Today I received the DVD (The Office 1st Season) that I ordered from Borders which is then shipped by Amazon. It arrived with a Wal Mart sticker on it as if maybe it was produced or packaged for them at one time. It was supposed to be new and does appear to be.
Any idea why this happenned and more importantly, whether I got what I should have?
Wal-Mart is known for censoring versions of music CDs & VHS tapes sold in their stores.
So you might want to check to see if you got an uncensored version. (I’m not sure how to do that. Maybe check the play time vs. online listings of the length of the film?)
But it may not be important in this case. TV shows like this are already ‘censored’ by network program standards people, so it’s unlikely Wal-Mart required anything removed from the versions they sell.
possibility 1: Walmart often has strict packaging and labeling guidelines, to save a few bucks the mfr might have printed an overrun of walmart labeling and it got tossed into another order.
possibility 2: Walmart is pretty dynamic in its inventory handling, if something does not sell off in short order it could have been remaindered/returned and scooped up by another retailer who didnt bother to remove the walmart labeling.
Sounds to me like you didn’t actually order from Amazon but from one of the Amazon marketplace sellers. Very possible they are reselling stuff from WalMart.
By George, I think you’ve got it!
Because you’re right! He didn’t order it from Amazon.com!
Because he ordered it from Borders.
:dubious: :smack: 
-FrL-
Thanks for the smilies, Frylock, but Borders online = Amazon.com. Even the OP acknowledged that.
Sarcasm is fun, but factual answers are better.
At first I thought you meant that the DVD itself had a sticker on it, which might make it hard to play.
FWIW, Borders!=Amazon. Gift cards from Borders can only be used on Borders specific items, which, when you do a search for an item,shows you everything, not just the borders stuff. I had a hell of a time spending one of their gift cards because of this.
I’d guess it was probably a reseller or an overstock item. I would absolutely check the run time as many folks will NOT buy videos from Walmart because they censor the items and well, that stinks. If the run time does vary, I’d raise hell with Borders/Amazon.
With respect to accepting gift cards, perhaps, but with respect to most other contexts, borders online = amazon.com. If you go to borders,com and order a book, it’s being fulfilled by Amazon or one of the Amazon Marketplace sellers.
But don’t take my word for it. Look at the site.
Yeah. Borders.com is owned and run by Amazon. In fact if you come to Borders with a question or complaint about ordering from that site, we’ll refer you to Amazon for help, because we have nothing to do with the site, except the name.
I don’t see where the OP acknowledges that Borders=Amazon. But now I know, and knowing’s half the… you know.
-FrL-
I don’t know if this helps or not, but video stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood video buy copies of movies at Wal-Mart if they run out of popular titles. (I work at Wal-Mart.)
Can they do that? I was under the (admittedly uneducated) impression that rental outfits paid a higher-than-retail price for rental-only copies in exchange for the license to make money off of the rentals. I know if I went and bought a copy of, say, X-Men 3, and charged my friends five bucks each to borrow it, I’d be in violation of copyright law as quoth the big green FBI WARNING screen. If I’m mistaken about those laws’ relevance with regard to Blockbuster et al, please fight my ignorance.
My point was with an Amazon gift card, you can buy anything Amazon sells. You can not buy everything Amazon sells with a Borders card.
That does sound like a big huge violation of our favorite FBI warning.
No, I think the prohibition is against “exhibition” of the film. So if you invited several friends over to view your new DVD, and charged them each $5/seat, that would be a violation. (Even if you didn’t charge the $5, it would still be a violation.)
But just loaning it out to each of them, to view in their own home, I don’t believe that is a violation. (Much as the video comp0anies would like it ot be.) That’s just what the public libraries do.
I don’t know if they *can * do it, I just know that they do it.
Amazon customer service says that what probably happenned is that a customer returned an unopened copy that they bought from WalMart instead of the one they were shipped and that they didn’t catch it.
They offered to accept a return but I really don’t want to screw with it… unless there is a good chance that it has been censored. As an earlier poster mentioned, since it was over the air to start with there probably wasn’t anything to censor except for maybe a commentary.
Anybody have a version with some swearing in the commentary that I could check against?
When it comes to DVDs, W-M carries the damnedest stuff- the unedited THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, THE ARISISTOCRATS (yep, ya read that right!), JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK.
Don’t worry that you got a cuss-free THE OFFICE.
Well, you READ that right; too bad I didn’t WRITE it right!!!
Of course, THE ARISTOCRATS! :smack:
Not true. My mother was in upper management of a very large regional video store chain - well, up until it was acquired by Blockbuster. The chain paid normal retail prices for the videos, from distributors that deal primarily with video rental stores.
Video stores sell the extra copies of videos to consumers after they are cycled from the new release shelf to the “library”. If they were “rental only” editions, the extra copies couldn’t be resold.