Video game retailers

[Istanbul]

Would you really want to wear the secondhand hat of some guy who shops at Game?

The other Infamous 2nd Son I ordered came with a new and sealed hat. Never worn. Never taken out the bag. Delighted with that one.

You win some you lose some I guess.

[SeanR]

 

There is no such clause. This was made up by greedy managers/regional managers who didn't want to impact on there stores profit and loss. Infact GAME were done by trading standards last year for this exact problem. By LAW they have to honour the 'we'll beat by £1' even if its a massive loss. They can limit the amount you trade though. Too many people were refusing this despite there being no small print to suggest otherwise.

 

Just remember that if a manager tries to fob you off. It was in strict written documents late last year/earlier this year that price beating means you do just that, no questions, no refusuals.

 

http://www.videogamer.com/news/asa_rules_in_favour_of_game_over_misleading_trade-in_price_match_offer.html

They're still allowed to refuse sports games though?

[fat flatulent git]

I hope Game survive, for now at least. I do enjoy browsing their second-hand games, and the shops always feel a bit cleaner than CEX, Cash Converters and the others.

[Rob Rymond]

They can refuse sports games for those special trade in offers like 'trade 3 games for x amount' but when I was there we were never told otherwise to stop trading sports games. I remember the time we had hundreds of Fifa 09 in stock preowned. And yes they can refuse to serve people but when a trade in offer says 'we will beat by £1', they cannot say otherwise.

I worked for them for six years until March this year as a senior sales and I can honestly say that we only banned two people for excessive trading as that was pretty much there day jobs to wheel and deal with HMV, Cex and us. One guy had thousands on his reward card and head office saw a pattern so decided to ban him from trading in.

[Mentazm]

What was the pattern? I need a new job.

[gossi the dog]

I did something similar a few years ago. HMV were on their knees after a poor Christmas and it was obvious it was only a matter of time before they'd go bust. I had a ton of Pure HMV points and was keen to use them up before HMV closed down. A lot of people had the same idea so all the cheap items had gone. By far the best item they still had was a Marvin Gaye poster for the equivalent of having spent £1,250 in HMV. The poster when new cost £125 and had long since sold out, so I decided I was going to do my utmost to get this. I was about £500 of spend short and obviously didn't want to spend that much money in HMV. So I bought a pile of Wii U games from CEX, traded them in for store credit at HMV (at a gain of £10 to £15 per game) and then spent that on cheap games that I could trade at a gain either back into CEX or Game depending on which offered me the most. Then repeated (purchasing numerous copies of stuff I could trade in for a gain at either CEX or HMV at Game). I think my net spend was around £50 in the end. I got the poster as well as a Wii U, a number of games, a few blu rays and a set of earphones for that and had more GAME and CEX store credit than what I started with.

[Transient Curse]

By far the best item they still had was a Marvin Gaye poster

From that line onwards the post stopped making sense.

[SeanR]

I made this face

[dumpster]

I took 20 shit games into game yesterday, expecting that I'd get the terrible prices I would have expected for such rubbish, but with a quid extra on each item. They gave me the total Cex price, plus a pound. That cant' be right can it? If I took 20 trips and put the items on a gift card, I'd be 19 quid better off....

[Guest]

Each transaction by a £1 not each trade.

[dreamylittledream]

Supposed to be that but I have be served by people in the Norwich store that were insistent it was £1 per transaction and would not budge so YMMV

[ridgeracer]

I took 20 shit games into game yesterday, expecting that I'd get the terrible prices I would have expected for such rubbish, but with a quid extra on each item. They gave me the total Cex price, plus a pound. That cant' be right can it? If I took 20 trips and put the items on a gift card, I'd be 19 quid better off....

But you would have to go into Game 19 times more and queue up 19 times too.

I'd pay £19 not to do this.

[dumpster]

But... You could just trade one game for value on a gift card, then as soon as the transaction is done, reach into the bag and pull out the next one... Over and over?

[Guest]

My local game are selling NHL 15 preowned for £48

£48. Preowned.

[angel]

Those EA sports games never lose value, id grab it.

[deerokus]

Yeah, not having a current gen console amd lately mostly playing on PC and handhelds, I was horrified when I went in and saw the prices for games on the xbone/ps4 in Game. New releases seem to be 50-55 quid?! They have even taken the opporchancity to bump up last gen prices, the new releases now seem to be 45 quid there.

It put me off a new console more than anything. Even if I bought one, I wouldn't be buying any games for it.

[angel]

Ive never paid that, you can get them for 40 quid and below 30 if you wait a month.

[Rob Rymond]

Each transaction by a £1 not each trade.

We used to match by £1 per game! As for the pattern of trade in, it was just the cycle over several years of constant price matching and trade ins!

[sandman]

It's £1 a game. Don't accept anything less. I got my bone from there about 6 weeks back and they beat cex on every one of the 30 or so games I traded in by £1 a game.

[Halo]

Game is offering double value on trade-ins on software today, but you must use the credit immediately (and they won't price-match).

[SeanR]

I think that just highlights their normal rates are shit.

[sandman]

Yep, their normal rates are fucking awful. And they get worse as time goes on.

[Nate Dogg III]

From the comments on that Facebook link they're offering £12 for Forza Horizon 2 and £7 for Mordor on ps4. Even with double trade in you'd probably still do better at cex.

[Halo]

They're offering £15 for pretty much every 3DS game I've got (e.g. Animal Crossing, Yoshi's New Island, Zelda). Doubled and that represents more than I paid for them, so it's a good deal for me.

[Mentazm]

I take it it's not double cash? There's nothing left in game I want to buy. My local is split into two, Xbox n PS. Don't think they've got anything else anymore.

[Halo]

No, it won't be, but you could always get Xbox/PS4/eShop/Steam credit

[angel]

From the comments on that Facebook link they're offering £12 for Forza Horizon 2 and £7 for Mordor on ps4. Even with double trade in you'd probably still do better at cex.

Even for game this is cheeky. I remember my old area manager there attempting to drill the trade in cycle to us. As far as he was concerned, every friday people should be selling us last week's release for 15 quid less and happy to do so. Any trade ins older than this were deservedly treated as small fry, and we were doing people a favour accepting their junk.

We had a guy who worked in carphone warehouse, a regular, would buy the major release every friday and trade in last weeks game, he totally bought into it. Paid 15 quid a week plus last weeks game, kept up his cycle of playing them. I couldnt grasp how he could accept having zero games in his collection, nothing to show for it. The store manager obviously loved him too and couldnt understand these other customers having a problem with our trade prices. But then without taking a breath, he would extoll the virtues of pre owned. We had GBA games in our preowned bin, I specifically remember Tony Hawk GBA being in it for £32.99 and my manager genuinely couldnt comprehend that this was a bum deal. You get the same game, he said, for 2 quid less! It plays the same! 2 fucking quid for a mangled box, GAME permanent marker over the barcode, someone elses undeletable save, and the fact we only paid someone 15 quid for it.

So many reasons why theyre cunts.

[StephenM]

And the trade in checker on their website won't work.

[Rowan Morrison]

My favourite Game story is from PS4 release day. I was there to pick up SM3DW, but of course there was a big queue for preordered console. Some poor sap was in front of me was expecting a Battlefield pack, but all they would sell with was a Knack pack. There were a few minutes of back-and-forth with him showing them a Battlefield preorder receipt, and them telling him it didn't guarantee him a release day pack, and him saying well you told me it would when you took my money and so on and so forth. It was pretty entertaining, given that if you're in a big queue in Game you'll pretty much clutch at the slightest diversion to occupy your mind.

Anyway eventually he resigns himself to his fate because he's arranged a PS4 night with his friends. So he's buying the Knack set and a separate copy of BF4. He shoots for the moon: can he swap the copy of Knack for a copy of BF4? No, obviously not - but, says the man at the desk, you could trade it in against a copy of BF4. Suddenly there's hope for our hero. Okay, great, I'll do that please. Q: How much do I get? A: £14. At this point he gestures to the display next to the till. "You're selling it for £54!" But he knows it's no use and he finally accepts his fate.

I'm pretty sure he went through the full seven stages of grief in the space of ten minutes. His appalled reaction to being obliged to buy Knack couldn't have been better. The staff were pretty obnoxious to him, but a week later they did let me have an extra Cat Mario key ring for my daughter, so it all balanced out in the end.

I did a big trade-in purge with Game for my PS4 a couple of weeks ago and it wasn't so bad - I checked all the prices beforehand and was happy enough with them, given the convenience of just being able to dump them all in one go. I suspect I would have gotten a little more at CEX, even in cash - but I've never known our CEX to admit to having any cash, and I certainly couldn't face another Limp Bizkit marathon.

Re. Angel's regular customer, we had a great indie shop in our town in the original Playstation's glory days - Games World (slogan: "It's good to save money"). We knew it as Smelly Shop. When you bought a game you were given a coloured, dated slip. For seven days after that you could trade the game back and pay £2.50 for another game. Two weeks and it was £7, or something like that. It was a wonderland! A wonderland with an angry manager. You could safely buy any old tat safe in the knowledge that you wouldn't get saddled with it or have to lie to Dixons about it not working when you knew they didn't have any more copies on the shelves. Also for some reason they had scores of copies of Suikoden when it came out and flogged them for under a tenner. Eventually they decided that Pokemon trading cards were the route to success and it seemed to ruin them, but it was a good run. It stank, though. You think CEX is bad, but honestly.

[sandman]

Rowan, you do realise that you could have got considerably (ie loads and loads) more if you had got them to beat CEX by a pound per trade. I made over £180 more doing that when I got my bone.