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GameStop Offers $50 Certificate For Coupon Fiasco
First time accepted submitter milbournosphere writes "It appears that GameStop has a guilty conscience. They are offering a $50 gift certificate to any person who bought the new Deus Ex at GameStop. You may recall that GameStop has admitted to removing the OnLive codes good for one free game from new, unopened copies of the game. From GameStop's email: 'For your inconvenience, we would like to offer you a free $50 GameStop gift card and a Buy 2 Get 1 Free pre-owned purchase. We want to earn back your trust and confidence in the GameStop experience. Please bring in this email and your store receipt or order confirmation from GameStop.com and present it to a Game Advisor.'"
Please humbly accept our apologies. To make this better, we'd like to offer you the chance to buy more stuff from us.
Reminds me of class action lawsuits: "Hey there friend, sorry we fucked you so hard last time, here's a coupon for $10 off your next ass-fucking at any of our many locations."
Is a Game Advisor supposed to be that girl that was working at the GameStop a few years ago (the last time I went into one) whom I overheard telling another customer that "Def Jam Icon" was probably the best game she had ever played? Or is a Game Advisor a completely different idiot within the structure?
This is why I don't buy "new" games at retail anymore, and haven't really since around 2003. If I'm going to bother buying a game, I want it to be "complete", as in everything that came with it originally for my collection. Without the coupon, it's no longer complete.
My housemate's an OnLive employee, so I've already tried it out. I think it's pretty good, but you can decide for yourself with their free trial.
Friends don't let friends buy from GameStop.
I wouldn't trust Gamestop to sell me snow in the Arctic. Who knows where they got their merchandise? Dumpster diving at failed K-Marts?
I haven't bought new from GameStop in years because of their general practice of lending new copies of games to employees and then later selling those games as new. Last time I tried to buy a new game from them, it looked like this guy's game, so I just walked away without buying. Now I only buy new from my local Target store, or online from Amazon.
I still go to GameStop to buy and sell used games, though.
Someone needs to kill himself to appease the gaming masses.
"Why yes sir, the rotting banana peel and a mummified female index finger were part of the original packaging."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Give your lame attempt at spin a rest.
Why was parent modded troll? He may have been a little passionate about Sony, but he was right on most counts.
It sounds like a damn good deal, especially if the only people affected were already GameStop customers.
It really does seem like GameStop is trying to apologize for this mistake. so fucking let them already.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
This doesn't mention anything about future sales of the game. Will they be including the $50 certificate for new buyers or will they get shafted? Will they drop the price of the game since it wont be sold with the coupon anymore?
It doesn't really matter one way or another, customers are still getting screwed out of what they should have gotten in the first place.
It wasn't a mistake, it was a purposeful altering of a product prior to selling it as 'new' without telling anyone.
I believe that qualifies as a mistake. Not an accident, but a mistake.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Lamestop officially pissed me off a few years ago (hit google and search for "gamestop roaches" and youll find my story.
Since having stopped shopping at lamestop and instead using ebay, amazon and walmart, toys r us when they have sales plus occasionally newegg I have saved my self a ton of money and I have had the pleasure of NOT dealing with lamestops pathetic rules, horrible customer serive, inflated prices and incredibly annoying sales people.
So I couldnt care less about this as I wont ever give lamestop my money again. They officially made my shit list along with bestbuy and honestly Im sorry I didnt quit using them years sooner.
I understand the $50 as a sorry.. But how can they offer the Buy 2 get 1 pre-owned game, when that is a everyday sort of deal. Or at least Everytime I walk into my local gamestop they have signs posted about it.
I did not see many people taking Gamestop's side in all this. From their point of view publishers have been trying to ruin their business for a long time now. First they debate the legality of second hand sales. Then they begin offering their own distribution methods. Now they are specifically advertising for a competing market but using the old one that got them rich in the first place.
Does anyone else throw up in their mouth a little bit when they read a corporate euphemism for "store clerk" like "game advisor"?
"We want to earn back your trust and confidence in the GameStop experience."
Sorry guys, you lost that when you sold me a copy of Sins of a Solar Empire without a disc in the case.
That was before I "trusted" digital downloads. Because of that, now it's the physical stores I don't trust. Ironic.
"...and a Buy 2 Get 1 Free pre-owned purchase."
So basically anything in the store then.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Not to mention that this whole thing turns out to be Square Enix's fault. They violated a contract they had with GameStop, so GameStop did what they had to do to make it so they could sell the product Square Enix game them.
People didn't like it, so now GameStop is shipping all the stuff back to Square Enix to get new, fixed versions of the product.
Unlike the Sony asshats that offered a free month (zero cost to themselves) for unleashing your credit card data all over the net.
They did more than that - they released the prequels to games with sequels that were just coming out - not to mention versions of games that, if you want to actually play the full versions, require you to pay more money for DLC. They turned the entire thing into an advertising stunt, and the really annoying this is that it fucking worked. PS3 sales were UP after the PSN fiasco.
Fuck Sony, and fuck Square Enix for both managing to turn THEIR OWN FUCK-UP into a massive advertising campaign for their shitty products.
STOP OPENING MY GAMES. This is why I never buy from GameStop / EB, because you have the audacity to OPEN everything before I do. You know what shrink wrap is supposed to mean?, it means I'm guaranteed on getting an UNALTERED product.
ESPECIALLY with most stores not taking back opened copies.
Oh, when you hear about say,
selling used games as if they were new, or say, ripping off the customers, and then trying to distract them with a shiny gift card,
it makes me trust you even less then I did before.
1) Stop opening games. Sell them in their box. Even Bestbuy's game vault is better then getting an opened game.
2) Fork over $10 for the service they should have gotten in the first place, AND give them a gift card. I don't care how much the gift card is, that's not the issue, it's allowing you what you should have gotten to begin with, and then adding on an act of contrition.
3) Just stop your used game business. You are screwing over gamers and game companies. If you want, then buy the used games for 1/2 of what you sell them for, just don't act like trading 3 games in for a 5$ discount is a steal, especially when you sell each of the games for $5 under what you were for a new game.
Future Shop annoys me, Best Buy infuriates me, I hate the very concept of Walmart, and Gamestop / EB is STILL at the bottom of my list. I LOVED EB, it was the store for me, the store that seemed to understand the gamer geek, and you are lower then stores I hate even getting near.
It might be because of what I / we once had, but we can have it again, just treat me with respect, and carry stuff I actually need, (has anyone ever tried to get a PS3 cable to let their backcompatible PS3 read PS2 memory cards? 1, just 1 would have been good enough, and I might have kept caring).
From a libertarian perspective, Gamestop can do whatever they want with the games that they own and sell. Of course they have to deal with the backlash from publishers and customers.
or Marketing Genius. Getting those existing customer back into the store to buy 3 or more video games.
This is wasteful corporate stupidity at it's best. First, pay employees to spend time opening factory sealed new games to remove a voucher for a free ~$50 game from a competing service included in something they are selling. Then, when people find out about it, claim to have done nothing wrong at first, alienating and forcing people to question their trust in GameStop, and then after people have ample time to stew over it, follow it up by sheepishly offering a free $50 game purchase AND a Buy 2 get 1 Free purchase to help "earn back your trust and confidence in the GameStop experience". Which winds up costing GameStop the original cost of the employees pay to spend time removing the vouchers PLUS the $50 game PLUS the possible additional free used game (which most won't use and will just use the Free voucher, thereby netting GameStop no positive sales from the offer), all to fight the THEORETICAL purchase of a game from OnLine.
Brilliant.
But really, anyone who still shops @ brick and mortar stores is asking for this sort of thing. Steam and NewEgg don't remove vouchers. Nor do they require gas $ to take a trip to the store. Or charge tax. Or require you to deal with annoying sales people. Used games and console games? Yea you can get those online too. *sigh*
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Now if only EA would change their EULA for Origin and eliminate the portion where they grant themselves the right to datamine your hard drive.
"It appears that GameStop has a guilty conscience." Simple answer is that, they do not have a conscience. The reason for this is not out of guilt but out of profit. This has always been about profit. Why did they remove the coupons in the beginning? Because it was aiding their competition, in other words their potential profit. And why did they decide to offer the $50? Obvious reason, profit in the long run. They realized the sheer amount of backlash from this and attempting to win people's hearts. All this is going to do is give people who decided to stop going to GS, to continue not going and get a $50 giftcard.
http://www.shamoozal.com/nerdlog/gfgames-the-last-copy/
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Hey, GameStop, here's an idea on how you can get our trust back: Don't be a bunch of fuckalls in the first place and willingly / knowingly do things to piss off and cheat the people that pay your wage!
That was the Left4Dead: Garbage Truck Edition right?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Buy 2 get 1? I'm not english, but shouldn't it be "buy 2 pay 1"? Sounds like you pay 2 and get away with 1 XD
I've totally changed though. Just don't leave, is all I'm asking, give me another chance. If you stay, I totally guarantee that I won't beat you up again, much, for at least a week, unless you do something dumb and get me mad again, or I have a drink, or I want to.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I haven't trusted gamestop since I found out that they buy used games for $0.10 on the dollar (10% of the new price, and resell for 5% less than the new price. That and that they very seldom buy or sell the PC versions of games. Game consoles SUCK, PCs are the only worthwhile game platform!
My name is Nonya F. Biznes
Email: nonya@nonya.org
Address: 123 Nostreet
Notown, FU 77342-090
There's no conscience there, they're just p*ssed they got caught yet again, exposing their terrible business practices, I'm amazed honestly that anyone even shops there anymore, you don't even know if the game you're buying is new, legit, etc. I'll just stick with Steam, Amazon or even Best Buy.
Their management is running that company into the ground, the sooner the better I say. They deserve to die screaming and in flames.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
... and business laws are a completely different thing.
Square Enix and OnLive likely lost an investment as a result of the disposal of the coupons (which I was unaffected by, simply because the copy I purchased was opened by a GameStop employee who read about the fiasco the day before, and opened it in front of me.) Besides, GameStop does not have a directly competing service yet (its streaming-gaming service is still very much in R&D, as admitted; info on Ars Technica.) Simply put, their corporate department's actions were anticompetitive at best.
I'll continue to do business with GameStop, however, so long as those employees of theirs that I can trust continue to work for them, and are willing to work with me at point-of-sale during issues like this.
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