Opposable Thumbs, Ars Technica's gaming personality, has a story up today that I'm sure is going to piss a lot of people off. Apparently, Ben, the author, purchased Twilight Princess right around the launch of the Wii, from Gamestop. He played it a bit, probably thought it wasn't the next coming of Christ, and placed it on his shelf to be forgotten next to his copies of The Lost Boys and Hard to Kill. Recently, though, he was phoned by Gamestop's automated phone service (cleverly named Aeris), with the following message;
"We hope you're enjoying your copy of Twiliight Princess, but if you're finished with it, why don't you bring it to the store and trade it in? We're willing to give you $35 in trade for your copy of Twilight Princess...."
That's the point at which he hung up. Of course, if he had stayed on the phone, I'm sure Gamestop would have offered him oral for a twenty or their entire New Jersey division for a fifty.
Telemarketing is the sixth ring of Hell, according to Dante, right between the fifth ring (where you have to stuff your eye sockets full of scorpions) and the seventh (Kentucky), but stooping to the point where you are hounding your own customers to resell you games that you sold them in the first place is a brand new low. This is the retail equivalent of a man trying desperately to jam his two month old child back into his wife's uterus, because she wasn't full of the delicious candy that his wife had promised him.
The moral of the story, kids, is that babies are not fun, and Gamestop is some how even less fun.
Contest:
4:10 AM on 02.16.2007
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I wonder if you'd get the same call if you bought a used game lol.
Oh ya.
Come to think of it, they can call me, those fuckers have my phone number.
only good thing about it.
They got a funcoland(which is now gamestop) at a ghetto in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The idea of people robbing their neighbor to unload those stolen games at funcoland(now gamestop) cross their mind.
DOES ANYONE ELSE have the creepiest people working at their gamestop?
maybe its cause the touring freak show broke down near me.
Damn game stop workers are fucking weird..
For the record, their phone number is:817-251-1016.
If you see that one in your caller ID, skip answering it. And it's an autodialer, so no one answers when you call it back.
http://www.weeklygeekshow.com/2007/02/gamestop_is_broken_heres_how_t.php
Liked the article! Personally I avoid dedicated game stores as much as I can, and never buy used or trade-in anymore. I'd rather give an older game to a friend or relative rather than get a small amount of credit, and knowing that the publishers and developers are getting nothing for the sale of a used game made me stop buying pre-owned long ago.
Just a quick example: when I worked at EB Games, a new Gamecube: $109.99. How much EB made from said new Gamecube: ~$10. Pre-played/refurbished Gamecube: $90. How much EB made from said pre-played Gamecube: $90 ( give or take the price to fix/re-box it ).