Wal Mart Ripping Off Its Core Shoppers (Passion bulk packs)

[Atman]

The Religious Righties will have the opportunity to purchase "church packs" of the film "PASSION OF THE CHRIST" when it goes on sale tomorrow. The 50-disk or tape bundles are expected to sell to congregations for distribution to their flocks...but at $895 per bundle, this works out to almost $18 a disk, even when purchased in bulk! At that qty, those disks should be no more than $8-9 each. Off course, Wal Mart knows the Wal Martyrs will gladly fork over their hard-earned Jesus Bucks for a copy instead of waiting to check out the used bin at Blockbuster in a few weeks. What shameless corporate bastards...pay them $7/hr, then make them work almost three hours to be able to pay for just one crummy disk of The Passion.

[DrWeird]

1. "Wal Martyrs"

Beautiful.

[LittleApple81]

6. WalMartyrs, ChurchMart: the Christian coalition!!!!!

[TahitiNut]

29. "Wal Martyrs" -- An EXCELLENT meme! I'm using it from now on!

:thumbsup:

[Justice]

2. You Are Right - Here is The Proof!

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search-ng.gsp?dept=4096&search_query=passion&search_redirect=true&search_constraint=4096%253A41938&CATEGORY_ID=41938&cat=41938


List price: $29.98
Our Price: $17.96
You Save: $12.02 (40%)

[Fear]

3. I didn't think the movie was THAT great either....personal opinion here

not worth my 18 dollars / actually not worth my 3 whatever renting it

[kcwayne]

4. Well the good news is that the more Jesus bucks that are used to purchase

the movie, the less there are to give to the GOP. Seems like a fair enough trade to me.

[Wapsie B]

28. The gop will still get their cut.

The Waltons are big contributors to the party of geeeeeeeeeezus.

[MissRegina]

5. No Special-Features Either

I read that before the Christmas or Easter season, Mr. Gibson is going to release another DVD of The Passion with special features, commentaries, and such. Folks who buy this first DVD won't get anything but the movie! If I'm going to pay $18+ for a DVD, I want a little more than just the movie itself. Call me selfish.

[merh]

20. I read the book

and knew the outcome and IMHO the movie doesn't capture the message of the book.

[Tina H]

7. somehow I doubt we would see all these complaints . . .

about pricing and distribution if weren't talking about a controversial movie like The Passion. I think the real beef of some posters here is with the movie itself, rather than with Walmart's (or whatever retailer's) pricing on bulk sales. If the bulk sales involved,say, "Dude, where's My Car?" I doubt there would have even been one thread about it on DU.

Disclaimer: I think Walmart sux and shop there as infrequently as is feasible. I haven't seen the Passion and have no immediate plans to see it and no opinion about the movie itself.

[truthseeker1]

8. How many movies do you know of that are being sold in bulk "Church Paks?"

How many movies are being sold in bulk at all? I've never heard of it. And this one is, yes, controversial. And it's being blatantly marketed to the fundies. So, yes, it's a topic of conversation. The additional point being made - that the very people being targeted by the marketers are in actuality being ripped off - is just an added irony.

[Tina H]

9. Yes, you are correct

I see now. We should make a law against selling dvd's in bulk becuase it has never been done before, so we just don't know the risks.

Also, another good law to make: law against selling religious objects to religious groups. After all, merchants sell things at the pleasure of the government (that is inherent in the Interstate Commerce Clause). Separation of Church and state should therefore dictate that no type of religious object should be sold. Maybe we have to share retail stores with fundies, but we should not be forced to look at their crap when we go to a secular store, like a WalMart or a Sam's. This would be a good platform plank for Candidate Kerry.

(sarcasm off)



side note, added on edit:
I think that Walmart and Sam's Club are a perversion of capitalism and should be restrained by the government, because these companies are too big and have too much market power. However, I do not wish to impose special, governmental wage or price (or inventory!) controls on these retail stores. Instead, I think an antitrust action should be brought, and WalMart should be broken into 500 or 1000 independently operated, "baby Walmart" chains. If this happened, I imagine that some baby Walmarts would carry the Churchpaks and others would not. Now that would be *functional* capitalism!

[Blue Wally]

12. That Same Reasoning Could Apply To.....

"Walmart and Sam's Club are a perversion of capitalism and should be restrained by the government, because these companies are too big and have too much market power. However, I do not wish to impose special, governmental wage or price (or inventory!) controls on these retail stores. Instead, I think an antitrust action should be brought, and WalMart should be broken into 500 or 1000 independently operated, "baby Walmart" chains. If this happened, I imagine that some baby Walmarts would carry the Churchpaks and others would not. Now that would be *functional* capitalism!"


Just about any of the many, many national chains of "big box" and "category killer" stores that have developed overthe last fifty years.

Walmart, K-Mart, Target, Office Depot, Staples, Home Depot, Lowes, Toys-R-Us, Guitar World, Petsmart, Sam's Club, BJ Wholesale, Costco.

The same with national grocery chains, national drug chains, and national department store chains.

Is Walmart a greater threat to liberty than K-Mart or Target? Is it just because Walmart has been more successful than the others?

[Tina H]

13. Good point

there will be many suits for Kerry's department of justice to bring. Looking forward to the tax relief that will come from the monetary damages and the new business climate. Bill Clinton may have fallen down on this stuff for the most part (and don't get me started on *), but I have faith the President Kerry will succeed where his predessors have failed.

To answer your question, yes, Walmart is a bigger perversion of capitalism than Kmart and Target because it is the biggest. They should pay the highest fines (and repay the biggest portion of the deficit!) and be broken into the mostest pieces. But all chains the reply mentions need to pitch in with fines proportionate to their respective market perversions.

At some point a retail chain would be small enough that it should not really attract antitrust scrutiny, IMO. Your reply didn't happen to mention any of these smaller chains, though.

[Blue Wally]

14. Normally

Fines are not exacted in antitrust suits unless someone can show damages. If an antitrust suit shows that an entity has become so big that it is in "restraint of trade" by virtue of its bigness, the judicial remedy is usually breaking the entity into component parts (Standard Oil, AT&T) not punitive damages.

I would submit that the Union Pacific Railroad is far more dominant than Walmart.

[Tina H]

15. There is no reason that both injunctive relief . . .

and monetary damages can't be awarded. Courts haven't always done this in the past for the same reason that antitrust law has been neglected in general -- specifically, big money interests run the political apparatus. Candidate Kerry can, should (and will) change this trend as president. I know this because he has shown himself to be a person of exceptional integrity who cannot be bought.

Also, there is no reason Kerry's DoJ can't go after both Union Pacific and Walmart. the (new-style) money damages from the Walmart suit will pay for the Union pacific Suit, the Target suit, the Kmart suit and more!

Final thought: There may be a good reason not to bring antitrust suit against Union Pacific in that they may have a sort of natural monopoly position due to the scarcity of train tracks and our unwillingness (for good reasons) to build more. Of course, if Union Pacific is indeed a natural monopoly, they ought to be regulated as a common carrier (the way FDR used to regulate'em -- not the way post-Reagan gov't's regulate'em).

[Blue Wally]

17. Railroad Regulation

"Of course, if Union Pacific is indeed a natural monopoly, they ought to be regulated as a common carrier (the way FDR used to regulate'em -- not the way post-Reagan gov't's regulate'em)."

Just about killed the railroads. It was only the Staggers Act which allowed the railroads to set their own prices that saved them. Right now, the main trunk railroads are reasonably healthy though there are a lot fewer of them than there were thirty years ago. BNSF, UP, NS, CSX, and CN pretty much do 95% of the railroad buisness in the US.

To return to the previous question, "who has been damaged by Walmart that can claim compensation from them"? K-Mart has been badly damaged by Walmart and Target, but K-mart was a huge nationwide enterprize when Walmart and Target only had a handful of stores.

"Al and Joes Variety Store" in East Podunk probably went out of business when the local Walmart opened, but Al and Joe had the same junk at higher prices and weren't paying their help any more than Walmart does. A lot more people in East Podunk are better off with Walmart than Al and Joe and the only losers in East Podunk are Al and Joe. We would be complaining about all of the Al and Joe stores around the country is they had been better businessmen than Sam Walton.

[Tina H]

18. I enjoyed shopping at Al and Joe's

even though the prices were higher, the goods were not made by slave labor and the employees were treated a lot better than Walmart treats its employees.

Low prices are cool, but they are not my only important value.

[Blue Wally]

25. Not really

I worked for a small town Mom and Pop store while I was in high school. They wanted to pay less than minimum wage and to pay "off the books". Unfortuantely, those were the only summer jobs available to high school students under 16 who couldn't get Michigan "work permits". I never got a social security card till I was 19.

[jmowreader]

21. Tina, mellow out!

When one buys an unbroken case of product, like a "Church Pak" of The Passion, one expects it to be sold at a discount because there's no difficult labor involved at the store level.

Okay, so it takes thirty seconds to cut the tape holding the box closed, turn it over and dump the DVDs into a bin. But it's the principle of the thing.

[LTR]

10. Good point

Especially when one can go to Best Buy and Amazon.com and buy it upon release for $15 or so (often, new releases are on sale the first week of release). They do limit quantities, though.

But I'm sure they could probably deal directly with the film's distributor and skip the middle man.

Sam's Club is a lousy place to buy DVDs. No cheaper than anywhere else, and occasionally more expensive. I beleive there's no choice. Seems to be a lot of price protection in 'software media' (films, music, etc.). They would likely be limited anyway, as far as how low they could go.

[MadHound]

11. Hey, a fool is born every minute

If there are people who wish to purchase this DVD in this manner, more power to them. It simply means that there will be less money for the right wing Christian fundies to donate to various religious PACs. Thus the fleecing of these people by WalMart will be less damaging to our society than if that extra money went to people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc.

[TexasBushwhacker]

16. In Wal-Marts defense .....

we have NO idea what their cost is from the distributor. Unless you expect to them to sell the "church packs" at a loss, their cost would have to be less than $5 each to sell them for $8 to $9 a disc and my guess is that it's much higher. Remember, Mel, Mr. "Buy your Passion Nail Pendants Right Here" Gibson isn't cutting ANYONE a bargain. My guess is that the church packs are an exclusive sales gimmic for Wal-Mart. They aren't priced better, they're just "packaged", but it doesn't look like Wal-Mart is selling them at cost either.

[Atman]

19. $5 wholesale not unreasonable

"Unless you expect to them to sell the "church packs" at a loss, their cost would have to be less than $5 each to sell them for $8 to $9 a disc and my guess is that it's much higher."

----

In the multi-million unit quantities Wal Mart is buying them, I don't see $5/disk as that unreasonable. Remember, they negotiate this stuff in advance of manufacture...the distributor knew it had a multi-million unit order for it's first run, it could easily have factored that in to the retail price, as there was less risk that they would not sell enough. It's simple wholesaling/retailing. Also, by bulk packaging, they SHOULD be reducing the overall cost. That is the entire principle behind the concept. But they're not. They know every church in America will dip into its playground fund or have a bake sale to raise money for them, or actually re-sell them at the full $29 "suggested retail" as fund raisers in their own right. Can you imagine paying $29 for a non-special disk? No double disk, special features, no nothing...for $29? That "suggested retail" is only to give the church lady enough room to mark it up like crazy to further bilk the congregation...if Father O'Feely doesn't buy it anyway out of church funds.

It is a cynical marketing ploy, imo. Of course, from what I understand, cynics play a large part in the Jesus story anyway, so maybe it's fitting.

[ArkDem]

22. I would say you have no information on the pricing for this

movie (one of the biggest sellers ever). Hard to make a judgement when you have NO IDEA of the cost, isn't it?

[Atman]

24. I would say I have a very good idea of wholesale vs retail

Your response indicates that you are missing a fundamental part of this deal...the "biggest ever" does not mean it should cost more. In fact, just the opposite. Remember, the movie is done. No more production costs there. The only costs now are distribution and packaging, maybe some advertising. So, with a massive advance order from Wal Mart, it should stand to reason the cost per disk should be lower than average, especially given the bulk nature of the purchase. 50 at a time of ANYTHING should warrant a substantial price break, unless you're talking nails or noodles.

[ArkDem]

26. Your knowledge is showing

[jokerman93]

23. Good!

Mel must be laughing all the way to the bank with these Fundie Jeezuz-creep puppets scarfing his movie down like ghetto crack...

I hope they go broke buying spin-off merchandise too.

[Th1onein]

27. Jesus bucks! Ha!

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