what you are saying is that I should not expect to be able to order online and pick up in store and be guaranteed the same level of service.
I think that is another way of seeing a special where it's in-store while supplies last.
Also I think I see where we disagree. You seem to view the special deal as triggering off a purchase of a video card so long as the video card is in stock and picked up in-person instead of being delivered by mail, where you would be guaranteed to get the coupon as though it were included inside the box. In otherwords, you seem to apply the "limited stock" disclaimer only to the video card, and that you only have to worry whether or not the video card is in stock.
However, I don't see the special that way. It seems to me that the special is like a free prize givaway with every purchase of a video card. To me, when they say "limited stock", they mean there is a limited stock of free prizes to be given away - and the number of prizes is far less than the number of video cards. So whether you get a video card or not isn't the determining factor; you need to verify in-person at the store whether there are still prizes to be given away when you purchase the video card, and purchasing a video card does not guarantee a prize unless the prizes are in-stock at the store.
You are over-complicating a simple situation. There is no conflict. Whoever buys the card first gets the coupon. What could be simpler?
As mentioned above, I could see how we'd disagree on this based on how we see the product purchased and how it triggers the coupon. So I think it's more than simply buying a video card before someone else. It also involves the prize giveaway aspect, where there are not enough prizes to cover all purchases, and you need to be there in person to find out if there are any prizes left. So whoever buys the card first gets the coupon *IF* you are at the store to verify in-person that there are coupons left.
If you want to push it, it could be whoever gets to the store first gets it.
I think it's more of, you have to get one of the prizes before everyone else exhausts all the prizes, and each video card purchased qualifies for a prize if there are prizes left to give away at that point.
But the *point* is that if I knew there were *zero* coupons left I may have made a different selection, or ordered from a different vendor.
I still maintain that there will be problems with notifying people in a way that works, and you'd still be in the same situation even if they had a running count. The only way I see of preventing this problem is if the running count was able to predict your future, such that when it showed a certain number remaining, it would also say "I now predict that it's impossible for you to get one of the prizes, so please do not purchase a video card at this point forward." Even if you had the running counter on your phone, it could still show you 5 prizes remained right before you checked out, and then they sell 6 video cards right before the checkout lady runs your card at the register so you thought you were entitled to that prize but it goes to someone else.
Also, can you see how this would be exacerbated if you allowed other people on the internet to order a video card and snap up the remaining coupons/prizes before you? What if there are 1000 prizes to give away, and 1000 people all order simultaneously one microsecond before you check out? i think that's what you are saying you should have been entitled to do, snap up a prize from the guy who was waiting in line at the store before you, when you are sitting comfortably in your pajamas at your computer with a hot cocoa.
Or maybe you can come up with a scenario where you can properly notify the public about remaining stock in a way that guarantees they'll get a prize?
You seem to think it's Microcenter's "right" to purposefully trick me into thinking I might get something when there is absolutely no chance at all.
No, I think it's pretty messed up this happened, because it's misleading. But I think there have been lots of lawsuits over the years to help guide the law, and the law usually takes a compromise position considering the interests of the public, the businesses, and the consumers etc. So they require disclaimers etc., and they recognize that there are practical limits to be able to keep track of stock etc.
i know I've gone to a store and asked if an item was in stock, the salesman said yeah the computer says we have 12, but nowhere in the store. So that's another issue, perhaps keeping a running tally of remaining prizes would get out of sync and then people would be upset because they were told a prize was available when it was really a stock number error (that we see all the time). There's more at risk to anger the customer when you mess up the count on a prize the customer is supposedly entitled to, vs. messing up the count on something a customer wants to buy (where he won't feel like he lost something he is entitled to because he just won't have the opportunity to buy it).
That is a very strange position to take. Especially considering you are calling shifting product between stores (an extremely common activity) "cheating." I call that "customer service."
I wasn't clear there, I meant that the store could cheat you out of your prize. If you are there at the store, seeing that the store has 100 prizes to give away, and you go over and buy a video card, the store could cheat you out of your prize by saying "sorry, we already need to transfer these 100 prizes to another store, they are already taken". Then, after you leave, they present the prizes to other people in the store to get them to buy video cards, and just keep doing that. then they could sell 100 video cards to people online, and give the prizes to them. Or they could then transfer to another store, etc. The cheating is the store being able to manipulate the availability of prizes, instead of being set with a specific inventory of prizes that they must give away to people who go down to that store.
These are not franchise operations where shifting stock between locations creates a loss. The point is to deliver product to sell. If you can sell it at another location, you should do that. In this case the "product" is the video card combined with the coupon.
Again, I think we disagree. I don't see the coupon as part of the video card as one total stock item that can be shifted around before being sold. Instead, I see the coupon as a prize or "loss leader" type of item that is not tied to the video card, and is a separate limited-availability thing to incentivize customers to walk in the store and purchase from an infinite supply of video cards.
So you need to worry about the limited supply of coupons/prizes that can only be verified in-store, because buying a video card is not a guarantee.
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