The Hoffman Forums strike again - killing the music, one Ram at a time:

The great Steve Hoffman Forum does it's level best to kill the music, once again:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=283986&page=25

Here is one of those astonishing, mind numbing threads about the upcoming Paul McCartney "Ram" reissue. 25 pages long and going strong, the reissue has not been seen, heard, or released yet, but there is no shortage of opinions on this thread, and almost all of them are solely about how to kill the music industry for good.

Yup, when you get right down to it, that's what it's about. Let's break it down into components:

1. Amazon preorder pricing:

This is very typical at the Hoffman vanity board - endless discussion of Amazon pre-order pricing, placing an order to 'reserve' a super low price, cancelling to go somewhere else with an even lower price, complaining about Amazon and whether it will have it in stock on release date to fulfill all those super low price orders - basically, Hoffman's site is now the latest audiophile PriceCheck site with these so-called music fans 'sharing' lowest price info constantly, looking for their fix at prices that basically are at or below wholesale or in fact, with free shipping, effectively have no margin or even a loss.

Only a short time ago, Hoffmanites were complaining daily as brick & mortar stores died one by one - yet not a single one of them stopped to think that they are the problem! Of course physical stores collapsed. With customers like these, swapping price points and coupon offers like a bunch of old housewives, there was no money left to keep those stores going. It takes profits to keep retailers alive - and these people at the Hoffman board are hell bent on making sure that music can only be sold with practically no margin in it at all.

2. The endless, brain cell killing shipping updates:

They have commoditized the CD business, totally.  And then they have the temerity to start up endless threads to give all the other lemmings regular 'shipping updates' - like "mine shipped today from CD Wow!" or "Mine shows temporarily out of stock at Amazon" and other inanities - like the world needs some dweeb's shipping update. They complain about the packaging - my goodness, the CD case arrived cracked!! They complain that Amazon's LP packaging isn't as bulletproof as Acoustic Sounds or Elusive Disc - even though they insist on getting free shipping from Amazon.

These must be pretty lonely people to have the need to share shipping status. But - whatever.

What is sad here is that none of these people have any business sense or sense of perspective on the 'Amazon Experience'.

The fact is - when some dipshit Governor claims he/she is creating "jobs" they invariably mean the online retailer "tech jobs" that Amazon offer - Chinese sweatshop type jobs, minimum wage, contract to avoid benefits or severance obligations, impossible to meet 'performance standards', remote locations that force desperate employees in towns out of nowhere to drive to get to work even though the wage barely exceeds welfare payments - these folks walk on average 12 MILES a day in the Amazon fulfillment centre under impossible conditions to meet pick and pack quotas that are impossible to meet.

And these entitled Hoffmanites COMPLAIN that their CD case was cracked in shipping?!?! And they have the self-righteousness to complain that their package isn't shipped fast enough??

What totally proves that this board is populated with the desperately dumb is the discussion of what number they got on the slipcase of their new AF Gold CD -  like, they really don't understand that that picker working at the Amazon fulfillment centre actually does not pick the slipcase with the lowest number to ship first, they simply grab one totally at random - which is pretty much what every retailer does, so that number you got means absolutely nothing at all. Sucked in again.

3. The Ramming of HMV:

The latest and greatest is how the Hoffmanites are 'ramming' HMV UK over the upcoming McCartney "Ram" reissue. Apparently, HMV made an obvious and inadvertent pricing error, setting the price of the deluxe hyper expensive cash grab version pretty much at single CD price.

It was obvious to anyone that it was an error. Even more obvious that it would ultimately be corrected, or at least, that orders at that price would be cancelled. To make matters worse, in their glee at finding a price so far below even manufacturing cost that HMV would lose a bundle on every copy sold, these losers went so far as to announce the pricing error on SHTV and provide a link to it - so all their pals could pile on and join the party, not only making the loss worse for HMV, but all but ensuring a massive number of orders were placed, raising the likelihood that HMV would notice the error - and correct it.

Which they did, taking the only prudent course of action - cancelling all the orders. To the outrage of the SHTV'ers who so blatantly tried to take advantage, feeling so entitled to the music at the cheapest price possible - devaluing it, disrespecting it, doing everything they can to not have to pay a fair price for it.

Shameful. The armchair lawyers claim 'contract violation'. They claim that they will never go back to HMV again. They claim they are writing to HMV to demand that they honor the price for their legitimately placed orders. They claim....well, when you get right down to it, all they claim is their selfish entitlement to take advantage of an obvious pricing error, one that obviously hurts a shaky retailer and hastens in it's own small way the demise of music retail.What they really don't get in their self absorbed minds is that HMV doesn't want them as customers - who would? Guys that only go to them because they are giving it away are not the type of customers any business can survive on.

What's most wrong about that thread at Hoffman's board is not that Hoffman himself didn't step in to correct it or take it down - Hoffman has never stepped in to a moral argument, no self-interest there. What's most wrong is that not a single one of these adolescents wrote HMV to alert then to what they knew was an error, one that would hurt their business. They all just figured it was a great opportunity to rip off the man, and even posted about their intent to do so on the Huff board.

Disgraceful. Not one of these people care at all about music.