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GameStop buys EB
Dram writes "Business Week, among others, is reporting that GameStop will buy Electronics Boutique for $1.4 billion. Hopefully this will allow both chains to better compete with Wal-Mart and Best Buy for our gaming dollars."
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Every Gamestop I've ever been in is dark, dirty, has unhelpful employees, and has a poor selection of games. Every EB I've been in is clean, has cheerful, helpful salespeople and has a good selection of games.
I'm disappointed.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
It has a great selection and awesome prices. The 48 -hour deals are also a great way to pickup some older gems that you originally passed on. While the shipping is $6, you can buy up to 3 games without any additional cost.
Gamestop is very much into the used game market. More so than EB. In fact, I hit Gamestop way before EB.
In Florida, a woman's video games were stolen and then returned by the thief to EB for store credit. EB then resold the games in violation of Florida state law, which requires at least a 30-day wait to resell used goods.
Ivan256, the original poster, used this one incident to imply that Electronics Boutique has a corporate directive to break the law.
For more information, click here.
While Walmart and Best Buy might not be all that great either, they are ALWAYS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION cheaper or equal in pricing to GameStop/EB for new games.
I've also found EB usually has the games earlier than WalMar and BestBuy, and at least the ones near me are more likely to have some niche titles. They differentiate in different ways-- price is one area of competition, but not the only one.
For all the people that complain about EB, when I worked at EB (3+ years as an assistant manager), there were good, solid, friendly people who visited our store more than once a week. They loved us, and we loved them. These people had been customers since opening day. Our relationships with these people reminded me very much of how it must have been like to run a smalltown hardware store at the turn of the century; we did them good by working deals in their favor when we could, and they always came to us when they bought games. Basically, the way business should work.
That all changed when they brought Steve Morgan on board, maybe a year after I'd been working there. Up to that point, EB had been essentially a family business. The board had hired people from inside the company to run itself. But Morgan was from a department store. I knew someone who was inside the company enough to have talked to Morgan, and Morgan was quoted as saying that he'd never played a game in his life and never would. He didn't have children, and never wanted them.
Joe Firestone, on the other hand, was CEO when Morgan was brought on. This guy exemplified leadership. He'd write inspirational, funny columns in our mailbox newsletter every week. Think of a fireside chat for video game employees. He knew what it was like to be one of us, and his emphasis was always the customer.
The first thing Morgan did was set quotas on the stores for selling Game Doctors. It went downhill from there. When I left, they were changing the return policy to a Best Buy variant (you breath on it and you cannot refund it). He revamped the training that focused less on customer relationships and more on the bottom line.
Firestone retired soon after they brought Morgan onboard. Jeff Griffiths replaced him, but it was clear even to the 5 hour a week part time employee that he was a puppet for Morgan. I haven't been in EB for two years now, but I have no doubt that Morgan had something to do with this buyout. Only people from outside the company, who had no vested interest in the company itself, no history, would have sold out EB.
It's sad, actually. Many of the things people complain about when they're talking about EB stem from Morgan's policies. Sure, EB has always had arrogant assholes behind the counter or "unfair" trade-in values, but the underlying philosophy is now (obviously) completely different. The customers were first. Likewise, under Firestone, employees were treated fairly well and with respect. That started to change when Morgan came in.
Morale of the story? Watch out for outsiders coming in, because they don't give a damn about anything except their own stock values - especially not the customer.
I can't help but think that this decision hurts the people it really shouldn't hurt: the customers (who no have no choice or direct competition), and the hard working EB employees who will no doubt have to fend for their own jobs against longtime Gamestop employees. You think the clueless employees are bad now? Wait until EB/Gamestop starts to resemble the only competition they have left: Best Buy and Walmart. My guess is that the internal employee relations will reflect the same practices as Best Buy and Walmart too.
Get out, video game store employees, while you can.
I go into gamestop all the time. I truly do miss the Funcoland of old - they went to hell when they were bought out by gamestop, long before they changed the names of all the funcolands to gamestop. In particular they carried stuff for older systems, understanding that it brought people into the store on a regular basis. Gamestop doesn't get this and now I have nowhere to buy sega saturn games. Anyway gamestop is a great place to pick up used cables, controllers, and systems. If you don't like their game prices, don't buy games from them. As long as they're open, I'll be in there buying memory cards and extension cables.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"