If there's one thing I learned in when in retail, the store's only as good as its employees and management.
There's tons of Gamestop's around my area. I've shopped at one particular store in the mall the moment I got my 'Cube back in December 2001. They had good staff, made honest suggestions of what games/accessories to buy, and were never too pushy. Almost needless to say, they had my business for a while.
But something happened. Whether it was sudden management change, or all the employees went elsewhere, their quality tanked. The staff was obnoxious, disrespectful, and had to audicity to push their promotions. I remember going in picking up Icewind Dale (since I'm a fan of Baldur's Gate type games), and the employee, said something like "Dude, you why you're playing that? Its sooo dated..." He rang me up, and tried to sell me some Gameinformer. I don't know where the manager was at that point, but I never visted that establishment again.
In an odd twist, there was a Gamestop right across the street. The one in the mall was known as Babbages (good times, good times), and the one across the street was a FuncoLand. I gave them a try, and oddly enough, some of the employees from the mall worked there. Once again, I was graced with good service, so good that they finally sold me a subsciption to Game Informer. But quicker than you can say "Trade-in", new management came in and service rock-bottemed.
There aren't too many Ebgames in my immediate metro-area. I stumbled a newly built one around spring 2k4, and walked in to see what its like. They just about waited on me hand and foot. I found my sweet spot. I still get great service to this day.
I still frequent there today, without few complaints. The only two I have are A)Weak trade-in prices B) They get a little pushy when I go to the register. Considering my other option, the strengths far outweigh the weaknesess.
NOW, about the topic at hand, this merger scares me. Its bad enough that on paper, they're basically twins. But at least there was an option. GameStop put a 'stop' to all the mom-and-pop gamer-shops in my area.
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Karl says: Unfortunately, with less competition in the used/trade-in games market, this will probably mean you'll get less money for games you trade in as well as paying more for used games. Hopefully the lack of risk won't go to GameStop's head.
Wishful thinking I'm afraid. Aside from the hobby-shops who might have a gamespace (and give you a better deal), There's no reason for them to be fair. Nobody else does what they do on a national-scale. You're almost better off keeping your old games and hawk them on Ebay, sell them to a friend, etc.
Topic: GameStop Eats EB (Read 9210 times)
