The Squeaky Wheel

My friend Tom collects just about anything that you can imagine. It doesn't matter if it's baseball cards or old records, he buys whatever catches his attention.

Earlier this year, he signed up for the Los Angeles Lakers online fan club. They run a pretty nice fan club overall. They offer membership perks, inside information on the team and they sell merchandise exclusive to the fan club before it goes on sale at the team gift shop at Staples.

One of the items they offered to members was a collection of mini-basketballs. Each month the club would offer one ball with an autograph of a Lakers basketball player. A couple of times a year they would offer a couple of balls in a month due to the fact there were 14 players on the team. Each ball cost $15 and most sold out very quickly.

Tom missed a few of the balls because they sold out so fast. As you can imagine, the Kobe Bryant and Shaq balls were quick sellers and were selling on eBay for over $60 each. Tom really wanted to complete the set and finally found both for $100 total at a local swap meet.

At the end of the year, the club offered a set of all 14 mini-basketballs, each with a player autograph. There were only 500 sets made and they came in a nice case that was covered with the actual cover material of an actual NBA official ball.

Tom thought the set looked great and decided to order one. The hype around this set was huge. There were a lot of people interested in this collection of balls and it sold out in less than 10 minutes after it went on sale.

After placing his order, Tom patiently waited for it to be delivered. After being delayed a few months, due to production issues with the case, his package finally arrived.

He opened the shipper box with anticipation and pulled out the set and to his dismay, the case was in bad shape. All 14 of the autograph balls were in there but the case was in bad shape with wrinkles and adhesion problems. Tom was fuming.

He notified the fan club about the problem with the case and they said they would look into the problem and would get back with him. He suggested that he may be satisfied with the case condition if they would give him a free limited edition jersey or cap but they said that they probably wouldn't be able to offer anything but a refund.

The next week Tom got a email from the fan club and it said that the club would refund his money if he wasn't happy with the set. He asked if they could just replace the case with a new case but they said that there wasn't any extra cases and that it would be almost impossible to exchange them. This really upset Tom.

Tom got on the Lakers message board and started complaining to everyone that would listen about his problems and his issues with the fan club. He talked about how this case cost him $190 ($400 set - $210 for the balls) and that he wasn't going to be happy until they replaced that case. Other members even offered to buy his set if he wasn't happy. He told them "since you weren't able to get one when they went on sale, why should I sell my set to you now"?

I wondered if Tom really thought the case was worth $190 or if he bought the set because of the hype surrounding it? Even after the fan club offered to refund his money and others offered to buy his set from him, he was still pushing for getting his case replaced even though he knew it wasn't an option. I began to wonder if Tom was doing the 'squeaky wheel' trick. Make enough noise until they throw some oil his way.

--Robinator

South Texas Diecast