Why Gamestop is evil.

[SkiDragon]

I figured I had to say this. A while ago I worked near a Gamestop and after work when they were closed I sometimes looked in their dumpster. I found at least one working XBox controller, but really angered me was all the stuff marked "Field Destroy", which was, well, destroyed, and thrown away. It didnt bother me when I saw lots of 3rd part controllers, it didnt bother me when I saw some 1st party playstation ones (almost all w/ broken circuit boards. Saved some for the chips inside). It didnt even bother me too much when I say broken playstation and N64 sports games. Even the intentionally smashed Wavebird wasnt that bad. But what really angered me was the SNES (!) that was smashed up, missing MOST of the circuit board, and thrown away. C'mon, thats like burning a piece of art because you couldn't auction it for enough.

I wonder why they do this instead of lowering the prices. They could at least make SOME money off the stuff, I'm sure. I would have bought the SNES for, say, $10. If they think since there is no SNES I will take a PS2 or something instead, they are insane.

I figured I would just tell everyone. Dont trade games into Gamestop unless you have a very good reason to.

[SoulBlazer]

Oh, I NEVER trade into any of those shops. I get MUCH more money selling it used on Amazon. :D

[Hovoc]

blah blah blah, im bitching bc im a dumpster diver, and gamestop doesnt cater to my needs


dude, get in nice with the employees there, and maybe even a manager, maybe you can legitimately get free stuff without rumaging for it.

[EnemyZero]

its like at gamecrazy, if can't take something in, once and a while the customer says "throw it out" and im the only game nut there so i take whatever it is home...we throw out any cases too...we only keep loose carts..so i ttake those as well!

[FantasiaWHT]

As to why video game stores "destroy" items instead of just lowering the price, usually it's a space issue. There's only so much space out on the floor for stuff, and it's not worth keeping out a ton of stuff that's not selling. Then you put it in back, where somebody has to ask for it, and at some point there's just not enough space back there either.

Also their defective policy may be different than ours... we pay for broken PS2's and Xboxes, and of course take returns on anything we sell that doesn't work, but ALL of that winds up going back to home office.

Last possibility is somebody brought it in saying "Hey it doesn't work, can I get anything" and the store says no so they just say "Hey I don't want it anymore, can you just chuck it for me?"

*shrug* game stores are there to make a profit, not to cater to the extremely obscure customer who might actually WANT a broken piece of equipment *g*

[Flack]

I was just going to say it was probably a space issue. If you say a store like that is, I don't know, 5,000 sq foot but has 2,000 sq foot of display space, you can figure out (depending on the rent) how much it costs to keep something around. Obviously games are smaller and can be kept longer/stored easier, but like Fantasia said, it's a business not a collection.

As for destroying the stuff, if they didn't, then they'd have half their customers swarming the trash area for free instead of walking the store floor.

[Predatorxs]

Also by smashing stuff up it's like!... Well it's trash to use, but your not having it either!... A-holes!

Just imagine all cool VG stuff that gets dumped, cos it nolonger has any use in there store, Crazy just crazy!..

I think the next time, i'm in my local Game store, i'm gunna ask if (and when) they go to get rid, of there Gamecube Kiosk, can i have it!.. ;)

And see what happens..

:vamp:..XS

[Achika]

Field Destroy- a defective return that the company does not see profitable anymore or fixable. Like EB games, we'll take back PS2, Xbox, Cube, etc. and send those to our HQ for refurbishing and then reselling. Since Gamestop stopped taking back NES, SNES, Gen, and DC last February, the SNES you found was probably a return from a customer that thought it was defective. If we don't carry the product anymore, there is no reason for us to waste space shipping it back to the home office.

Silly customers, all it probably needed was a cleaning. Curious, why cry over a busted SNES and not a PSX? They are both systems that play a group of games.

[Hovoc]

yeah, in general, most customers are idiiots


most thigns that are retrun do work

i got 2 free dreamcasts bc the customer claimed they didnt work, one wouldnt read discs, the other over heated.

customer was as smoker so once they were cleaned internally they work beautifully, have had them since 2002

[MegaDrive20XX]

I too worked for GameStop...anything broken we could not touch but throw into field destory and send it to some monkies in GrapeVine, TX.

A majority of the time, that shit wasn't even that bad...when a majority of the systems, games and controllers really needed was someone to look at them.

Yet I have seen too many managers who play it by "the book" and have to follow orders sadly.

[josekortez]

I feel the same way when I have to pull strategy guides for destruction at my FYE. They have to be shredded, spray painted, and dumped by the district manager who comes in at a later date. Because I'm the only one in the store who really has game knowledge, I'm always the one who has to pull them.

Afterwards, I always go to other game stores and buy up their penny guides afterwards just so I feel clean again. Then, I trade them in at Game Stop so the circle of life can continue.

On a related note, I've actually seen one of my managers yank a pennied out music single out a customer's hand so she can destroy it. :eek 2:

[Fungus]

On a related note, I've actually seen one of my managers yank a pennied out music single out a customer's hand so she can destroy it. :eek 2:


OK, that's just wrong on so many levels.


One time when I worked at GS, my manager and I had pennied out so much PC software that we bought them ourselves and traded them in to EB. Whatever they didn't take, we brought back to our store and just gave 'em away.

[-hellvin-]

Yeah it's a sad thing but what can ya do? They have to field destroy things just like I have to junk out stuff at work. Gotta be done. It really does make me sad that game crazy throws out the boxes to the cart games when they get them...I could get so many more complete games from them =\. Sometimes they do carry complete/boxed games, but only at a few large locations.

[soniko_karuto]

it would be nicer if they had a 'free' bin in there, it would bring in a lot of lurkers.

[-hellvin-]

it would be nicer if they had a 'free' bin in there, it would bring in a lot of lurkers.

True, but then we get to the whole space thing again ;D.

[Fungus]

it would be nicer if they had a 'free' bin in there, it would bring in a lot of lurkers.


Yeah, but that would also bring in lurkers that "accidentally" finds a Half-Life 2 in the said bin. Granted, I'm sure they would be well marked, but still a pain-in-the-ass to have to deal with.

[farfel]

My store did the same thing with clothing. I wondered why they didn't give it to goodwill. They wanted to destroy all free or cheap stuff so customers have to buy the new expensive stuff.

[flying-d]

I had never heard of "field destoying" until now. Interesting how they have to trash stuff.

[Fungus]

The practice has been done with books and magazines for years. When new issues of magazines come in, out the old ones go. It's far more expensive to send the old mags back to the publishers just to have them destroyed, so instead, the covers are torn off and sent back to the distributors for credit. If they sold the old mags for cheap, or just gave 'em away, I know I'd never buy a fresh new magazine ever again. The same is done with old paperbacks that just aren't selling any longer. Seems like a waste don't it?

[FantasiaWHT]

Good old field destroy.

Something to add-

A lot of people wonder why we aren't supposed to just give these "pennied out" items away (or actually sell them at a penny).

Official policy is that giving out freebies to customers unless it is a SPECIFIC promotion is a no-no. Especially when such freebies are given out to your "good" customers- it can be misconstrued I guess. You're not supposed to offer one thing to one customer (or a group of them) that you don't offer to all customers.

Pretty much depends on the person ABOVE the manager. Our district manager actually does all the field destroy stuff himself. We collect all of it for a month or two and then he stops by. We can pull something out here and there, but not in any great quantity =/

A couple weeks ago had to penny-out a ton of Official Nintendo Power hintbooks.. to pretty recent games- Mario Kart: DD, Sword of Mana, SW RS: Rebel Strike, etc. That really sucked, especially because Nintendo was our "Vendor of the Month" then, so we wondered how we were supposed to be promoting them when we weren't allowed to sell them hehe

[esquire]

Another reason they have to field destroy the stuff is to keep the employees honest. If they didn't destroy the returned stuff, it could lead to corruption by the employees, i.e. marking "working returns" as "non-working returns" and the employees then taking the item home, or giving it to a friend OTC for free.

[swlovinist]

I can just see it now, a earthbound box being trashed into the garbage because of "space issues" :(

[downfall]

I once.. uhh.. "found" a box of field destroyed stuff. It was "laying beside the road". Yeah.. that's it.

Anyway, I didn't open it until I got home - it was a heavy box, and I kinda wanted a suprise.. like Christmas time!

Inside, there were three CIB Game Boy Gamesharks, 6 PS2/Xbox Controllers, Several PSone games/cases, several PC games/cases, two USB Headsets, and a few other random things. They had all been sliced to pieces with a knife, controllers had the joysticks broken off, etc. I tinkered around with it a bit, and I decided that the majority of the stuff still worked, but perhaps there was just one button that was messed up, so they just junked it. I was disappointed because most of it could've been fixed, or at least frankensteined together to make something that worked just fine.

If I see any field destroyed boxes laying beside the road now, I just leave them there.

I did manage to salvage a few of those multi cd cases (the ones that hold 4 discs), so it wasn't a total bust, but yeah, they pretty well demolish some of that stuff if even one thing is remotely messed up.

[Nesmaster]

i found a nes and 5 games behind a goodwill in the dumpster. the games had broken pins, and the pin connector in the nes was shredded apart with scissors. i know that because i picked the broken tip of the pair of scissors out of the pins... :(

i dont know if they were destroyed by the employees or donated this way, but i would have to say the latter, because they couldve sold them. makes me mad that someone would do this, but i took the carts and machine anyways, for parts and/or i want to get a new 72 pin to stick in the nes

[Oobgarm]

Hasn't this all been brought up countless times before? Good lord. :o

[SegaAges]

i didn't know about this until i read this, but it sucks.

there really is nothing we can do about it, but it sucks.

for awhile, there was a local game shop around here that would let the employees take the busted crap (i say for awhile because they got shut down for installing modchips). i liked that place because it was more like this board. if i could prove to the employees that a game was worth less than they were selling it for, i could buy it for what it was worth.

[Captain Wrong]

Hasn't this all been brought up countless times before? Good lord. :o

Yes, and it will continue to come up until the end of time. Waa waaa waaaaaaa! Life is soooo unfair.

[bargora]

OMG!!1! Gaymst0p = teh suXx0r!one!

BTW, Captain Wrong, your custom title has defeated my feeble Google skills. What is the provenance of teh "Let's Kick Ass Together!!"?

[Kid Fenris]

OMG!!1! Gaymst0p = teh suXx0r!one!

BTW, Captain Wrong, your custom title has defeated my feeble Google skills. What is the provenance of teh "Let's Kick Ass Together!!"?

If my recollection of useless shooter trivia is sound, the phrase in question is derived from one "Armed Police Batrider," good sir.

[Ed Oscuro]

And yet...now it's changed.

How rare.

[Gapporin]

OMG!!1! Gaymst0p = teh suXx0r!one!

BTW, Captain Wrong, your custom title has defeated my feeble Google skills. What is the provenance of teh "Let's Kick Ass Together!!"?

If my recollection of useless shooter trivia is sound, the phrase in question is derived from one "Armed Police Batrider," good sir.

Yep. It's the name of the song that plays during the first level, IIRC.

*end of hijack*

[Captain Wrong]

BTW, Captain Wrong, your custom title has defeated my feeble Google skills. What is the provenance of teh "Let's Kick Ass Together!!"?

If my recollection of useless shooter trivia is sound, the phrase in question is derived from one "Armed Police Batrider," good sir.

Yep. It's the name of the song that plays during the first level, IIRC.

*end of hijack*

Wow! So many Batrider fans!!!! Whoo hoo!!! Raizing/8ing rules!!!!!!1!1!!!!one!!!

(Incidentally, APB will always have a place in my heart as it's the first JAMMA board I ever bought. Awwwww...)

[SegaTecToy]

Yeah! Life is unfair and people are a bunch of greedy morons... :angry:

At least we 'still' have the right to bitch and whine about that. :D

[farfel]

This is how modern companies eliminate competition from The Past. Destroy it.

[Sniderman]

(Incidentally, APB will always have a place in my heart as it's the first JAMMA board I ever bought. Awwwww...)

Yeah, I loved Officer Bob and his thief-throttling ways too.
http://www.arcadeclassics.info/db_images/apb_upright_small.jpg
:D LOL

[Captain Wrong]

(Incidentally, APB will always have a place in my heart as it's the first JAMMA board I ever bought. Awwwww...)

Yeah, I loved Officer Bob and his thief-throttling ways too.
http://www.arcadeclassics.info/db_images/apb_upright_small.jpg
:D LOL

I KNEW someone was going to go there. LOL

(I wouldn't mind having that cab tho. Fun game.)