orks, and 4,000 pts of Daemons. All of his armies are heavily customized, and has a lot of forge world. He also has large fleets of Orks, Necrons and Chaos for BFG. We've really only been heavy in the hobby for about 2 years, so the point is my group spend a LOT of money with GW and have spent a LOT of money at that particular store.

 

Anyway, these two guys were in the Naperville Games Workshop store on a Saturday to play a moderate sized Battlefleet Gothic game of Imperial Navy vs Necrons. It was a really cold Chicago Saturday so the store wasn't very busy, with only about half of the tables in use. The guys found an empty table, started their game and about 30 minutes into it the store manager (black shirt) told them they weren't allowed to play specialist games on the weekend, but were only allowed to play them on Thursdays. Thinking it was a joke my friends laughed and made some cracks about the store being empty (seriously these are the two politest guys I know, I know they didn't give any sass.) The manager insisted, got very rude and told them that unless they were going to play 40k, Fantasy, or LOTR they had to leave the store immediately. My friends tried to reason with the manager, offering to clean up if a player playing an acceptable game needed that table space but he insisted they leave the store immediately and so they did.

 

My gaming group spends way too much money on GW stuff, we're not the teenagers who buy a box every couple of months (no offense teenagers, you are the backbone of the hobby), we're adults, some of us with families, all of us with good paying jobs and spend hundreds of dollars of plastic, pewter, and Forge World nearly every month. These stores are there to support the hobby, to support GW Games, and it is completely unacceptable that they were thrown out because they were playing a specialist game instead of one of the big three.

 

Letters have been written to store managers, the US HQ in Boston, and the Global HQ in England. But I felt it was important to share this with the community as well.

 

Eric

[paulson games]

Wow, that kinda floors me that they'd be so rude. I understand that they want to keep table space open for the main games on the weekend but if the place is half dead they really should drop that rule when judgement calls. Unfortunately the hobby and as a result the Store staff tend to be people with serious OCD type personalities that are huge sticklers on "rules" and hammer them down mercilessly. The rules GW hands down are guidlines to help boosts sales and make business runs smoothly, the unfortunate side is that many of the employees are decent guys but they think too inside the box and are overly strict on enforcing rules when they should let it drop, or at least approach the situation with some judgement.

 

The rules are good guidlines but not always what's best for growing the business, I know a lot of people who literally spend thousands on these games that have gotten honked off by some kid or new manager who's blindly following corp rules like they are the word of god himself, rather than taking 2 second to think about how to be polite and tactile towards the customers and negotiate a situation that makes everyone happy.

 

I've run into far fewer issues at the bunker, it's usually only the new employees that are overzealous as they don't know any better yet. I miss Alan he was a really good manager who also had a lot of experience in real world sales and customer service, he knew how to run the place well and that even the most well thought out rules still need to be adapted around your customer base, not enforced blindly. Even if he wouldn't bend from a rule he'd at least approach it with a lot of tact and grace so it wouldn't feel as draconian.

 

Anyways there's a BFG league going on wed and saturdays at the bunker, so skip naperville :P I just started learning BFG and as soon as I have some minis I'll be there on wed afternoons. Plus they should be opening up the expanded store this weekend so that gives an extra 18 tables worth of space, so even specialist games should be able to be played on the busy days.

Edited February 8, 2009 by paulson games

[Sgt Waffle]

My friends also go to the Chicago bunker in stead of the Naperville stores. The employees are better, it's a bigger store, and they help us pick out that one box every few months. I went to the Naperville store to buy a Vidicator and the guy tried to sell me the Line Breaker Squdron, my friend wanted to buy 2 Spawn for Gift of Chaos and they tried to sell him Tide of Spawn. Both of those kits were more points then our entire armies!

[paulson games]

I really dislike the high pressure sell, and feigned interest for the sake of a sale. I know they are under a lot of pressure to sell, but you can do it a lot smoother than what they do at times. It's usually because somebody is new and doesn't know how to read the customer to gauge their sale. It drives me nuts when I go in for a specific model and nothing else yet the staff repeatedly tries to up that with suggestions that are nowhere near relevant.

 

I swear sometimes they consinder training their people to say hi welcome to GW what new army do you want to buy today... instead of finding out what you're actually there for :(

 

Unfortunately it gets on my bad side enough that I probably come off as totally rude just so they can leave me alone to look, but I have noticed that since I started hanging out at the bunker reguarly most of the employees are strarting to know me well enough that they know I have entirely too much stuff and if I'm there for something there's no extra push they can give to up the sale as I already have literally everything I need for my army (10k+ points worth). The bunker isn't quite as bad as some of the other GW stores I've visited in the area, but there's been the occasional times when I wanted to strangle their staff.

 

The strong sales pitches actually kept me from going to their stores for quite a while and I did most of my shopping online so I wouldn't have to listen to their banter, plus I got a discount buying online that you don't get in the GW stores, buy stuff I want cheaper and without the pitch, hmm.... pure win. The difficulty with being good at sales is that it takes a while to learn how to interact with the customer, and lots of gamers made employees aren't all that hot at it. They can definately learn but it takes practice and an ability to be social and talk with people on a less informal level which can't be taught by reaidng the employee manual or handbook.

[popfenton]

I'm really happy I live down in Springfield and that we have a locally owned store, I have never enjoyed any trip into a GW store. Its really just a bunch of friends playing and you get a much better community out of it I think. Quite a few of us help with terrain or do whatever is needed, our 40k tournament turn outs are generally around 20. But my favorite part is that I don't have some guy I don't even want within ten feet of me trying to sell me something I don't even remotely want.

[Heru]

Letters have been written to store managers, the US HQ in Boston, and the Global HQ in England. But I felt it was important to share this with the community as well.

 

Eric

That's the best thing you could do in the situation (though you could back it up with a phone call maybe).