Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello,

I've just been all the way to my local GAME, which is fucking miles away, traded in some Wii games and paid some cash monies for Modern Warfare 2. I paid full price (£45 fucking quid), barring the money off for traded games (which is why I went to GAME in the first place).

Anyway, the game wasn't sealed. The guy in the shop put the little GAME seal over it and handed it over. I got home, opened it up and there's a massive fucking scratch all the way round the circumference of the disk. It doesn't read in my 360. So I rang them up, annoyed, and asked what the hell the crack was and why they'd sold me a game that wasn't sealed?

The reply was that some games come unsealed and some come sealed. If I bring it back in I can swap it for a sealed copy. Fair enough, except it's miles away and I don't have the time to fuck about. I'll return it tomorrow. But more to the point, is he bullshitting me about unsealed games?

Every game I ever buy online is sealed. Every game I'm ever sent by a PR company is sealed. Every game in Tesco is sealed. Have I been sold, for full price, as "brand new", someone's return copy of MW2? Because that's what I think has happened. Someone has brought it back, and they've put it back on sale because it's "new" still. Does this happen? Is the "sometimes games come unsealed, sometimes they don't" line a load of fucking bullshit? Should I kick up a stink when I take it back tomorrow?

Further to my annoyance, I'm so busy these days that Saturday is my only designated day off. I have to do work tomorrow. And return a fucking game.

I am suspicious too. In my experience every new copy of a game has been sealed from GAME, with them taking the shelf copy off my hands and giving me a shrink-wrapped one from the drawer. Questions should be asked!

I bought a game from Dixons once, supposedly brand new. I got it home, and there was some sort of treacle on the manual. Didn't bother making the effort to complain, rather foolishly.

I used to work at GAME and I can say without a doubt that you have been given a copy that has been returned by someone else. He is definitely lying to you!

EVERY game comes sealed from the manufacturer. Occasionally stores receive unsealed copies but these are only on older games that have been recalled from other stores. They do this occassionaly to distribute stock.

When games are received in deliveries, they are opened to put the boxes on the shelves while the disc and manual (lovingly referred to as the guts) goes in a drawer.

A scratch round the circumference of a disc is caused by some earlier 360s when they're used upright. I reckon they're lying.

He's lying, I guarantee it. Why? Imagine you own a game shop. You want new copies of a game. So, you contact a supplier that can give you the best deal, and have them delivered.

Why would this supplier have some that are sealed, and some that aren't? There's absolutely no reason at all.

I would complain, and demand that they post a copy, recorded mail, for the inconvenience and lying. The person in that shop sold you something that wasn't new, while claiming it was. Trading standards would bend him over and fist him. The least they can do is take a £2.00 P&P hit by way of apology.

I've never come across a new 360 game that doesn't have the official XBox seal over the opening hole, I'm fairly sure it's required. For that reason, I'd be surprised if they've given you a new copy.

This, only with the rather blunt assertion that you should have asked the sodding questions when they gave you an unsealed "new" game in the shop. Yeah, they are probably lying cuntbags, but they've offered you a trade so fair dos, and the fact that it is a long trek for you is frankly entirely your own fault for not raising the issue when they put it in your hand.

I have, but only in Blockbuster where they insist on storing the disc and manual in a drawer.

Speaking of the the seals: I can't stand it when people break them but leave them stuck to the cases, usually covered in hairs and fluff.

GAME also have a price match policy, where they will match the price of any local retailer*

*Excludes Argos, Asda, Tesco, Sainsburies, Morrisons, Comet, Currys, Dixons, PC World.

The moral of the story is just don't buy games from GAME.

multiplied by many.

Is this true? How many other retailers are left?

Other branches of Game.

Electronics Boutique? Tandy? Game Zone?

Future Zone? The Next Level?

It's basically Gamestation (same company) HMV, Blockbuster and Grainger games. Those are the ones my local GAME will pricematch.

Edit: And WHSmiths.

Microbyte?

Eek, Grainger Games? That orange shop in Captain Cook's Square? That's the most expensive shop I've been in for a while

They have the odd good deal.

WH Smiths though, do any of their branches still sell games? I remember buying 8-bit budget games from WH Smiths back in the old days, but that was a long, long time ago...

The one in that strange little shopping precinct on Oxford Street does. I remember going in there a couple of days after GTA4 came out and asking if they were likely to be getting any new stock of it in soon. I was laughed at. I've not been back. Ok, so it was a desperate and slightly silly question (although it turned out not to be as other places had it back in plentiful stock within a week), but if a shop can't manage a bit of basic politeness to a potential customer, they deserve to lose business. (Ironically, I bought it from Woolworths.)

My local WH Smith has always sold games, from Speccy onwards. These days it's primarily DS, with some Wii stuff.

Most places that I buy games from on the high street don't give me sealed games -- HMV, Asda, Game, and Gamestation all put the case out on display and keep the guts behind the till, for most games at least. For big new releases I've seen Game and Gamestation keep a stock of sealed boxes on display behind the desk and hand those out directly before returning the case to the display but that's only for the first fortnight or so the game is on sale; all back catalog seems to come out of the drawers. Surely that's just anti-shoplifting common sense?

If it's a little indie shop with limited space I can understand them taking out the guts but in a chain store I want a new game, which to me is a sealed game. Sainsbury's are good at this unless you want a Halo game, I promise they'll fetch out the fist thing with Halo on it they see.Merthyr Game sold me a second-hand (as opposed to pre-owned, which doesn't exist) copy of Assassin's Creed as new for 12 quid but it was in minty condition so I wasn't that arsed, not like I'd ever be going back.

Come to think of it, once a store is selling you an unsealed game, how do you know the staff haven't been playing that copy at home all week?

I've also often wondered whether the CoD4 GOTY edition I bought second hand from Blockbuster was mis-sold, being as it had a thing in it for extra maps, which I couldn't use because someone else already had. They want disclaimer stickers on there or something similar.

I didn't take an empty box to the till, though. They got my copy out of the glass cabinet behind the counter. Plucked it from a massive pile, as well. Unsealed is one thing, but why didn't they even check the fucker for the massive scratch before putting their "seal" on it? Also, as has been mentioned, it's clearly the scratch of an old model 360, so it's obviously a returned copy.

Hitler Games.*



* The local software shop that only opened for a year circa 1990 and was run by a man who looked like Hitler.

Didn't we learn this lesson in the 8 bit era?

Always check the game before you leave the shop. It wasn't uncommon for the dappy woman in WHSmiths to stick a C64 tape into your CPC box when you took it to the till.

Mate bought Spy v Spy but actually ended up with Spy v Spy 2 in the box because he's a tool.

On the rare occasion I still buy a game and its open, I'll check.

Asda have unsealed games, for the most part that I can judge.

Also, my mate bought some wrestling game from Tescos, and even though it was in one of their sealed perspex boxes, when it was brought home, it was the ps2 disc in a 360 case (!).

Next day took back - completely sold out apparently...bs

Who buys games from shops? Online order, baby.

What Pod said..

Working in GAME this time of the year is a complete bastard. There's so many games being exchanged with Christmas temp staff handling them, you're bound to have the odd game that is sold 'as new' but is second hand! It used to happen all the time in my shop.

And yes.. The staff do play the games. They used to have a scheme where the staff could take games home for a couple of nights at a time to try them out.. Or try and copy them.

So if a game was, say, £35 in Sainsbury's (sealed) and £30 in Asda (unsealed), you'd buy the Sainsbury's copy?

Blockbuster did that with movies. It's so you know what you're talking about when someone asks you about it apparently.

Problem is it's 100% the reason why games and films are leaked onto the net before their street date.

I remember once some kid from a cinema in May's Landing NJ leaked The Hulk out of the cinema. They caught him though, and fucked him really hard .

Ah yes, here we go..



http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10211136-93.html

I had some appalling experiences at WH Smith back in the 8 bit days. I reckon maybe 30% of their tape games actually worked, only when you bought back a faulty game they pretty much accused you of copying it and bringing it back. They made me fill in a form and told me that I couldn't have a refund and had to wait for them to 'send it off for testing' before choosing another game. The utter, utter evil bastards knew a 10 year old kid wouldn't know this wasn't the norm.

I bought Overlander for the speccy about 5 times but every time it was just a tape of random bits from the speccy and c64 version that they just put back on the shelf every time I bought it back. The most annoying thing about that was that once I got to play it (on c64 disk) it was really shit.

I'd also never buy a game from Blockbuster as the fuckers get their finger prints all over the disks.

Problem was that it was so easy to copy games it was untrue. However I never did.

I once bought a Speccy compilation that had Carrier Command on it. 2 of the 5 games didn't load so I exchanged it.

Thing is I really wished I'd copied Carrier Command before exchanging it. I just thought that it would come out on budget so I'd buy it then but it never did.

Have never seen the CPC version either although apparently it does exist:

http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/filedetail.php?recid=1273

Speaking of WH Smiths and stock, I remember this time last year they were turning people away who were looking for DVDs and CDs and the like, as Woolworths going bust severely affected WHS's own stock-receiving capabilities. Some how.


Same here. Like the Punch-Out (Wii version) my girlfriend picked up for me last month. Had a chewed-up manual, so I made sure the game went back for a refund. It was a shite game anyway. Awful.


Had that happen plenty of times in the old days. Even several years ago, I bought Essential Soduko for the DS from a now-defunct entertainment product retailer. They had to put the gamecard of another, completely different Soduko game in the box, didn't they? Luckily I noticed that sitting on a bench not far down from the shop, went back almost straight away, and received the right gamecard after a go at the manager. Relief.


Generally yes, but then brick-built retailers sometimes have excellent, one-off special offers that online shops won't. Like in the January sales and stuff.

Woolworths had a massive distribution arm, as well as their retail business, and so when they went under every piece of stock in warehousing anywhere immediately belonged to the creditors. As modern shops don't keep much stock on hand, this means that as soon as they sold what they had on the floor they couldn't restock -- this effected Smiths, Zavvi, and a number of other companies. It takes a long time to get the contract work in place to switch suppliers.

So let me get this right, you buy an unsealed game, but you don't check it before you leave the shop?

They sealed it.

When I worked in HMV and items that had the disk behind the counter were purchased you had to show the customer the surface of the disk before putting it in the case.

You say that, but I ordered Soul Calibur IV from Game online, and the copy I was sent was clearly a 2nd hand/returned disc - the box was sealed with one of those Game sticker things, and the disc had fingerprints all over it. Fortunately, it still worked, but it really, really pissed me off. I suppose I should've sent it back, really.

Isn't Soulcalibur IV fun?! Much better than this shoddy Tekken 6 excrement.

Why not check it at the counter before paying for it and ask for another?

I'm not trying to cause upset here, but it seems, I dunno, a little odd. If it were a sub standard pint, you'd be right back at the bar and stuffs.

Vote for new forum subtitle:

"BETEO: When we're not comparing stuff to cars, we're talking in pub metaphors."

Right then... *rolls up sleeves*

OP, it does sound like you've been sold a returned copy as a new game and that's pretty bad. To be fair on the store, it's probably more fuck up than malicious intent, with some Christmas temp sticking what should be a faulty return in with the re-saleable returns, but that doesn't help you. Also, finding your game is not sealed doesn't mean it isn't brand new, but you should always check the disc before leaving the store. In the case of GAME, I'd actually ask to see the disc before they put the seal on it.

From 2003-2006 I was an Assistant Manager and then an Acting Store Manager (basically a Store Manager without the pay, for 7 fucking months, because our senior management were cunts who seemed shocked when I quit the job on them... but that's another story) in a branch of Gamestation.

It works like this: all newly released games come sealed. However, we need to put those games on display without worrying about them being nicked, so we 'gut' a number of copies (break the seal, put the disc inside the manual and the whole bundle into a drawer) and put the empty boxes on display. When I worked in Game, we even used to put a security tag in the empty box, because people will steal empty boxes. I once had to have a word with the manager of our local WH Smith because some little scrote had stolen an empty box from us, clearly realised it was empty soon after and dumped it on the shelf in Smiths. I knew it was ours because we had a box missing, and they had one on display with one of our price labels on it. But that's also a different story.

Anyway, we worked to a POS plan, which would change every week. This is literally instructions on how you have to display your new releases, so we'd try to only gut as many copies of any game as necessary to fulfill the POS plan. All the sealed copies would go behind the counter, and everytime someone would bring an empty box to us to buy, we'd swap it for a sealed copy until we had no sealed copies left, the empty box would then be put back on display. From then on, we'd simply have to put one of the guts into the empty box and hand that over. So it's not sealed, but it hasn't been in anyone's console either.

The problem was that back then we had a 7-day no quibble return policy (I don't know if it's still in place since the GAME buyout), which meant you could essentially return your game for a full refund or exchange within 7 days simply because you didn't like it. And then... and this is the bit you won't like... we'd simply gut the returned game and put it back out on sale as new stock, not preowned. Obviously we'd check that the disc and instructions were pristine (you could refuse a refund if the game was returned in less than 'as new' condition), but still.

I've heard people before complain that stores should use display cases. That's fine, but there are a few practical issues:
1) They don't come as cases, they come as sleeves. Someone's got to put those sleeves in blank DVD cases and that takes time the store may not have.
2) Only a few games get sent with display sleeves.
3) They look shit compared to the actual game case.
4) They make quick stock taking a nightmare, since if you're using gutted boxes, when you sell out, you're left with no boxes on display. So on a busy Saturday, you can have a number of people queuing to buy the same game and they're all holding display boxes. You only notice you've sold out when you can't find any copies behind the till. You have to explain this to the customer, who gets very irate that his time has been wasted queuing. You'll then have to do this with all the other customers queuing whilst a member of staff desperately dashes out to scoop up all the display boxes before anyone else tries to buy it.

Finally, the staff borrowing policy that GAME and Gamestation have (or at least used to have when I worked for them) only applies to preowned items. Borrowing new stock is a serious disciplinary matter, although obviously that doesn't mean it doesn't go on. In my experience, the management in most videogame stores are by far the most crooked of all the staff working there. One of the reasons I had problems getting promoted to a full Store Manager is that both of the Store Managers I worked under were eventually sacked for theft, so it's difficult convincing the top brass that you're not thieving yourself in those situations.

True but it was unsealed, before they did that.

FTFY

Seriously though, that bit you said about the borrowing of games only being allowed on pre-owned. This definitely WASN'T the case when I worked at GAME. We were allowed to borrow ANY game from the store for a few days as long as it was logged on a crib sheet we kept in the office.

It sounds like you have similar fond memories of working in the industry like I have. Being made redundant from GAME is the best thing that ever happened to me!

While breaking the seal means it's not new it's understandable - but selling second-hand as new is just illegal.

They put their seal on it behind the counter whilst I was pissing about with chip and pin, then they bagged it up and handed it over. I did other shopping with the Mrs, then went home. Then I opened it up and found it to be an unsealed copy with a big cunt of a scratch on it. I can't say I usually check my games to see if they're scratched before I go home, and perhaps that's my fault. Needless to say, I'll be checking properly from now on.

But disregarding all of that, they've sold me a second hand game as new - at a proper £40+ price point, no less - and then given me some bullshit about suppliers sending in unsealed copies to boot. I know about "gutting", and what have you, having worked in retail for over five years as a student (the first time round), but my point is I didn't take a "gutted" case over to the counter for them to fill from the drawer. My hands were empty, I pointed at the shiny cabinet behind the counter where a big stack of "brand new" copies of (presumably) the top-selling games are kept, and he scanned it, sealed it and bagged it.

Hell yes, I'm not being seen in a fucking ASDA unless I'm with a client.