Friday, July 20, 2007

Main Bookstore Chains Boycotting Harry Potter

This morning, the Morning Crew on Hitz.FM announced that Carrefour is selling Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at RM69 tomorrow, the first day of the release of the book.

Considering Times, MPH and Borders are retailing the book at RM109.90 with a percentage of discount depending on the chain of store and whether u r a member, that’s still RM20 more expensive when compared to Carrefour.

I didn’t think much of it till I found out from Fruitcake that the 3 main book store chains will NOT be opening their doors at 7.01am as promised for book collection and sale. And they will not be entertaining sales for not pre-bookings. Also, they are canceling all activities pertaining to the launch of the book. This has been confirmed on Star Online.

This is an outrage. We cannot collect the books early even though we’ll paying full price? How is that fair?

I just called Times Bookstore. I could get though. No one picking up calls from MPH 1 Utama but MHP The Curve responded to say that they will be open at 7.01am.

Maybe this is just an issue of people being over zealous about the book. Emotions can run pretty high when it comes to something people are the passionate about. And this is a global sentiment.

My take is that Carrefour is selling the books at cost in order to attract crowds to their store in hopes that the customers will buy other items while they are there.

Apparently we are to write to Penguin Books if we are to complain. And that, we shall.

Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

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