Yesterday the popular topic was what had happened to a friend of mine and the policies of Games Workshop when it comes to pre-orders. I have not gotten into the policies with my own take on it, because it is simply not what I try to do here on Faeit 212, nor did I expect this to be the popular topic of the day. I do have however have a response that may help clear up how things work with pre-orders etc.
here is the link to yesterdays conversation if you missed it. It had to do with GW Policies with pre-orders not being filled when there is stock on the shelf that could fill it, and making the customer wait until his order arrived.
http://natfka.blogspot.com/2013/04/games-workshop-pre-order-not-filled.html
Please remember that this is in no way an official Games Workshop response. Please no hate towards any particular store managers, and no names if you are discussing a particular incident at a store. This is not a rip and burn session.
via an anonymous source obviously in the know
The manager was adhering to the structures in place.
In order to provide the customer with the models from the shelves he would have to process a return.
With the current scoring system exchanging products counts as a loss for the amount returned and the product purchased counts as a gift certificate (meaning no sale).
I.E. An exchange appears as a loss for the day. -$300 from the total in this case.
Thus, if the manager would to process the swap it would severely hurt his metrics for the day which have a higher bar on a release day.
Long and short, it could have been done, but would have probably ended up in the manager getting written up for poor sales on a release day and a lot of headache for him to contest.