From an old Reddit post of mine:
If you buy an item and the seller sends one that differs significantly from the description or is defective, you have the right to reject the item and require the seller to retrieve it at their expense - no matter what the seller’s return policy says. You also have the right to a full refund. Rightful Rejection is part of state law and based on the Uniform Commercial Code. It is also written into Visa International’s rules. Don’t believe Citibank representatives or anyone else who tells you otherwise.
If you don’t want to pay new prices for a used item, it’s 100% up to GameStop to make it right. They have to pay to retrieve it and for return shipping. They have to give you a full refund on everything, including shipping charges.
priced like new
And that’s why we need to read the tiny letters folks!
New to you, I suppose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Recently went into a gamestop for the first time in a while. Immediately wondered what happened. $25 dropship shirts, OLD (5, 6 year +) titles for $30+, just kinda barebones over all. Sorry that happened to you bud, hopefully you don’t get bullshitted if you try to fix it.
If they’re selling them at a retail location, it’s not a dropship
They were basically a failing company before the whole WSB stock manipulation. Now they have money again, but no useful business model.
What, you don’t like Pop! figurines of decade-old niche franchises?
Ew is GameStop doing that too?
All the comic book stores are becoming Funko pops, board games, and some graphic novels in the back stores.
But they sell retro games too! Yeah, that little shelf in the middle beside the shirts. No, the really skinny one. The one with one obscure GameCube game, 2 OG Xbox games, and a bunch of crappy Disney Channel DS games. Yeah, that’s the one. They sell retro games!
GameStop is still in business??? I haven’t seen one in years lol! I thought they went bankrupt because of this exact kind of bullshit they always used to pull
Come on. People actually believe this guy believes GameStop went out of business? There are 2500 of them in the US and like 8 around Columbia SC where this guy posts pictures from in the reg. Stop being suckers.
Well they did close many, many stores just before the whole stock market shorting thing. Like my area had like 12 and now there is only 1 still in operation. Some areas probably have 0 stores in operation, making it seem like they went belly up.
What exactly is it that you think I’m “suckering” people in to? I’m sorry I haven’t scoured the entire town looking for shitty overpriced used game stores… 🙄
They almost did, but then there was the whole thing with people getting stock and holding, and that actually ended up on helping GS. How long they will hold out is still debatable though. Mostly because of things like this post and the other comments. They used to be great, but because of stuff like that, i refuse to order from them at this point. And there’s a retro game store near me that actually has a ton of switch games. More than any GS I’ve been to. So I don’t see a reason to go into one in person. Not to mention the rise in digital games.
Don’t gloss over the stock issues. That was straight up Q-Anon shit with the CEO sending them secret messages because of the SEC or some absolute insane bullshit.
It was a giant “fuck you” to greedy hedge funds. Pretty diverse crowd got in on it.
Please link to the CEO’s Q connection. I tried but couldn’t find any relationship besides that time the SEC commissioner compared WSB smooth brains to the Q-morons that stormed the capitol.
It’s not that the CEO himself was Q like. It’s that SuperStonks went nuts about how the CEO had a plan he was telegraphing to them through coded messages. I am NOT going to try and look at that cesspool to find examples, but it’s pretty much all they posted about on reddit.
You aren’t kidding. I bought 2 shares at the start of the hoopla just for fun. Then I watched as that subreddit just slowly went off the rails over the next several months. People could not accept that “DRS and HODL” wasn’t making everyone rich, so they started inventing looney tunes conspiracy theories.
I do appreciate the spotlight it put on the abomination of hedge funds, but ultimately there’s no real change to be had out of this. That was proven when Robinhood or whatever it’s called got off scott free in their lawsuit a while back.
Oh gotcha. It seemed more like you were implying th CEO was playing along. Now your statement makes more sense, but saying the assumed coded messages were all that the WSB people were posting about is quite hyperbolic. That was a small minority of what people were talking about in that forum in the first half of 2021. I was in there for the entertainment value reading along the whole time, and I barely saw any of that conspiratorial nonsense, and when I did, there were plenty of people ridiculing it from the getgo.
By the time the last of four (!) Gamestops in my town finally closed, I am certain it had more square footage devoted to Rick and Morty shit than it did to video games.
Return that immediately. I worked for gamestop for about 6 years from 11-16. It was a horribly run company that should be a relic of the past like circuit city and blockbuster. Executive management would rather mild tiny profits than make pro-consumer changes that would draw in gamers (things like tournaments were actively discouraged).
I really hated that gamestop became a meme stock. It meant executive made a lot of money from no effort on their own. I would have much rather seen their shares go to zero and then get bought for pennies on the dollar, leaving the top brass on their ass.
I’m glad you said this. I was really confused by the meme stock phase.
As a consumer, they never felt like a great company to deal with. They were just convenient being located nearby. Trade-ins always felt like cons.
Tbf part of it was that a lot of senior management was let go and fresh blood was brought in to revitalize the company.
What are they doing to keep themselves relevant exactly?
Disclaimer: own stonks, so not exactly unbiased opinion here
From what I know they’re overhauling customer service to A) prevent stuff like with OP and B) make sure the customer isn’t disgruntled even if it happens. Not sure how successful they’ve been in that regard but at least it’s what managament claims they’re focusing on with seemingly at least some improvement. Aside from that there’s a couple experimental stores in Italy aiming for a more netcafe style service than the current store model as well as inventory/logistics slimming. They also announced a web3 game marketplace but last I checked there were no games but only loads of NFT vomit on there so not sure if that’s panning out as they intended it. Company is managing to become profitable though, last two quarters they beat estimates by a landslide and this quarter was almost profitable (iirc q2 hasn’t been profitable for them in ages).
I think key will be regaining customer trust, I see a lot of bad blood around with GameStop and I think if the company wants any chance at survival they need to work on clearing their image. They could offer the best service in the world but if people don’t trust their Customer Service that won’t matter.
Thanks for your input. I posted elsewhere in a comment about treating customers well that this hasn’t been the case imo. Nor do they treat employees well. Most of their stores are filled with collectibles, poor quantities of titles anyone wants, and absolutely abysmal support of anything goes wrong. It took me 9 weeks to get a gift card refunded after they oversold a product and left it as “pending” for a month. Each time I had to phone in was 60 mins on hold with just hold music and no indication there was anyone there to help me. Everyone I spoke to was friendly, but they couldn’t do anything about it, and those that could were not customer raving, gave no communication what so ever, and wouldn’t communicate back to anyone that I could talk to. It taught me to never use a GameStop gift card, and never buy online.
Management have been replaced, they are not the same company they once were. Ryan Cohen has taken the reigns and is currently driving the company with a focus on the customer. The guy from Chewy
They raised the cost of their Pro membership from $15 to $25. They fill most of their stores up with collectibles, have very little stock of anything. Have absolutely abysmal phone support for any problems (hour+ hold times, no call back options, needing faceless escalations you just have to trust will be resolved in weeks). Have misleading pricing online including advertising prices incorrectly by subtracting available $5 rewards or percentage off deals on certain but not all pages. Oversell products online, wait 6 weeks to cancel and actual refund people.
They treat their employees like commission based sales people but pay them terribly with no commission. Managers often have to manage two stores.
They’ve tried changing the terms of their pro membership mid-subscription.
They are Blockbuster circa 2004.
But their CEO posts funny things on twitter that gets reposted to reddit, that must mean they’re a good company!
Yeah, people forget that Gamestop basically ran all of their favorite local game and card shops out of business. They should not be celebrated.
Fuck now I want to invent a game hangout space that has indie game tournaments, sells games, cards and comics and regularly holds tournaments. Online gambling is legal now, right as long as its base off a skilled game? Stream that shit and take bets…
I try to patronize my local game shops as much as I can. I’m not into card or board games which limits where I go but I’m lucky enough to have a few local game stores that sell a lot of retro games for fair prices.
Of course with new games (I still like to buy physical quite often) I generally have to buy from the big stores but I make it a point to avoid gamestop.
As a casual yugioh enjoyer that went to Barnes and noble every few Saturdays to play and trade, I never saw GameStop even try to compete. I can’t imagine it had any impact on running game/card shops out of business.
I may be older than you. But there used to be a lot of those combo game stores when I was a kid I used to call them “the fun shop” as a child. Only the stores that had enough card volume survived, everyone else lost their business to Gamestop or another store that Gamestop ended up buying. So yeah, there are a few card places that do tourneys, Gamestop never really got into that business so if your sales were heavily card/comic based you had a chance to survive.
GameStop still exists?
What am I missing? I’m assuming this is not new for some reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The original absolutely does not use that packaging
TIL: Thank you 🙂
So, here’s what probably happened.
Physical GameStop stores will usually open a handful of new games that they receive, so that they can put the boxes on the shelves. But the boxes are empty. You take the box from the shelf for the game you want to buy, bring it to the counter, and they go into a locked drawer that has their stock of games, and they put the game into the box, and then sell it to you. This is assuming that they don’t have any unopened copies available; usually they will, but if you’re unlucky and happen to catch them at the end of their stock for a particular title, you might get one that’s been opened so that the box can be used on display.
Unfortunately, a lot of would-be thieves don’t realize that the boxes on the shelves are empty, and steal them. So if you’re really unlucky, you’ll get a generic box that they print out like this if they don’t have any originals left. Usually these boxes are only used for used games (where they bought the game without the box), but sometimes they use them with new copies if they absolutely have to. Depending on the store and the cashier, you can sometimes get them to give you a small discount for the missing box, but I’m not sure if that’s a corporate policy or not.
I believe that they can technically still sell these as “new” product, as opposed to “unused”, because the product never left the store’s possession during this opening/storing process, and isn’t the same as a returned product being resold. So what likely went down here is that when OP ordered this game, due to availability or logistics or whatever, they sent a copy that was being held at a physical GameStop store, instead of from some warehouse.
If you’re really worried about it, OP, you can probably contact GameStop and request a return or replacement for an unopened copy. In my experience, they’re usually pretty understanding about that. It’s an annoying extra hoop to jump through, but unfortunately that’s just always been a risk one takes when buying from GameStop.
Yet, other stores don’t do this. Avoid GameStop and you avoid this, and all that comes with it. It’s fine to learn what happened. It’s not OK to do this or have this happen to you.
I hate that they do this. You opened it, you touched the disc, the disc was run in a system. That’s not new, that’s not unused. GameStop should have never done this in the first place, and I can’t believe they still do it.
What system? “The system” is to put it in a plastic sleeve in a glorified filing cabinet. The game is never played, the box is just used for display. What’s asinine is that the video game manufacturers never realized they could sell cover boxes to gamestop and the like and probably make extra profit… which would stop the entire need for them to do this at all.
Try returning an open game to GameStop under the same rationale and see if they agree.
Twenty Years ago they let employees “check out” brand new games that were opened like this so it was all bullshit.
This is not what you paid for. You should demand either the item you paid for or your money back. Anything less is fraud.
That sucks. Suggestion, return it and buy this for $49: https://www.amazon.com/Pokemon-Sword-Nintendo-Switch/dp/B07PC7X38X
If I return it, I’m afraid they’ll claim I pulled some shady shit, since it’s clearly not a new product.
Like what? It’s in their box, with their sticker that says the games name, “new”, and has a barcode. What do you think they’re going to accuse you of?
If that’s the case then just do a chargeback with your credit card.
Likely not, you wouldn’t have anywhere to get that labeling other than them selling it to you. You can always call them first and tell them what happened, get return authorization. They should be willing to accept a return on a new product that doesn’t come in the original packaging. In fact with Gamestop if you have a local store they might accept the return there, I would think a store employee would be more sympathetic.
Bruh, stand up for yourself. If they claim that, you point at the box you just posted a picture of and go “No, this is what you sent me, and it isn’t new. I ordered a NEW game, not a Gamestop open box special.”
If they really won’t budge THEN you do a chargeback as others are advising, but that shouldn’t be your first response.
Just do a charge back worst case, you won’t be able to buy anything from them again. Not really a loss and generally doesn’t happen anyway.
A charge back just means he can’t use his cars to buy from them. He can always just use cash anyways. Not a bit lose.
It doesn’t even necessarily mean that. I have had to charge back 5 times, and only one of them refuse credit card now.
Yes, I know. In this case though it appears to be an online transaction not in store so no cash isn’t an option. That said, as I pointed out, generally even that won’t be the case most of the time. It’s just the worst case.
“oh no I can’t buy anything from the company that just tried to rip me off! Which of the 10 other companies can I now go to to buy video games?”
Try it if they complain pull a Karen and speak with the manager. If they refuse escalate to corporate complain. This should not happen.
This is normally good advice, but usually “the manager” is the only person in the store at a gamestop. The best way to get a refund is to waste their time and don’t let any other customers check out. Eventually they will give in, but you need patience and possibly to deal with angry people behind you.
If you want to be a real d-bag you down sell every game another customer picks up, as well…
Gotta admit I remember seeing teenagers do this to extreme effectiveness.
This happens all the time. They tried to pull it on me in store like a decade ago, and then just last week I was in a store where they tried to pull it on some dad that was there buying a console for his kids.
If you complain, they WILL fight it and say that it’s still new.
Threaten a charge back. They did not provide the correct product.
Worse case scenario - they ban you from buying online.
But boo hoo they’ll pull another one.
Back when I used to shop at GameStop they would open all of the games, take out the disc or the cartridge and put them behind the counter and then put the empty box on the shelf. Technically new, but that is not even the correct box.
Then ask for a refund.
Demand a refund.
There’s going to be a new movie out about GME and Reddit called “Dumb Money” out soon, directed by the same guy who directed “I, Tonya” (Could have won that Oscar if they named it “It’s Hardin’ Time” like I asked)
Don’t watch it. Both GameStop and reddit are terrible companies.
What does the movie have anything to do with this?
Just fucking return it. If I made a post for everytime Amazon did something like this to me, it would get really annoying really quick.
This has been known behavior from them for so long that at this point it’s your own fault.
I’m so confused, this seems like a string of really weird and bad decisions
- Why would you buy from gamestop of all places online when they’re so ubiquitous that you could walk into one anywhere and buy it new with the box instead?
- Why buy it from gamestop online for full price when you could buy it digitally for full price or other online places with a discount.
- Of all things to buy new, a pokemon game is one that buying used for cheaper is a better option all around, and gamestop specializes in used games.
- I’m still stuck on this but why gamestop? Amazon and ebay have the game much cheaper new, and with the box guaranteed too
Op get a refund and save like 20-30 bucks buying the game from elsewhere with better quality control.
Edit: To make it perfectly clear since people can’t differentiate, I ain’t blaming OP at all. Gs is a shitty company who I wouldn’t trust to provide free air. OP needs to get a refund and buy elsewhere from a company that will treat him better. My questions are just me personally being curious about what lead to picking gs in the first place given their reputation. It’s not victim blaming and I dislike that I even have to make this disclaimer instead of being able to trust people to understand nuance
Maybe they had a gift card?
That makes sense. Either way OP needs to get a full refund then take that gift card (if that is the case) to a converter/sell it to get the money off of it so he can use the money elsewhere with a better company that will actually keep up their end of the deal in full
The popularity of ebay and Amazon kinda proves how many people would rather shop online, doesn’t it? Since basically any retailer still around has added a competitive online store. You can also easily go hundreds of miles between gamestops so they’re not truly ubiquitous to most of America’s land mass
Victim blaming is cool and fun
I ain’t victim blaming. I made that perfectly clear with my last sentence saying OP should get a refund and go buy it from a better dealer for cheaper since gs is a shitty company. My questions are entirely coming from curiosity of what lead to using gs in the first place given their reputation
I feel like most of these questions are just victim blaming. OP bought a new game from a retail store and was not sent a new game; end of story. They should not need to take it further than that when making a purchase. They shouldn’t need to physically go to a store when making a purchase online. They should not need to justify buying used vs new. For all you know the new price was comparable or better than used (happens frequently). Maybe they had a gift card to gamestop. There’s any number of reasons. The takeaway here is Gamestop pulled a bait and switch. OP held up their end of the transaction.
I ain’t victim blaming, I’m not saying it is ops fault for what happened. I even made that clear with my last sentence that OP needs to get a refund and buy it elsewhere cause gs is a shitty company that’s also charging more for a new older game than other places. I honestly was just more personally curious of what lead OP to trusting gs in the first place in the manner they did. Not to blame but genuinely just wondering why from a personal standpoint
Asking “Why would you do X?” implies heavily that had they not done X, the situation wouldn’t have happened. It is victim blaming.
