A recent story about major music acts making exclusive sales deals with big-box record stores reminds me of a related story I heard yesterday. I don't want to get myself or anyone else in trouble, so names have been changed.

It seems a company had cut a deal with a discount retailer - let's call it Barget - to sell a certain, sure-to-be-popular DVD title with a free kids' booklet shrink-wrapped with it. In return for being able to offer an exclusive freebie, Barget would help pay for the booklet printing, and both companies would win. People spend hours designing and creating the booklet, and it is hours away from going on press, when the company gets a phone call from another, much larger discount retailer, one that I'll call Ballmart. Ballmart says, and this is only slightly paraphrased, "If you go ahead with this deal with Barget, we will not sell your DVD title at all; going forward, we will have to rethink our entire relationship with your company." The recipient of this veiled threat, suddenly faced with visions of millions in in lost sales by being blacklisted from the earth's largest retailer, has no choice but to pull the plug. Now Barget loses their exclusive offer, consumers lose getting a neato extra thing for free, and the booklet company loses an opportunity to add some coupons for stuff. The only person who wins is Ballmart.

Another Ballmart thing I learned; you know when you buy a DVD, the first time you open the box, usually some coupons fall out, with offers for other DVDs and stuff from the DVD company? Well, Ballmart has a strict no-coupon policy. They don't want consumers realizing they can potentially get things cheaper, by using coupons, at someplace other than their store. So the companies who sell DVDs have to remove all of the coupons from all of the DVDs they ship to Ballmart to sell. Who loses? Both the consumer and the DVD company. The only person who wins is Ballmart.

I just keep hearing Darth Vader in my head saying, "I find your lack of faith disturbing," and crushing that Empire toady's larynx.