Confessions of a Gamestop Manager

The site Consumerist has up a lengthy post from a former Gamestop manager, listing some of the sins, boons, pitfalls and promises perpetrated while he was on the job. Includes a discussion of the 'gutted' display game, pre-orders, the 'discount' card, trades, and lots of 'pro-tips' on how to get the most out of your Gamestopping experience. "19) Don't be afraid to sell things on your own! The going resell rates for any current games or accessories online is usually close to what we resell for. If its a much newer title and you don't mind listing and shipping it, you could make a small handful more selling it online yourself. Ebay and Amazon.com are obvious choices, but you may find other outlets that work for you."

Comments

Selling policies

[ZorbaTHut]

I have to say, the thing I've always wondered about is the business side of things. I've heard, although I have no hard evidence, that Gamestop/EB stores don't make any significant profit off new games, which is why they're always pushing used games. Their profit sources are "used games" and "product placement" - publishers pay big bucks to have things like Halo 3 in the front-and-center of stores.

What I'm curious about is what they would do if you went to them and said "I have a game, I would like you to sell it, we've been doing advertising and it should sell quite a bit, we can't afford to pay you for placement but we'll sell the actual copies to you for $15 less so you can actually make a profit on it". Would they give some of that front-and-center space over to it in the hopes of selling more, or would they just relegate it to the back shelves because it's not paying the bucks?

Unfortunately it seems impossible to actually get information on the big business policies. Ah well.

Re:Selling policies

[Sciros]

Guides can be worth the purchase for the convenience (if it's well-laid-out and thorough), the aesthetics of the design of the book, and the art inside it. The Final Fantasy XII guide is fantastic, IMO, in every respect, and I was very glad I purchased the collector's edition with the included Concept Art Book.

I also have this hardcover, gold-border Twilight Princess strategy guide but it's more of a "thing to have and admire" for its design because it's the opposite of useful when it comes to actually being used as a guide. Waaay too thorough or something. Hard to read through. But attractive.

Re:Selling policies

[Sciros]

Your criticisms are very valid but I think apply mostly to non-first-party guides. In other words, a Final Fantasy guide produced and released *by Square-Enix* is going to be a quality product, as would a Zelda guide produced and released *by Nintendo.* They're also most likely going to be up-to-date and their production quality is very high so the paper is usually pretty nice.

Oh and some guides are just plain well-written. Take for instance the Elder Scrolls guides. Whoever wrote those is a clever guy, and it's sometimes fun to just read through some of it because it's half-decent story telling ^_^

Guides are rarely "important," that's definitely true. But they can enhance the playing experience a bit, and often help you get a better appreciation for a game. Bad guides (like the one for Guild Wars Factions, for instance, which I was a *researcher* for but nothing we ever submitted made its way into the final omg-it's-due-tomorrow-and-I-haven't-started release; shame on ArenaNet but I digress) are certainly a total waste and can be exactly what you describe. But good ones are often the equivalent of a "movie guide" which make for at least some interesting reading.

Re:Selling policies

[Beardo the Bearded]

Two points in agreement:

1. My brother bought an old dreamcast game from EB. The game cost $2. The clerk said, "Would you like play insurance for $3? I have to ask in case you're a mystery shopper." I used to work retail - the people you see are just doing what they're told to keep their job. I did work for a really nice place that said, "remember, it's not your money. It's theirs. Give them whatever they're asking for, because otherwise, they'll just call head office, and we'll give them what they were asking for in the first place."

2. I was wondering what kind of people pay for game guides when you can find:
      a) better guides online
      b) more entertainment value playing the game yourself.

acts of gord

[farkus888]

http://www.actsofgord.com/ excellent reading. all the horrible things he did to customers in a undisclosed video game store.

Yeah right

[Tridus]

From TFA: "Preorders are only taken when their allotment can be guaranteed. I cannot stress this enough. There are burps in the system here and there, but for every one or two preorder gaffes you read about online there are literally thousands of beneficial ones. Preorders do not cost any additional fee (only a base 5 dollar deposit) and are fully (though reluctantly) refundable for cash at any time. Yes, cancelled preorders count against the employee ringing it in and they will be reluctant, but it is your right to cancel for cash refund if you choose to and they can't decline it."

Care to explain then how my local EB took several times more orders for the collectors edition of Burning Crusade then it was actually getting?

Re:Yeah right

[Tridus]

Thats my experience too. Want a game but didn't pre-order? Sorry, you should pre-order. (I've been told this.)
Try pre-ordering? Sorry, so did everybody else.

Yet for some strange reason, Future Shop down the street somehow manages to have copies on a shelf that I can walk in and buy, without planning two months in advance.

Gamestop corporate sucks

[StarvingSE]

FTFA: 7) Everybody decries the nature of the Gamestop employee to push reserves on the uninterested consumer. Please understand, no matter how dedicated an employee may be, on the district level and higher, he is of no value beyond his reserves and Game Informer subscriptions. Nearly any employee is the sum of their reserves, and unfortunately good people who treat customers well will see their job fade away because of poor numbers. A Gamestop worker pushing a reserve on you is trying to keep their job, literally.

What's sad is that the employee pushiness is the reason I don't shop there, even though I could walk to it from my apartment. I wonder if corporate knows they're actually losing customers because of this?

Glad to hear the truth about the company - employees are nothing but numbers. I really want to know why companies do this to their employees. It makes the employees unhappy and pissed off, and the customers irate. I used to work at Sam's Club way back in the day, and if we didn't process 2 credit card apps a shift, we'd get written up - 3 strikes and you're fired. My next job was Micro Center, they kept a daily percentage on how many people you successfully added to their customer database. Not only that, but if you mistyped the address and it came up as bogus, you get dinged for that as well. This is because Micro Center is too cheap to just mass mail their flyers, they rely on the customer data entered at point of sale.

Despite what the article is trying to claim, there really is no reason to shop at Gamestop. Their used prices are way too high, and their new games aren't any cheaper than other retailers that don't hassle you as much.

I would shop at gamestop if they differentiated themselves a bit from other retailes (besides being annoying). They could do this by doing things like hosting lan parties in store, or gaming tournaments, something that would make it fun to go there. For now, I just avoid it like the plague.

Re:Revervations are pointless

[EtoilePB]

Because of the warehouse distribution model they use.

Warehouse has 1000 copies of Game X for distribution to all the area stores. Store A has 150 pre-orders, so they get 200 copies. Store B has 12 pre-orders, so they get 15 copies. Store C has 247 pre-orders, so they get 350 copies.

I don't know if it's changed since the merger, but that's how it worked back when I worked at GameStop. Pre-orders are construed as "local area interest," and so in a store with low pre-orders, no extra games. It's a self-perpetuating cycle sort of thing.

Re:I refuse to buy from Gamestop

[twistedsymphony]

Why I stopped Shopping at EB years ago... and why I started Shopping at Gamestop again

I used to pre-order the occasional game, but mostly just poked my head into a local EB to check out the used stuff.

On about 3 separate occasions I had placed a pre-order with EB only to show up on release day and they were sold out. Once such time I saw a guy buy a copy of the item I pre-ordered (and he did not have a pre order) and walk out of the store only to be told that they were all out and I would have to wait for the next shipment, even worse was that this was a pre-order I had paid for in full...

I swore off the store for quite some time. There is different store, a Gamestop, roughly the same distance from my house but in the opposite direction and I had stopped in a few times, they of course asked if I wanted to pre-order anything to which I told them NO and WHY, recalling the story from EB. They claimed that their store was run much better than the other one. I shrugged it off. When the Limited Edition of Bioshock came out I decided to give them a try pre-ordering it. It was a large-ish cardboard box and risking a day-of purchase at walmart mean it was probably going to be beat up by the ham-fisted employees there.

Two days before the release I caught word that a large percentage of the Limited Editions were damaged (the included figurine had a broken are in 60-80% of them). I called Gamestop where I had placed the pre-order and the assured me that they would not be selling any of the broken ones and that they had checked their shipment and had enough good ones to cover the pre-orders. When I arrive to the store on release day to pick up my copy the clerk handed me a copy of the game and said "check this over and make sure your happy with it before we ring you up"... I was extremely impressed that they actually gave a sh*t. Every time I go in there they're friendly and unlike some other stores the actually know what they're talking about. Instead of regurgitating misinterpreted forum banter.

I believe that the quality of the store comes down to the management 9 out of 10 Gamestop/EBs I go to are total garbage with rude employees and lack luster selections.... on occasion I'll step into one where that's not the case and I'm fairly certain it's due to a management staff that plays Gamestop corporate instead of the customer and holds their staff to some semblance of a standard instead of allowing them to be rabid register jockeys hocking pre-orders.

Gutted games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamestop policy is, for better or worse, that employees may check out new games that are more than two weeks past their original release so long as they are returned in mint condition.

Good thing that game manufacturers don't check if serial #'s are used multiple times.

Re:I refuse to buy from Gamestop

[CatPieMan]

I recently purchased a 360 Elite from GameStop. I was told by 3 different GameStops that it had a built-in HD-DVD player.

Sure, I looked online, but they were inconclusive. Amazon.com even said that buying this product would make you elegible for 5 free hd-dvds, which implies that it had a built in player (there is an offer to recieve 5 free movies by mail if you buy a certain HD-DVD player).

Also, xbox.com didn't deny that it was built in. It also did not mention an included player, so I suspected the GS employees were lying.

There is no included HD player in the 360 Elite. Not that it really mattered, as I wanted the system anyways. I just take offence to being lied to by 5 employees of 3 different stores (Vienna, VA; Reston, VA; and Herndon, VA).

I talked to a friend who used to work at a GameStop in Texas who said "We lie to customers all the time".

-CPM

Gamestop's return policy is illegal

[rtechie]

Just so people are aware, at least in California, Gamestop's return policy is illegal. In California you have the right to a full refund within 30 days for defective merchandise if you present proof of purchase. In practice, this means you have the right to a full refund within 30 days on anything because if the retailer objects you could just break it before you return it. The obligation is on the retailer to prove that YOU broke it as opposed to the customer breaking the merchandise. This applies to both new and used merchandise unless the used item is specifically described as non-functional or is obviously non-functional.

I have successfully sued Gamestop on this very point.