Video game retailers

[Dudley]

GAME do sell snacks now don't they?  He's welcome to try.

[Rayn]

5 hours ago, Jg15 said:

Was this actually a thing and if so, did anyone here ever have the stomach to try it?

 

[HarryBizzle]

I don’t suppose anyone roughly knows how much retailers will be paying in shipping for the new consoles? GAME are charging an extra £9.99 which just seems bonkers and I’m wondering how right I am in feeling ripped off. Especially as it says Royal Mail 48H. 

[djbhammer]

1 minute ago, HarryBizzle said:

I don’t suppose anyone roughly knows how much retailers will be paying in shipping for the new consoles? GAME are charging an extra £9.99 which just seems bonkers and I’m wondering how right I am in feeling ripped off. Especially as it says Royal Mail 48H. 

Most are free delivery. Simply Games, ShopTo, Game Collection etc. GAME are one of very few who charge but £9.99 is excessive for sure. 

[teddymeow]

Seeing as this is now a generic thread I'm going to have a moan about Argos.

 

Went to order a 2TB external hard drive from them today because they were the cheapest place that had it.

 

Put the item in my basket, went through the checkout procedure, paid by PayPal and then got an error message saying that they couldn't confirm my reservation and to wait 2 hours to see if I received a confirmation email. No email, no order.

 

3 hours later, still no email and after doing live chat the order hasn't gone through. I now have to contact PayPal to stop the payment - Argos can't do anything.

 

Clown shoes.

 

Bollocks to it. Amazon had a 5TB one for £125. Ordered that for Monday delivery.

[HarryBizzle]

46 minutes ago, djbhammer said:

Most are free delivery. Simply Games, ShopTo, Game Collection etc. GAME are one of very few who charge but £9.99 is excessive for sure. 

Yeah, I mean what a retailer will normally pay a delivery company. I just can’t imagine GAME are paying anywhere near £10/unit for delivery. 

[Ketchup]

They probably are. The size and weight alone would make it costly to ship and that’s ignoring the insurance add on.

[Captain Kelsten]

Saw a random gaming bible vid pop up on Facebook comparing trade in and cash values for 175 PS4 games between CEX and Game...the results speak for themselves. 
 

[moosegrinder]

Game have always desperately tried to make margin more important than value. As more and more shops died off their prices got worse, then the just flat out refused to match CEX. I know it's a common refrain in here but it's a wonder they're still going. The only thing they've got going for them is people's fear of buying pre-owned things.

[Dudley]

If you embrace reality and accept a business does need to make money, CEX are generally not bad.  Yes they're willing to push new items above RRP but they also offer a proportionate amount to buy those in.

 

GAME have often been pretty awful.

[dumpster]

With trade ins, the important figure is the overall spend, not the trade in price. CEX give higher trade ins, but I find a lot of their stock is priced at a similar amount to buying new elsewhere.  Recent releases seem to be the same price second hand as the supermarkets sell new. The trade in price isn't entirely relevant alone, it's how much you spend in your transaction that tells you if you got good value or not.

 

Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence tells me of some long standing Game mangers taking voluntary redundancy, game advertising manager vacancies at 16 hours per week, a move to have stores staffed without managers and only a handful of stores advertising for Xmas temps this year.  It sounds like some Game branches will be replaced by a cardboard standee in Sports Direct soon.  

 

[Girth Certificate]

On 15/11/2020 at 09:58, Dudley said:

GAME have often been pretty awful.

 

yeah, except when they nearly went out of business and started paying comedy money for copies of Fifa 2006 and 99p DS games from the CEX over the road  

 

I've held a grudge with them going all the way back to the Future Zone days when I traded in pretty much every megadrive game I owned for a copy of Theme Park, which was well shite on the Megadrive.

[Thor]

7 minutes ago, Welrain said:

Working in EB was so much fun, it saddens me to see game reduced to what it is.

Faceless and joyless.

Agreed. The two-ish years I worked for EB ('98 to 00) were fucking great for the most part (made better when @pulsemyne was working there). I still get nostalgic when I step into the Swansea GAME. Despite the layout being completely different now, it's still the same store in the same location.

[dumpster]

Do we have anyone on the forum working there now?  What's it like?

 

I worked for Game from the launch day of Actua Soccer on PS1 and left just before the Wii launch and it was a great time for the games market.   I really enjoyed working for Game, and the whole business changed when EB bought them.  Game was like a big, professionally supplied indie store, where EB was like Debenhams but with games.  EB didn't have any passion or enthusiams.  They started off selling greetings cards, moved into electronics, then games.  My area manager didnt play video games and generally seemed a  bit sneery towards those that did.  But the 'Game' era was great  

Getting free promo Dreamcast games, going to manager conferences and seeing all the new stuff coming out, it was an exciting time.  When I saw the manager job recently being advertised as a 16 hour position I wondered what questions they would ask at interview.  I really don't know what games I'm looking forward to (from a retail point of view there's not a lot that stands out other than the handful of next gen titles), the only thing I'm looking out for is Resident Evil 8 and that a while away.  But what would you say at interview to show them you're the right candidate?  Would you need a wide raging knowledge of Keyrings, baseball caps and Funkopops?  Or should they rename the store "Phone" and focus on the trade in of gadgets?  

 

It's a strange place these days and you just never see it busy. Who are they serving?

[Thor]

8 minutes ago, Welrain said:

I worked there in 98/99.

The phone rings, you pick it up and … "Is WWF Attitude out yet?"

 

[dumpster]

Thanks for calling Game where you can now buy the Sega Dreamcast for just £99 when you trade in your working PlayStation and any 10 working PlayStation games, D speaking, how can I help?

 

What?

 

I know, sorry, how can I help?

 

Is WWF Atti...

 

NO ITS NOT.

[earlymodernsteve]

18 minutes ago, dumpster said:

Thanks for calling Game where you can now buy the Sega Dreamcast for just £99 when you trade in your working PlayStation and any 10 working Games, D speaking, how can I help?

 

What?

 

I know, sorry, how can I help?

 

Is WWF No Mercy

 

NO ITS NOT.

 

Thanks Steve. Now I have to go back to therapy about you making us say those things back in 2000.

[pinholestar]

1 hour ago, Thor said:

The phone rings, you pick it up and … "Is WWF Attitude out yet?"

 

 

I too worked at EB for a few years circa ‘98-‘99 and it got to the point where we had to make multiple A4 signs displaying the delay/release date for WWF Attitude in large red letters and posted them all round the shop. Didn’t stop every single scrote crawling in off the street asking every 5 minutes though.

 

I have fond memories of working in the place for the most part although the pay was absolutely shameful (£3.75/hour ffs) and as it was my first proper job I had no idea that they basically exploited spotty 19 year olds to work for them for such a pittance as they didn’t know better and were just grateful to be working with games in some capacity.

 

Things like the Metal Gear Solid launch were great fun though. Setting up all the awesome merchandising artwork and getting to play and complete the game the weekend before it was officially released was a pretty big deal for me back then and I loved it. Also when the manager would come back from the annual conference with a box load of free shit that would be doled out like some sort of frenzied cattle market sale.

 

A simpler and more carefree time for sure.

 

Haven’t set foot in a high street videogame retailer for literally a decade or more, so I have no idea what they’re like these days but if their prices are anything to go by then I don’t imagine I’m missing much.

[Girth Certificate]

I bet nobody is hounding them for the newest WWE game  

[Down by Law]

I was at Gamestation from 2003-2009 so simply replace 'Is WWF Attitude out yet?' with

'Is Smackdown Here comes the Pain out yet'

'November 7th mate'

'ITS OUT AT ARGOS'

'THEN FUCKING BUY IT FROM THERE THEN YOU LITTLE SCROTE!!!'*

 

*dramatization: may not have happened

[Dudley]

1 hour ago, Welrain said:

Oh god.

 

 I remember when we used to sell the loyalty card..£3 I think it was.  It was hilarious on bundles where you’d explain that by spending £3 they’d get more back in vouchers and people would still say no.   We were monitored on how many loyalty cards could shift so we added them to bundles or discounted items by £3 to get people to take them.  There was also the stores where there was a secret loyalty card which they’d scan if the customer didn’t have one...so 100% of sales went to a loyalty card holder...they got caught when head office noted the size of some of the vouchers generated under the scheme. 
 

 

 

And this was because you actually got yelled at if you didn't hit a certain % of transactions.

 

We went the obvious step further than Welrain.  Many, many store cards so none of them ended up with huge numbers. You might choose to think it'd be even more convincing if the cards happened to be registered to people's friends so the points also got used.  I couldn't possibly comment.

 

Also never go 100%. Make sure you're about 10% above the minimum that won't get you yelled at

 

If nothing else, my time at GAME taught me to be REALLY suspicious about any and all metrics.

 

The other gameable one was at Blockbuster.  You had a maximum % of rental transactions that could be refunded without the store being in trouble.  We got very good at keeping our discs good etc so we were always well below this.

 

In reality we were 0.1% below this because of course the regular customers got freebies.  Especially when there was something we knew damn well someone would like, "Here try it on us".

 

(Related note : In the financial year I was at BB, the company was down 15%.  We were up 3, the only rise in our entire district.  It's almost like "targets are fucking meaningless" isn't it?)

[Girth Certificate]

13 minutes ago, Welrain said:

We got into trouble with head office once when we closed 5 mins early and one of our regulars turned up and we waved to him through the window. He complained and we all got a bollocking.  

 

you should have thrown him a beating. Drag him into an alleyway and be all like 'Eddie Honda sends his regards' before putting the boots to him.

[wretcherd]

3 hours ago, Welrain said:

And the 10 day return policy which a couple of customers would abuse

[Dudley]

36 minutes ago, Welrain said:

Yes the metrics ruined it (or contributed to the fun I suppose as you made up ways to beat the system) and Americanism of the customer service really was a killer. The “do you need any help” as soon as someone walked in the door came in during my time...it was awful and I cringe when people have to do it to this very day.  
 

and the totting up the till and cleaning after the shop was closed, which was after you’d supposed to have finished.

 

We got into trouble with head office once when we closed 5 mins early and one of our regulars turned up and we waved to him through the window. He complained and we all got a bollocking.  In a staggering coincidence  I’d move 200 miles away and end up working alongside this guy....

 

The related one at Blockbuster are the idiots complaining when they got charged for a late return because it was 22:10 and staff were still inside.

 

Yes, running the End of day you immense prick.  A process that I don't think you need to be technical to understand might have required the day to end.

[dumpster]

3 hours ago, earlymodernsteve said:

 

Thanks Steve. Now I have to go back to therapy about you making us say those things back in 2000.

I was only following orders!

 

Do you remember the Porsche Challenge one, it's on the tip of my tongue, it was another twister.

[dumpster]

2 hours ago, Welrain said:

Oh god.

 

 I remember when we used to sell the loyalty card..£3 I think it was.  It was hilarious on bundles where you’d explain that by spending £3 they’d get more back in vouchers and people would still say no.   We were monitored on how many loyalty cards could shift so we added them to bundles or discounted items by £3 to get people to take them.  There was also the stores where there was a secret loyalty card which they’d scan if the customer didn’t have one...so 100% of sales went to a loyalty card holder...they got caught when head office noted the size of some of the vouchers generated under the scheme. 
 

 

Also if you used the loyalty lookup and searched for Darth Vader, he had hundreds of loyalty cards all over the country.  Many managers had the same uninspired names that popped into their heads when filling in loyalty incompletes.

[dumpster]

1 hour ago, Dudley said:

 

And this was because you actually got yelled at if you didn't hit a certain % of transactions.

 

We went the obvious step further than Welrain.  Many, many store cards so none of them ended up with huge numbers. You might choose to think it'd be even more convincing if the cards happened to be registered to people's friends so the points also got used.  I couldn't possibly comment.

 

Also never go 100%. Make sure you're about 10% above the minimum that won't get you yelled at

 

If nothing else, my time at GAME taught me to be REALLY suspicious about any and all metrics.

 

The other gameable one was at Blockbuster.  You had a maximum % of rental transactions that could be refunded without the store being in trouble.  We got very good at keeping our discs good etc so we were always well below this.

 

In reality we were 0.1% below this because of course the regular customers got freebies.  Especially when there was something we knew damn well someone would like, "Here try it on us".

 

(Related note : In the financial year I was at BB, the company was down 15%.  We were up 3, the only rise in our entire district.  It's almost like "targets are fucking meaningless" isn't it?)

One Game store I will not name used to get really busy during the annual illuminations when people would visit the town's famous tower.  They scored 106% as their loyalty swipe rate for the month and the manager (for the sake of anonymity I'll call him Jack Poole) was confident that the area manager wouldn't spot that they had been swiping cards on everything but not on refunds, but at our next regional meeting she held up that result as the target we should be aiming for  and congratulated Dave sorry, Jack, and gave him a bottle of wine.  The same area manager told us all that she expected us to be "above regional average" and no-one seemed to be able to explain to her that it's not possible for everyone to be above average.  Nightmare when you work in that environment.

[Jazz Glands]

I remember all this stuff well. Worked at EB Stevenage between 97, through the Game days until about 2004. Those first couple of years in particular were great. Still have some of the  funnier made up loyalty card names/addresses printed off on receipt rolls somewhere. 
Taking home some awesome standees was a great perk too, as well as winding up the shopping centre security nobbers over the radio, not to mention the pre-owned Sku swapping free for all that went on. Newly released game on a 7603? Don’t mind if I do 

[George Clooney]

At one of the stores by me (not the one I worked at though) they sacked someone because they would swipe their own reward card for every other person that didnt have one.  The big brainiac didnt think they'd notice because he "was careful not to do every transaction that didnt have one".  Another guy would just randomly search a bunch of people so he had a list where he'd add points to a random persons.  Another person used to just do them "free" and knock the money off under the student discount reason and hoped no one noticed.

 

Them were the days....

 

[Vespa Alex]

11 minutes ago, Welrain said:

The preowned sku system was hilariously broken.  One of my colleagues would also try to trade in stuff for the lowest price possible, ignoring the recommended prices. Plenty of doctoring going on by staff and customers.

 

also shoplifters...I caught so many.  We did the whole disc in drawers thing but not the peripherals so they would walk.  We also used to pile up the trade ins beside the till...until someone swiped them one day..Not just one but about 20 ps games in one go.  We all thought a different staff member had moved them until the realisation dawned.

 

 

A general retail shenanigans thread would be pretty good, I think.