Be Excellent To Each Other

Back before Christmas I was whinging about this:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5164

Seems they're still doing it, even to online customers.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/game- ... -new-stock

There seems to be a fair few angry folk on the comments thread of that article, so hopefully there'll be a backlash or something. Probably not, though.

Share your stories!

They quite specifically state those aren't second hand though, just shop-soiled. And they go on to apologise and say it was a cock-up and offer refunds, so all in all, not too bad a resolution?

But as you can surmise from my previous thread, they're probably lying. And also, selling unsealed games to online customers, whether technically classed as "second hand" or not is still shocking. Especially taking into account GAME's pricing, which is usually close to RRP and the fact that the likes of Amazon, as far as I know, NEVER send unsealed games out. An apology and refund is hardly a get out of jail free card when they've been pulling this shit online and in-store for years. It's the absolute least I'd expect.

Oh, and the ONLY reason they've apologised on this occasion is because Eurogamer took it upon themselves to complain and probably threaten massive exposure. This won't end here - they'll keep doing this shit.

Thing is though how can they proove that? It's their word against yours.

IMO something that comes sealed and isn't has been opened. And if it's been opened it isn't new.

Amen, brother!

I am definitely not adverse to buying something unsealed. However, I don't think it's fair that something is advertised as new and clearly isn't. It also isn't fair that I get an unsealed copy with superficial or possibly even game-breaking damage, whilst the next guy gets one factory sealed at exactly the same price. Refund? Well yeah, thanks, but that doesn't help me on the morning I receive the shitty second-hand game in the post, does it?

Funnily enough, I got sold a brand new Just Cause 2 for a pre-owned price from Game. People had been buying the recent xbox deal and trading in the sealed copies of JC2 immediately.
I picked up a new copy, took it to the till and the dude offered me one of the sealed pre-owned ones for a fiver cheaper if I wanted, which I thought was jolly decent of him.

Whilst I am trying my super hardest not to get into it about lying British wank companies today I'm finding it hard.

I'm currently being lied to by two companies at the same time and neither are providing my goods. Yet both have my money.

It seems that Customer service rep in the U.K actually means fucking good liar.

LewieP is requesting stories on the Twitter in order to do writings on the subject at hand.

I would but tbh I'm trying my hardest not to lose my temper with it all. Writing about it will only invoke how I feel.

Perfect sound bite for the TV advert of Panorama Investigates!

I'd probably say less 'jolly decent' and more 'makes the shop more money'.

I think the staff member was actually being nice. I'd certainly appreciate it.

They could have easily just put the game back on the shelf and charge full price for it, as it stands I saved a fiver, seems jolly decent to me. Iwas at the till with the full price game in my hand and would have paid the extra £5 if he hadn't mentioned the pre-owned ones.

God is punishing you for evaluating things.

Then fuck him. If I like something I will pay for it. Gone are the days where you could walk into Smiths and evaluate a game properly before handing over coin for it. Seriously dude that debate has been beaten to death. Demos are dishonest and misleading and the only way to know what you're getting is to check it out for yourself. You wouldn't walk into a garage, eye up a car and hand over the cash having never driven it, would you?

See also - free samples in U.S supermarkets. Because they have the balls to actually return something if they don't like it, unlike us Brits who put up with way too much shit from retailers.

Now don't get me wrong we have gotten a bit better since before I went to the U.S. But it's still a very sorry state of affairs. Unsealed items in the USA are open box. They have to be clearly stated to be open box and you usually save big.

So from now on I shall call it test playing. Just as in a test drive, but with a game.

For those of you keeping score.. I used to work at GAME.

Every so often we’d do a “mint recall” which was when head office recalled a load of stock to redistribute around different stores. Because most of this stock had already been on display, their empty boxes had been on the shelves while the discs and manuals had been in the drawers out the back.

We weren’t particularly careful with this stock and most of the stuff that got recalled looked second hand.

We would then receive stock that had been recalled from other stores and most of it looked like it was second hand. Most of it was sent back as being faulty.

When people buy things online, GAME will often source the stock from stores. They do this by sending an empty jiffy bag to the store already labelled etc and ask the person in the store for the relevant game and then they send it off. Most games, since they’ve been on display, aren’t sealed when they’re sent off and thus.. look second hand.

GAME are bastards for doing this!

No they can't*. Just because it's pristine and sealed doesn't change the fact it's second-hand.

* Legally they can't sell it as 'new' anyway; they could put a pre-owned sticker on it and charge full price. So I'm sure they do that, being Game and so bastion of law and morality.

Also, it would mess up their stock takes (Not that most GAME stores bother about this) but you know, it would.

Thevision.

When I worked for Blockbuster we used to remove DVDs from their Amarays and put about 50 covers out on the shelves. It was called P.O.S attraction. No, not piece of shit point of sale.

After the initial flurry we could end up with a good ten films that hadn't ever rented and were still brand spanking new (never been played). However, the law was the law and we were not allowed to sell them as new. We had to check them in as rentals and then convert them to previously viewed and then offer them for whatever pre viewed price. Which was usually about half that of a new copy. I mean shit, we even had the means to reseal items and we did, but they were still not new and we were not allowed to sell them as new.

Ebay are very strict on this. And, if some one on there sells refurb or opened shit as new you can do a Paypal cash snatch back very very easily.

Here as an example.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DELL-ALIENWARE-AU ... 2eac788508

That PC is listed as refurbished. The chances are of course that it was simply built for a customer and he cancelled before ever even recieving it. Yet the guy selling it is not brave enough to list it as new (as people would have in the past) because he knows full well he will end up losing a grand's worth of PC when it gets to the customer.

I think my point is that, in my experience, GAME staff generally don't give a shit and don't really look after the stock like someone who actually owned the games would.

That's not a great comparison. A demo is a lot like a Test Drive, unless in the TD you get to keep the car for a few months to find out enough about it, and not just the general feel/handling that you'd get from a TD.

How about you call it piracy?

Take the piracy debate outside, gents! Thanks for the info TheVision!

How come? All other types of goods (except perishables, IIRC) can be. When was the last time you saw a pre-owned pair of jeans in a clothes shop, for example?

I guess in the case of the game the shop have bought the bundle copy second hand from the person who bought console rather than accepted it as a return.

I don't believe there is a legal definition of second hand, just clauses about goods being in "reasonable" condition and "as described". And in any event, if the guy before you bought the game, held it for a second, and traded it back in; and it was still sealed when you received it; I don't think most "reasonable" people would really class that as second hand. You're probably better off with the phrase "used" rather than "second hand"; clearly, the game in question was not used.

I'd agree with the Gay Wood, however, this seems to be an isolated thing involving some sealed games. The main problem is unsealed, scratched to fuck games being sold as new.

Oh, absolutely. I was just piling in to the thread with a vaguely related comment, to see how far off track I could take it, and see how many people replied, therefore making me feel popular.

The game in question was Just Cause 2 by the way which, incidentally, looks pretty much exactly the same on the 360 as it does on PC to me...

<runs away>

I've seen GAME staff sell a console bundle and trade the games straight in on the same transaction for money off the console.

Then unwrap the game, put a permanent marker scribble on the manual, box and disc and then put the game box on display as pre-owned for £5 less than the new game... The new game which, if you all recall, could be in worse condition that this "pre-owned" game.

As usual, I'm not entirely sure where I got that from, and am now confused.

Of course, if GAME sold it as a new copy under those circumstances, they'd lose money overall. And the publisher would want to know how they'd sold 11 copies when they'd only had 10 delivered.

Exactly right which comes back to the stock take argument.

It's entirely in GAME’s best interests to sell games pre-owned rather than brand new.

If I was a publisher I'd be keeping very quiet indeed about that.

But, we're talking about the sale of returned/faulty/opened games as new and not actual "second-hand" games that they've bought back from people - barring, of course the Just Cause 2 thing which is presumably what you're talking about?

And if I was a publisher (Sony for instance) I would like to know how a certain GAME Store managed to lose 6 brand new PS2’s when they were still worth over £200 each but still…

You know, these things happen!

I remember from my days at THE when we had pallets of N64s from THE games delivered before their launch. Security was high and we had a dedicated camera pointing at them. Didn't stop them losing some though.

That reminds me of another story!

A load of N64 games kept going missing from a GAME store a while ago. No one knew where they were going until one day.. the thief (who worked at GAME) got talking to a guy who happened to be mates with the guys manager. It was a total coincidence.

Knowing it was him, the loss prevention team searched his car and found his boot full of games.

The best part about this story is that the store had a secret camera fitted to find the thief. It didn’t… instead it managed to catch a great video of someone checking their watch while holding a full cup of coffee!

So if I say someone is 'Stealing' for downloading a load of torrents with no intention of ever paying for the music and films that they obtain and keep for the rest of their life, I am fundamentally wrong in my analysis of the situation, but if GAME sell me a perfectly functioning product at a price I was happy to pay, without a sticker on the box, they are the worst criminals in the entire corporate world?

I have so much to learn about life.

That's a bit of a straw man, though. The main thrust of this thread and why I'm personally annoyed at GAME is because they're selling non-functioning or damaged products as new. I don't think anyone is saying that if someone sells them a "perfectly functioning product at a price they were happy to pay" they're going to be complaining about it. That's not what we're talking about here at all. Barring the Just Cause 2 thing, which as said before is a complete one-off and an interesting side-note on what GAME get up to generally, but is not what we're arguing about here.

Damaged and non functioning, I accept. Although if you had asked for second hand, they shouldn't have been damaged or functioning anyway and you'd have had the same entitlement to refund.

This is true.

To clarify, the thing I'm annoyed about is the fact that GAME are selling returned/scratched/damaged/faulty/etc games as brand new. They're selling them alongside sealed copies of the games. One guy could go in and pay full whack for a sealed copy and another guy could go in and get an unsealed copy with a crusty manual and a scratch on the disk for the same full whack price. This boils my piss.

As for the piracy argument, I don't really see how that's relevant. I mean, you could bring in any sort of commonly performed "crime" and compare it to what GAME are doing, I still don't see how it helps. For example:

"So it's okay for people to drive 40MPH in a 30 zone but GAME are Satan for doing this?"

It is indeed a slightly shoddy business practice and as a British Consumer it is your legally enshrined right to whinge about it, preferably on the internet

I was considering (not very clearly, obviously) the semantics behind 'Stealing' on this forum.

Piracy isn't stealing because you aren't depriving the publisher of physical product
GAME are effectively stealing because they sell you a physical product that works just the same but in a dirty box.

Hmm. I wouldn't say they were stealing, though. Has anyone said GAME are stealing? They're conning, misleading and being cunts, but not stealing. I dunno maybe other people think they're stealing.

On a lighter note, look at what their subsidiary are up to with their online sales...

http://www.edge-online.com/news/gamesta ... 0%99-souls

Of course, giving you a sealed 'pre-owned' copy instead of the new one you took to the till is depriving the people who actually made the game of any cash, remember.

And that's a good thing

Because it means more cash going into the pockets of retailers? I'm struggling with your logic, here.

Ah good call! Presumably they'll pocket the full whack for it? Which is presumably considerably more than the usual used price at £5 below the new price?

I'm just playing devils advocate throughout. All of it could be considered 'shady'.

Retailer selling second hand as new - customer is perceptively ripped off
Customer buys game, plays game to full value, trades in - original customer doesn't pay a net 'full value'
Retailer allows trading of games - developer gets no resale value
'Customer' evaluates game and never pays for it - developer gets nothing, but then they wouldn't have if customer had bought it second hand anyway

Developer sells games for £50 for a disk - wouldn't they have Grossed more through a Steam type model and sold at £30?

I don't know the answers, but the arguments at any point need to be considered throughout the chain.