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.

acts of gord

[farkus888]

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

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

[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