Topic: Let's moan about stupid wit less staff at video game retailers - ah come on!

[Mop it up]

I don't really have experiences with moronic employees, but boy do I hate those stickers. I remember when they used to put those smack on the label of cartridge games... A nightmare!

[lolmonade]

I've found it's really contingent on which Gamestop you go to as to whether or not you have a good experience.  When I lived in Illinois, I had a litany of different small video game shops to choose from, and yet, every Gamestop I went to had garbage employees that didn't know anything about how to be a good customer service rep OR would force me to say no 3-4 times when asking if I wanted a "protection plan", Power-Up Rewards, or to pre-order games that there'll be dozens of copies of at any store not named Gamestop (or Target, lately).
 
Since moving to North Carolina, there's nothing but Gamestops & a similar chain called Play-N-Trade.  My local Gamestop has mostly kind, knowledgeable, and accomodating reps.  The ones in the malls are terrible, probably because they care more about taking care of the ridiculous amount of foot traffic they get.
 
You'd think the ones in IL would be forced to hire people that would make Gamestop the most approachable choice given all their competition, but just goes to show you a Gamestop is only as good as the people in that particular store.

[Oblivion]

They ask you like that because they have to. Hate the company, not the wage slave.

[Kyle98632]

First off I have to say I actually love my city's Gamestop. The people there are pretty nice and usually are helpful. And they all have DS's so I know I get to streetpass at least 4 or 5 people, even on a slow day there lol.

But, one really frustrating lack of Nintendo knowledge on their part happened not too long ago with me. My visiting mom brought her dog over to my house. A dog who thought it would be a good idea to crew through the cord that recharges the Wii U's gamepad. Asking them at Gamestop if they had any new ones, one employee told me that the recharging cord is the same for the gamepad as for the 3DS. I was fairly sure that was not right and when I said I think the plug in was much smaller for the 3DS another employee them jumped in and said that he personally uses the same cable to recharge his 3DS and Wii U gamepad all the time.

I go home and sure enough find that the cords are not the same. So I head back over there with the game pad and 3DS cord and showed them they aren't the same. After doing some "research", another employee told me that you can not buy the cord to recharge the game pad, and the only thing I could do is buy this recharging station made by Energizer. So like a fool I gave in and bought it for $30. It stunk given the short battery life of the Game Pad as you can not use it to charge and play at the same time. After about 2 weeks of this hell I did what I should have done in the first place, go to Nintendo's website, and literally the next day had a cord at my front door for $19.

So when it comes to the Wii U I think I will skip their advise in the future.

[BlackNMild2k1]

You should always bypass their advice regardless of the system and do your own research first. Only once you know what you are looking for and that they have it available at the best price you could find, should you wander into that store.

That's pretty much how i shop at every store nowadays when it comes to electronic related items (games, cords, hardware).

[lolmonade]

They ask you like that because they have to. Hate the company, not the wage slave.

I understand it's the company policy.  I worked in retail, and hated that they rated me on how many credit card applications I could pull every month, even though I worked as a stock & display worker who only was at a register to help check-out a catalog order (people who 99% of the time already had a store CC).
 
That said, there's clearly something about an individual store's environment that can make those transactions either 1) tolerable, quick, & painless or 2) ongoing, frustratingly persistent, & almost antagonistic in approach.  And anecdotally, I personally won't go back to a Gamestop (or any store) that takes the car salesman approach to it (#2).

[pokepal148]

You should always bypass their advice regardless of the system and do your own research first. Only once you know what you are looking for and that they have it available at the best price you could find, should you wander into that store.

That's pretty much how i shop at every store nowadays when it comes to electronic related items (games, cords, hardware).

Either that or if you are basically digging through the used game collection.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I don't buy used. /snob

[pokepal148]

I don't buy used. /snob

I dont either if I have the option

[Stratos]

You should always bypass their advice regardless of the system and do your own research first. Only once you know what you are looking for and that they have it available at the best price you could find, should you wander into that store.

That's pretty much how i shop at every store nowadays when it comes to electronic related items (games, cords, hardware).

Most people should be able to educate themselves at a moments notice. Smartphones can look up most any product for prices, reviews and comparisons. I always cross reference my purchases on Amazon. The one time I didn't was an impulse buy of Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm at Frys. I get home and discover it was cheaper on Amazon with free shipping. So I ordered that and returned the Frys game the next week.

They ask you like that because they have to. Hate the company, not the wage slave.

And I do not blame the company. People's attitude make all of the difference. If it were exclusively the company's fault then EVERY Gamestop would be a trash heap. But everyone I've ever talked to here and elsewhere usually know of at least one GS that has awesome people there. This shows that it is not the policy, but people's interpretation and execution of the policy. So really, I blame the person behaving poorly (because they are choosing to behave that way) and local management. Local management can make or break a store. I've seen this in the restaurant biz when I was a manager there. Have an awesome group of leads and everything works better. But have mediocre leads (or people who choose to be tools to the letter of the law instead of the spirit in which it was written) and the store reflects that in it's team and the customer suffers for it.


In the end, the human element will make any experience vary despite how much corporations try to standardize everything.

[smallsharkbigbite]

That's life in general.  You can choose to believe that you get shortchanged and screwed in things you do and there is nothing you can do and take it out on others.  Or you can choose to work hard, have a positive attitude, and be kind to others because they are people too.


Most people choose the former and there is always a variety of reasons they use for their behavior.