videogame store ethics
 

so, today... against all odds, i picked up a nintendo ds. i'm thrilled w/the actual product, but that's for another thread.

after going to four stores without luck (target, walmart, best buy, gamestop), i stopped at my local EB to see if they had any DS units in stock. i asked the guy behind the counter, he said "yeah, we've actually just got a single one left because a someone who pre-ordered decided not to pick theirs up." ok, that was the best news i've heard in a while.

while he was ringing me up, he says "oh yeah, this last one is part of a bundle package... it costs $199.99 (fifty dollars more than a standard DS purchase) and includes Mario 64 and a starter pack." this really caught me off-guard... so i asked him if there was anyway i could just buy the DS hardware by itself. he replied that this was the last unit in the store and that it was impossible to separate the hardware from the other things i didn't want to buy.

since i was backed into a corner (it was probably one of the last ones available in the city and no guarantees of getting one before the new year) i decided to go ahead and get the bundle pack. w/out being a jerk about it (i hope) i said i was dissatisfied with their business practices but would take their last unit anyway under the circumstances.

so, he finishes ringing me up... then proceeds to gather my "inseparable" DS bundle. he shouts at some guy in the back to bring up a starter pack, grabs a Mario 64 game from a glass case, and (here's the kicker) opens a windowless locked cabinet to grab a DS unit. yeah, next to the "last DS in the store" was about 9 others.

now i know there is probably another side to this story... it's probably not as shady as it looked from plain view. still, i can't help but think EB was doing something unethical.

do stores have an obligation to sell merchandise as it was intended (not bundling it with items you may not have wanted and requiring you to purchase those also.)?

i'm doubting there is a legal imperative for them to stop this policy, do you think there is an ethical one?

do you think i was given the "bait and switch" or another variety of shady deal today?

my personal opinion is that they are simply engaging in a little profit gouging w/a high-demand item during the winter profit season. i suppose i should have just walked away and not encouraged such consumer manipulation even though it would mean i wouldn't be able to get the product i wanted for a long while. what do you all think?

Well,myabe those other "nine" were already reserved for people who pre ordered them and the one you got was from a guy who canceled his order?

yeah, i thought about that... but i'm pretty sure EB has stopped taking pre-orders so those would have to be a bunch of units that were not picked up since launch (3 weeks ago). given the limited number of systems delivered to each retail location... i find it had to believe that they would have a huge surplus of unclaimed systems.

it sure is a possibility though.

The people who work at videogame stores get fired if they don't make ridiculous quotas. Therefore, they sucker people into buying lots of extra shit, so that they don't loose thier job. This kind of shit happens all the time. You got screwed over.

So after you saw the 9 others, what did u do? Nothing, not even mention it to him? I would of atleast said something, unless you were gonna eventually get the Mario game. If not, they pretty much suckered you into $50, i know yea, not really cuz you got something worth it, but still, if you didnt want it you should of said something.

yeah, i was going to buy the mario game anyway... so i was only *really* screwed into spending twenty extra bucks this afternoon. the principle of the thing bothers me more than the hit my checking account took.

I worked at a game store for a few months.

It's true that there are all sorts of sales quotas that the store managers have to make, some of which are more manageable than others. These store managers then divide the quotas they get among their employees, and you've got a bunch of people who would really, really like you to pre-order something, buy 10 used games in the same transaction, and subscribe to their magazine.

It may have been company policy to only sell DS units as part of a package. On the other hand, the store workers may have bait and switched you into a multiple sales transaction. Look on your receipt. If it lists the package as one item, you didn't get duped. If the DS and the Mario game and whatever else are listed as separate items, then you did your part in fulfilling their quota and got a fast one pulled on you.

As for the "last one in stock", I'd bet that they lied to you about that one. I didn't work at EB, but at the place I did, we kept all of our pre-orders either in the storeroom or locked behind the counter in something opaque. It's possible that all the other ones were pre-ordered out, but if they were in plain sight to customers, I doubt it.

yeah, didn't think to check my receipt...
::rummages through bag::
rung up separately, thanks EB. :rolleyes:

Okay, you people are making EB look way worse than it is. I work at a video game store myself, and I can tell you a few things to clear things up. Speaking as someone on the other side of the counter, DS units are VERY hard to get around here. We get about 20 in a week, and they are always preorders. That store may have had 10 DS's in, and 10 preorders. Like you said, he probably had someone take it off hold, so you were lucky to get one. But yeah, check your receipt. By all means, if he did ring it through as 29.99 (or whatever it is in America), then you can return it. However, he did tell you it was a bundle, and you agreed to purchase it for that price, sometimes EB has bundles like that. Your options are to trade the game back in for whatever value you'll get there, or take the whole package back (if its still sealed). That is of course, if he did ring it through as a bundle.

Just out of curiosity, what was in the starter pack?

Sorry, just had to add a few things...

No they don't.

And irateplatypus, EB is still taking pre-orders for the DS. You can make a pre-order for anything if they don't have it in the store. Doesn't matter how long its been out.

I don't mean to slander EB or anything else. If the company recognized these "packages", though, they'd have a code for them in the cash register's software. If each item was rung up individually, they didn't. The fact that the items weren't packaged or even backroom-shrinkwrapped together is also a rather sure indicator.

Even if it was the manager's decision to sell his DS'es only if the customer agreed to buy some other stuff, the person who answered Platypus' phone call should have informed him of that before he drove to the store. Some degree of unethical business practice has taken place here.

the starter pack was a Mad Catz brand and included:
4 gb advance cases (why those were included i have no idea)
2 DS game cases
cigarette lighter adapter for car
DS hardware carrying case
extra stylus

the case is of decent quality, though it's just an empy shell to put your unit in... no pockets for headphones, games etc. the rest of the stuff is passable, but nothing great. i certainly wouldn't have paid $20 bucks for it otherwise.

i think xenomorph really got to the heart of the matter when he suggested looking at the receipt to see how it was rung up. maybe it was just the manager's decision to sell the units like they did... but i'm convinced he could have sold me the unit individually if he wanted to. i guess the point isn't whether he was allowed to, it is whether or not that is a good business practice.

maybe tomorrow i'll call EB and see if they still have "one more unit left". that might shed some light on the situation.

just to clear things up... i just walked in to all these stores, didn't call ahead to any of them. the sticking point is that they probably forced me to buy several high-margin items in order to buy a product that was intended (and marketed by nintendo) to be available for 149.99 with no strings attached.

As soon as you saw him taking out the system, sans all the other stuff included in the "package", you should have told him you want your 50 dollars back, because you're only going to pay for the system. This kind of devious, underhanded shit really pisses me off.

Can't speak for EB, but I manage a Gamestop.

You do not "get fired" for failing to meet quotas. You get talked to, possibly sternly. But every video game retailer in the country knows that the holiday shopping season means quotas don't get met for shit. Little Billy's grandma is going to walk in and say "I need a pokey-man game" and she's not going to reserve anything or subscribe to the magazine. So that's bullshit, right off the top.

Most of the time, manufacturers set the bundles. Nintendo packages Double Dash with the Gamecube, and that's your bundle. Gamestop/EB can say "If you buy the system and you buy this other game with it, we'll give you Accessory X as a bundle." They cannot say "This Nintendo DS can only be sold as part of a bundle" if the DS is packaged in retail-ready packaging (and all DSes are). You got served.

Your best recourse is to go to a different EB and return the stuff you don't want. If the manager says that you can't return the starter kit without returning the DS, you call Nintendo and alert them that your local EB is practicing unethical business using their products in a bait-and-switch.

In all honesty, the other 9 DSes you saw were most likely reserved. Sometimes we keep our reservation product locked in an opaque drawer, sometimes (especially with hot product) we leave it in a more accessible place so we don't have to climb mount everest 90 times a day as people pick up their reserves. Even if the DSes you saw weren't reserved, they're just going to tell you that they are. Pick your battles, you won't win this one.

The only other possibility is that when I worked at Bose and Sunglass Hut we sold things as bundled but had to ring up each item individually. Retail computer/operating systems are strange little entities that seldom make sense and do things in logical ways. You have to be very exact with your input in order for them to do what you want them to do.

For example, your bundle might have cost 225 dollars had you purchased each item individually but because all three showed up he could then enter a discount key or some such which would create a bundled price of 199.99. In my experience, a note to this effect usually appeared on the receipt, so you might take a look for that, too.

welcome to free enterprise. Had that been me, I would have said thanks but no thanks, I only want the DS. odds are that to make the sale you might have been able to get the salesguy to agree before you walked out the door.

dksuddeth, I doubt it. not that I think you are wrong, but in this case, the salesperson KNOWS they are hard to come by ,and will try that with everyone. I doubt that item would have stayed in stores more than a few hours had the OP not have bought it.

There are exceptions to every thing, with the high demand of this particular product that may have been the case......whats a DS though?

if you'll read my original post you'll see that i did request that i be able to purchase the DS unit by itself...

here is the link for the official Nintendo DS website.

When you succumb to this type of forced price inflation you're only encouraging them to do it more often. Why didn't you just purchase this online and avoid this problem, sales tax, and a trip to the mall (blech)?

that would be a great idea (or to be more precise, my original idea) if you could find one from a reputable online retailer that would deliver it by new years.

Hmmm...How ironic that only the ebgames.com site,you can only buy the DS in a bundle for $250.00, one hundred over the original retail cost.

[Notices amazon is out of stock, gamestop.com is only selling them in bundles as well, checks froogle and sees that only a few places are selling them at the original 149 un-bundled]

/Jeers to nintendo for artifically inflating the price, those bastards should have well known that they needed to reach a certain production quota....As far as i know, this isn't the first time they did this, happened with the N64 ?

There was a spot about the DS in a recent Wall Street Journal. I think that demand actually exceeded what everyone had anticipated by quite a bit.

I've barely had my GBA for 6 months, I'm a little slow to buy gaming peripherals that aren't major consoles. I think that Nintendo and everyone else was surprised at the willingness of consumers to eat this thing up with all the fears that it would be the next Virtual Boy or N-Gage, the lack of a flagship title (Mario 64 is great, but it's 8 years old), and the tiny game library, even for Nintendo's standards.

It looks like the PSP is going to blow the lid open on what's been a Nintendo-dominated market since they created it back with the original Game Boy. From what we're seeing of these DS sales, a lot more people are ready to plunk down the bucks for a handheld than everyone thought.

"the winter profit season"
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
That's hilarious!


Yeah, I got my DS the day it came out. I knew about the demand, and I went there, waited in line with 20 other folks, paid up for the hardware and Mario, and got out by breakfast. Most efficient, kudos EB.

Man they are going for like 300 on ebay. I say sell this thing while you can and buy a new one when more are available and make a sweet profit. :)

If you try to order this online, most sites give an estimated shipping date sometime in February.

We usually get 6-8 Nintendo DSes in once a week. We don't take reservations. We don't have a call list. We don't allow customers to prepay. If we did, our store would end up like the online sites, and you'd be prepaying for the right to buy the unit sometime next spring. I've had literally over a hundred people offer to drop the $150 up front for the chance to prepay for one in the next shipment. And that's just me personally, there are 9 other employees in the store.

If the OP didn't buy the DS, the next person in line would have. With an item in this much demand, with this little supply, there's no such thing as "teaching the retailer a lesson." You either accept their terms, or you don't get a DS and someone else is more than happy to take yours. We don't even bother taking consoles out of the box this time of year... PS2s, Xboxes, and DSes sell faster than we'd be able to put price tags on them (although we have some 40 Gamecubes in stock... anyone want to buy about 10?).

It would save me quite a bit of time and energy to be able to answer the phone with "Thank you for calling Gamestop where we do not have any PS2s, Xboxes, or DSes in stock, this is XXXX, did you have a different question?"

A cursory ebay search for "nintendo ds" came up with 7333 auctions, the first page of which had many systems selling for $175 with the metriod game, not $300.