Gamestop admits to ripping off customers

[Cyber Burn]

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/24/screw-you-gamestop/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl23%7Csec1_lnk3%7C89472

I've never been a big Gamestop fan, open boxes on the shelves have always made me wonder. Guess it's a good thing I take my business elsewhere.

[bearded]

if you work the system, gamestop is great. buy a used game, play it for a week, and then turn it in for a full refund, as long as it's within 7 days. rinse and repeat.
i wondered about the morality of it, but it's their system, so...i do it. i guess it's worth it to them, cause games i like, i generally keep, which is the point, i guess.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

The Gamestops around me don't have PC games anymore anyway, so I don't even step foot in them usually.  I do buy from Impluse, but I've done that since long before they bought it.

I also consider their response ridiculous.  Selling something that happens to have a coupon with it is not "promoting" another company.   Many other products have coupons and free offers for their companies and stores don't break open those things to remove them.  It simply isn't done.  Indeed, movies often come with free download of the movies from certain download services, but Walmart, who has been working on their own service, doesn't break open the DVDs and remove those coupons.  Neither does Amazon, and they have quite the extensive download service.

So no, I won't be buying anything from their brick and mortar stores, even though I won't be quitting Impulse any time soon.

[BentonGrey]

Yep, I'd heard about this.  It's fairly ridiculous, but I suppose that Gamestop has been in a long losing battle with the likes of Steam, so this is another act of desperation.  Ehh, I stopped giving them my business when they stopped carrying regular X-Box stuff.  I'm not really the market they're after anyway.

[Mr. Hamrick]

I only have a console for gaming and no PC.  (That's right, no PC.  I use a Mac.)

As a result, I usually go to this little independently owned game store that sells new and used games AND also does console repair

http://www.actiongamexchange.com/ is the their website.

but yeah... i generally try to avoid gamestop if i can.

[Kommando]

Opening a sealed game, removing contents, then reselling it as new is fraud or at the very least misrepresentation. I suspect they'll be going the way of Borders soon. Mind you the trend is that way anyways, my VIAO doesn't even have DVD drive. There's not really much reason too keep things on disc these days.

[Xenolith]

I had a bunch of GameStop stock a few years ago.  I sold it off.  The writing is on the wall for them, I think.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

The latest is that they've apologized and offered a 50 buck gift card and a buy 2 get 1 offer to all affected customers.  In addition, Square Enix has agreed to take back all unsold copies remove the coupons themselves.

[kkhohoho]

The latest is that they've apologized and offered a 50 buck gift card and a buy 2 get 1 offer to all affected customers.  In addition, Square Enix has agreed to take back all unsold copies remove the coupons themselves.

Which only confirms that GS didn't want anyone getting free copies of the game in the first place.

You know what you get if you replace the 'G' in 'GS' with 'B'? I'll let you all figure it out.

[Uncle Yuan]

I don't shop here much - only for used XBox games, which I don't think are much of a deal.  I will wait around to get my Arkham Asylum 2 pre-order then probably not go back.

[stumpy]

Interesting thread, and I disagree with GS' policy of removing the ads and promotional stuff. Basically, the customer should leave the store with everything the manufacturer says is in the box. If they don't want to sell what the manufacturer has packaged, then they can either just not carry it or work out a deal to get a differently packaged product to sell, which is apparently what eventually happened here.

However, it's also something of a matter of perspective whether or not this is really a "ripoff". I don't mean that customers don't often value the free few hours of online gaming or whatever is included with new software (I know that I sometimes do). I mean that, to a manufacturer and retailer, the promotions are often basically advertizing that's added to the product to help defer the cost of making it. It's kind of like the ads on the side of a free email account; whether or not you benefit from the sidebar ad about a local housewife who has discovered the key to weight loss, from Yahoo!'s perspective, that ad is primarily for the benefit of the advertiser, not for the email user. If Yahoo! decided to remove the ads, they probably aren't thinking they are depriving the email users of anything.