Is Gamestop Evil? The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[flamepanther]

It's too bad GameStop bought out and replaced a lot of those stores that could have filled the niche, eh?

[AppleQueso]

Gamestop drove a cool local place here nearly out of business. I have no fucking clue how, either, because the local place had better prices, better trade-in-values, better selection, and better service. It still baffles me.

[sevin0seven]

It's too bad GameStop bought out and replaced a lot of those stores that could have filled the niche, eh?

dammit! bring back FuncoLand.

[AppleQueso]

We have Play N Trade at least. It's a franchise though so the quality of stores varies quite a bit.

They sell retro stuff at least.

[gtmtnbiker]

Gamestop drove a cool local place here nearly out of business. I have no fucking clue how, either, because the local place had better prices, better trade-in-values, better selection, and better service. It still baffles me.

It's not really that hard to figure out. They were losing money. Something that a lot of people can't seem to understand. You really have no idea how much store rent , insurance, utilities, yada yada all go for.

[AppleQueso]

Gamestop drove a cool local place here nearly out of business. I have no fucking clue how, either, because the local place had better prices, better trade-in-values, better selection, and better service. It still baffles me.

It's not really that hard to figure out. They were losing money. Something that a lot of people can't seem to understand. You really have no idea how much store rent , insurance, utilities, yada yada all go for.

I've talked to the owner of said local place several times. He pretty much outright says that customers simply stopped coming there and started going other places.

I could probably just chalk it up to people being effing morons but still.

[Bradtemple87]

It's too bad GameStop bought out and replaced a lot of those stores that could have filled the niche, eh?

dammit! bring back FuncoLand.

YES Mark, +1

[gtmtnbiker]

I've talked to the owner of said local place several times. He pretty much outright says that customers simply stopped coming there and started going other places.

I could probably just chalk it up to people being effing morons but still.

No customers == No money, right? The expenses stay the same.

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

I love going to gamestops in the ghetto and getting rare games for cheap.

This is true. I find that the Gamestops located in bad parts of town tend to have good finds more often than the ones in better neighborhoods.

Sometimes, some amusing stuff happens in ghetto Gamestops too. Once the people in front of me attempted to trade in a stack of Xbox 360 games. The clerk had to spend like 10 minutes explaining to them that trade-ins are not done on a one-to-one basis. Essentially, these people thought that because they brought in a stack of seven used games to trade in, they should be entitled to seven new games.

I remember the first time that I went to a Game Crazy in a not so wonderful part of town. Walked into the store and there was a drunk woman yelling at the cashier to call the police while she was having an argument with her drunk man who was outside the store. Found some cool Sega stuff, but I think that may have been my last visit to that particular location.

JY

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

The bigger you get the more your expenses grow and the higher your liability gets. People will get more pissed off at you for random reasons, lawsuits that are pointless get filed daily, shit breaks, a LOT of shit breaks, paychecks, rent for thousands of storefronts, power bills, water bills, heating bills, light bulbs, stationary and office supplies, cleaning supplies, the 5-10 vacuums we go through in a year per store, computer maintenance replacement and repair, store maintenance and repair, shipping, warehousing, purchasing new product, paying certain companies to keep them happy with selling us product, paying for exclusives to remain competitive, etc..., etc... The list goes on and on.

Not trying to nit pick, but if a store the size of the usual Game Stops that I have been to is going through 5 - 10 vacuum cleaners a year then they either need to stop buying them at the dollar store or teach their employees how to use them.

JY