Pre-Order Pushers

I just found your site for the first time tonight and I know all to well about the pre-order program.  I am a manager at a GameStop in NC and trust me, it gets old to us too.  I was really surprised to read some of the testamonials that people left on your site, but I understand their pain at the same time.  At my store, we are not preorder pushers.  I hate the guys that are to be honest with you.  I train my guys to give the best possible customer service that they can and sometimes that means going against what the “company” wants you to do.  Technically, we are supposed to ask EVERYONE if they wanna preorder stuff, becuase if our “numbers” do fall and they stay low, we can lose our jobs.  But we get EXTREMELY tired of going “Hey you want this?” or “Check this out!” It really sucks.  As individual stores we USED to be ranked on the number of reserves and subscriptions that we got per-month but just recently that changed.  They are no longer our biggest concern.  Im not saying that pre-orders are not important. I honestly can say that I pre-order lots of things for myself.  Not that Im worried I wont be able to get one, but I pre-order becuase I like to pay it off over a few months instead of dropping 64.04 at one time on every new PS3/360 game I get.

Even as a GS employee I hate pre-order pushers myself. But the fact is, we have to ask, at least a little.  I am by no means sticking up for POP’s but I just wanted to kinda interject my opinion to your site.  I think you guys are doing a great job with it and weirdly I am in no way against it, even though its all about my company. lol.  Thank you for your time and I really would like to hear back from you and find out how you feel about my response.

from Steve

Store: GameStop
Location: Torrington, CT
Employee Description: Dark blonde hair w/ goatee
Submitted By: MrFuNKy76

I went into GameStop last Wednesday to purchase Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - not a blockbuster/hard to find type of game IMO - I figured I’d be able to run in and grab it during my lunch break.

I walked into the GameStop, looked around and didn’t see it so I asked the clerk who was working there that day.  Here is how the conversation went:

Me: Hi, I was wondering if you had R6V2.
Clerk: Did you preorder it?
Me: No, I didn’t.
Clerk: When are you guys going to realize you need to preorder the hot new games?
Me: (silent)
Clerk: Did you learn your lesson this time?
Me: (Walked out of the store.)

This guy was an arrogant ass. I left the store, drove next door to Circuit City, picked up my game and left. This preordering is total BS when I can go right next door to CC and purchase it.

This is the last time I buy any game from GameStop unless I absolutely have to.

Store: GameStop
Location: Aberdeen, NJ
Employee Description: Male Sales Clerks
Submitted By: Amy C

I’m a regular reader of Pre-Order Pushers and I have to relay this incident that happened to me at my local GameStop this weekend.

I stopped in to see if there was a chance that I might find a used copy of Trauma Center for the Nintendo DS for my husband. He had express an interest in playing Trauma Center: Second Opinion for the Wii. I had told him the game controls made the game kind of difficult and he should try the DS version instead.

There was only one other customer in the store (male) and the two sales clerks (males also). One of the clerks acknowledged my presence by asking, “Is there anything I can explain to you?” I gave him a quick no and went straight to the DS racks. What kind of asinine question is that! When my husband came in ten minutes later to look for me he asked him, “Is there anything I can help you with?” I’m really annoyed by that. Just because I am a female does not make me ignorant about video games. I happen to be an avid gamer, own several game systems and a ton of games for each system and very up to date on the buzz of new and upcoming games. So I really resent that question.

Thanks for letting me rant.

This ex-manager is responding to this post.

Hello!

I found your website yesterday while doing some research on GameStop and their pre-order practices.  I’m not a disinterested person; I’m a former EB Games manager who stayed six months past the merger and realized that GameStop was run by a bunch of morons.

Sounds like I have an axe to grind.  I don’t, really.

I was curious if you had any posts on anyone I might possibly have known or known of, and I came across this one about Myrtle Beach: http://preorderpushers.com/blog/2007/06/08/microsoft-isnt-making-any-360s/

The manager in question was named Anna.  I met her at the manager’s conference in Las Vegas in the fall of 2005.  I liked the writer’s description of her.  It’s pretty bang-on.

The anecdote related about the store also involved the district manager.  And it closes with:

“I tried to get back in touch with that district manager, but always  got an automated voice mail. About a month later, I was told over the phone that he no longer worked for the company.”

The district manager’s name was Steve Wood.  Steve did not, in fact, leave the company.  He was promoted to regional manager in the summer of 2006 in the Charlotte, North Carolina area.  Steve, as a district manager, was always out for number one, and if he could score points by doing something underhanded he would.

I don’t know if any of these people are still with the company.  When I left EB/GameStop, I also left the area, and eventually all my contacts in the area likewise left the company.

What I discovered was that EB Games had done a great deal to empower its store managers to make decisions.  At GameStop the worst thing a manager could do is -make- a decision.  Original thinking was rewarded at EB Games, but it was grounds for termination at GameStop.

I wish the company well, but I think that eventually the pre-order/trade-in cycle will come back to haunt them.  Shipments are based on pre-orders, which means that low pre-orders result in smaller shipments.  Smaller shipments means not many games are sold, which means there’s a smaller pool of games to buy back in the trade-in program.

That doesn’t even address vendor backlash.

Eventually, GameStop’s priorities will -have- to change.

Anyway, lest I ramble on longer, I wanted to give you some information on the Myrtle Beach story.  The reality is, two years on, Steve Wood was blowing the customer off.

Submitted by: Allyn

This is an open letter to any GameStop employees who frequent this excellent site: be smart about where you put those price stickers.  This seems like a picky request, but think about it this way: I’m not going to pay good money for a shirt with a hole in it or a book with water damage, so why should I buy a game with irremovable sticker gunk all over it?

I don’t agree with GameStop’s policy of selling opened games as “new”, but I have come to accept that it’s a practice that the company is not willing to change.  But a few days ago my wife bought a NEW copy of My Sims for the Wii, only to find out that the guy who put the price sticker on the spine didn’t put it on the plastic case: he stuck it right to the paper insert!  Stickers don’t come easily off of paper, and even when it does we can’t use any sort of gunk remover to get rid of the nasty black residue left on the clean white spine without ruining the insert.  So we paid brand new price for a game that looks used when sitting on my DVD rack (yes, some people do care what their games look like when they’re on display in the family room).  I thought this was a one-time thing, some jackass putting a sticker where it doesn’t belong, until I went to a different GameStop and bought a copy of Digital Devil Saga 2… same sticker stuck straight on the paper insert. Luckily DDS2 has a reversible insert with an alternate cover so I didn’t have to risk ripping it by removing the sticker.

This is a very easy issue to fix, which the GameCrazy down the street already does.  When putting the sticker in the spine of a game, don’t remove it from it’s backing.  It won’t fall out because it’s folded over the spine, but after purchasing the game I can easily remove it because it’s not stuck to anything.  Your management seems to have no problem angering customers by selling used games as new, but at least you have the power to minimize that anger by keeping them in new-like condition.

Submitted by Jbourrie

next-gen.biz:

The silent fury of publishers toward their retail “partners” is a palpable force in game industry politics. Retailers such as GameStop, with its powerful network of 5,000 frontline stores, are coining up to $1 billion a year in used game revenues in North America alone. Add Europe and you’ve got to think about almost doubling that number. Publishers don’t see a dime, nor even a eurocent of the money.

Sorry, but for $60 a pop,  Daddy can’t always afford to buy the kid a ‘NEW’ game.  GameStop isn’t the only place that sells used games either, swap-meets, mom and pop game stores, pawn shops - they all sell used games.  GameStop however is the largest and most visible target.

Ars Technica:

“In the past year, none of the 12 [Slackers locations] have sold any Wiis except for a one-time promotional deal, where we did force customers to buy a game with it,” the employee told Ars Technica. “The real crime is that we get Wii shipments regularly. In fact, right now we have about 20, but none of them make it to the store front. They all get put on the store’s eBay site at a minimum $499.99 buying price.”

Submitted by: Dan

Submitted by: Javado Beckett

I work at Gamestop.

I do it because my store manager really is a very cool and nice person to work with, I am not given too many hours as I am a student, and we aren’t open very late or early so it’s not too hard to juggle it with school. Being surrounded by video games is a nice plus. However, I despise the company and our regional manager and think pitting stores against each other to get more reservations and subscriptions makes the situation absolutely terrible for our customers. And yes, the company does still grade stores on reservations and subscriptions.

I’ve heard about “double subbing,” or charging certain customers twice for the Game Informer subscription to get two subscriptions instead of one. I’ve heard of game insurance being applied to batteries and candy as well as being automatically appended to bills of more clueless-looking customers. This doesn’t happen very much at my store, but I won’t lie- numbers mean more to some employees more than others. I wondered why the more flagrant abuse of customers occurred at other stores in the region more than my own. At least half of it is the fact that my manager is a very honest person, but the major reason why we are pretty decent to our customers is that our store is the most highly trafficked one and second in the entire region.

If you feel the need to shop at Gamestop, I have two pieces of advice for you. The most important one is to patronize the store with the most decent employees. A good rule of thumb, though, is to frequent the busier store. If a store has thirty transactions in a one hour period, it’s more likely that a few of the customers will reserve or subscribe to Game Informer than a store with two transactions. The busier store will not take offense at your (hopefully polite) refusal, seeing further opportunities in other customers. A less busy store, on the other hand, sees your reserve as literally life or death. Therefore, they’re more likely to use underhanded tricks because a lower proportion of people genuinely wants to reserve or subscribe out of their own volition or benefit.

If you do find a store with employees you like, reserves are like tips at a bar. If you do it enough, the bartender may swing you a free beer.

We have a lot of cool stuff in the back.

Scientific American:

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told a telephone news conference that shoppers who pay the full price of about $249 for an out-of-stock Wii on December 20 and 21 at retailer GameStop Corp <GME.N> will get a certificate promising a Wii “sometime in January.”

The program is exclusive to GameStop. The executive declined to say how many units would be available, but noted that the video game specialty retailer had “many tens of thousands” of rain checks.

“We expect this to be a very strong program and … a great way for consumers who desperately want a Wii to be able to have something to put under the tree — a certificate that guarantees their family will be able to get a system in January,” he said.

Is it just me, or is this just a fancy way of saying, “Pre-Order your Wii now, and you’ll get it when it comes in?” Same bullsh*t different name! Raincheck=Pre-Order

“A great way for consumers who desperately want a Wii to have something to put under the tree.”  What!? A little piece of paper that says that one day you might get a Wii? Sounds a lot like a pre-order to me. Only Gamestop gets the whole $249.99 up front instead of the usual, what is it now? $50 to “pre” a console now?

I think Nintendo initiated this whole thing, so I feel a little better about it, but not much.
Hit the link for the rest of the article.