David Luebke of Dave's Comics in Richmond, Virginia read Rich Biedrzycki's recent Talk Back regarding Wizards of the Coast taking away his Premier Store status (see "Rich Biedrzycki of Dreamland Comics on WotC Suing Tourney Organizers") and had this to add:

We have been a WotC Premier Store for at least ten years and we also haven’t had a single complaint against us for any infraction.  To quote Dreamland Comics also,  "This week Wizards of the Coast stripped us of our Premier Store status after 10 years and now refuses to sell us any product.  Why?  Because we can't get enough players into our store to play organized DCI/WPN tournaments..."

The odd thing about this is we made money for WotC without in store play.  We have found that other local stores that have gaming going on in their stores also had problems with theft, fencing stolen merchandise, drug dealing, loitering on retail property at 3AM in the morning, and more.

We run a clean store in a great neighborhood and our landlord will not allow or tolerate organized play as it is occurring these days.  We explained this to WotC but it fell on deaf ears.  If this is their current model of
running their operation, I predict it will not be more than 12 months until they will cry that their falling sales will cause closing or revamping their operation again.

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