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GETTING MORE TALE #617: Now! 2

“Have you had a lot of people returning this CD?” asked the irritated mom standing at the front counter.

“Not that I know of,” I answered, truthfully.  Unless one copy counts as “a lot”.

“Well this is the second copy I got from your store!  And it won’t play!”

The steaming woman handed me her copy of Now! 2.  This was a Canadian spinoff from the popular Now That’s What I Call Music series.  All pop hits.  And the CD was a mess.  A totally destroyed disc.  Instead of a nice, clean surface, it was a series of tight concentric circles.  You could feel them.  It looked like somebody tried to carve LP grooves onto a CD.  Even the plastic case was already a skating rink.

I’d seen this kind of damage before.  Car CD players were notorious for that kind of scratching.  The technology of the 1990s didn’t make for very good portable CD players.  I saw plenty of discs with the circular damage.  A CD player’s laser can’t hope to read a disc looking like that.  And they didn’t come out of the case that way.  Yes, CDs can be damaged with you buy them.  Usually that’s from the packaging process and results in a few cracks or large scratches.  But patterns of concentric circles didn’t come out of the box.  That was caused by a CD player – period.  It used to blow customers minds when I’d ask if they owned a car or portable CD player just by looking at their damaged discs.  I was never wrong.

Additionally, even though I told her otherwise, I’d seen that kind of damage once before on a Now! 2 disc…returned by the same woman a few days before!  Same story then too, only I wasn’t working that day.  The lady claimed to have bought the CD like that, so our helpful staff exchanged the disc for her.  Now she was returning the replacement copy too.  Two copies, utterly and carelessly destroyed.

I’m sure the lady couldn’t fathom that it was her kids who wrecked the CD with their portable players.  Little Timmy or little Suzie wouldn’t lie about such things.

Because we had a “no questions asked” exchange policy, I had to do the exchange.  But I made sure it was the last one.

I grabbed another new copy of Now! 2.

“I’m going to open this CD right now,” I explained, “so you can see its condition right out of the package.”  I cut off the shrink wrap.

I carefully removed the CD from the case and showed it to her.  “As you can see this one is clean and brand new.”  She nodded yes.

“This is the way they should always look coming out of the wrapper,” I explained.  “Since you’ve seen this one for yourself, we know it’s in good shape.  I’m going to write that on your receipt.”

She said “OK”.  I took her receipt and wrote, “CD was opened for customer in perfect condition – NO EXCHANGES.”  I signed it and handed it to her with her third and final brand new copy of Now! 2.

We didn’t have any more problems with the lady and her destructive kids after that.  Fortunately our distributor let us return both wrecked copies of Now! 2.  They didn’t have to.

“Now” that’s what I call CD abuse!

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1.	“Wannabe”	Spice Girls	2:52
2.	“That Girl”	Maxi Priest featuring Shaggy	4:00
3.	“Mouth”	Merril Bainbridge	3:21
4.	“Your Woman”	White Town	4:18
5.	“You Were Meant for Me” (Unreleased radio version)	Jewel	3:13
6.	“I Love You Always Forever”	Donna Lewis	3:59
7.	“Spiderwebs”	No Doubt	4:28
8.	“No Diggity”	Blackstreet featuring Dr. Dre	5:03
9.	“Da’ Dip”	Freak Nasty	3:52
10.	“Jerk”	Kim Stockwood	4:12
11.	“Fastlove” (Summer Mix)	George Michael	4:40
12.	“Wrong” (Todd Terry Remix Edit)	Everything but the Girl	3:55
13.	“On & On”	Erykah Badu	3:45
14.	“Twisted”	Keith Sweat	4:11
15.	“I’m Still in Love with You”	New Edition	4:39
16.	“I Don’t Want to Think About It”	Wild Strawberries	3:45
17.	“Barely Breathing”	Duncan Sheik	4:14