Mislabeled Video Game Prices?

[The Clonus Horror]

I rarely shop at Media Play, but, for some reason, I decided to forego Best Buy and Circuit City tonight and go into a Toys R' Us and then Media Play. I found a bunch of new Dreamcast games for 9.90 at Toys, then I found a Legends of Wrestling II for PS2 for...$27.99? I looked closer and someone had accidently put on a price tag for the Tadpole DVD. They also had many copies of Kakuto Chojin for Xbox, so I picked up one of those, too. I know that this probably sounds sexist, but I waited in line at the female cashier's counter, because I figured that she wouldn't notice the discrepancy, which she didn't. Hey, when you can save $22 on a game, you have to be a little snakey sometimes...Has this ever happened to anyone else?

[The Clonus Horror]

To further explain why I chose the female over the male: She was in her 40's, whereas the guy looked like he was in college, so 1 of three things would've happened:
1) He wouldn't have noticed.
2) He would've noticed, but I probably could've joked my way out of it.
3) He would've noticed, and since he was starving and didn't want to lose his job, he would've made me buy it at full price.

Not only did the lady not notice, but she didn't even ask for my DL when I wrote a check for my purchase. Whereas the woman at Best Buy last week noted that my DL expired on the 19th of this month, which I had totally forgotten about...

[josekortez]

Mistickets are the collector's best friend. However, if the store uses SKUs (the lined areas with the numbers) to scan for the price, you might be out of luck and suspected of attempting to steal.

Having worked in retail before, I know that if the store made the price wrong, they have to sell it for whatever is stamped on the price tag. The problem is that we'd always have teenagers changing prices in the stores I've worked in. During the past holiday, I had someone try to return a game from another store, and the idiot didn't even bother to remove the original price tag bearing the other store's company name!

But last week at EB Games, there were 2 copies of KOF '99 for PSX and one was priced $4.99, so the manager had to sell it to me at that price. EB stores seem to do that more than other stores because they have so much product and they can never get to all the price changes they need to do...

But you are right. Most female sales clerks, esp. older women, have no concept of what a video game should cost. Sometimes, their eyes light up along with you when a price is really cheap!

Of course, the guy might have been a total idiot when it comes to games. At a local Toys-R-Us, I saw an idiot trying to sell a grandmother Tekken 4 when she was really trying to buy Resident Evil:Code Veronica for her grandson's birthday. I knew it was time to step in...

[video_game_addict]

I don't take part in those practices. Seems immoral, and if you are concerned about who checks you out, and if they will see it, and if you can get away with it, something's obliviously NOT RIGHT about it!

Actually when I saw the title, I thought you were referring to when store prices drop, and it rings up less than the sticker price, which you were contempt with from the get go. Those kind of deals ARE nice, and a added bonus, considering nobody else found out about it first, so it was there for your taking. :) Circuit City is notorious about not re-pricing their games after price drops. I have bought a many of DC, PSX, N64 games from them for under $10 that were priced $20-50 each!


Tonight I picked up Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling 2 (brand new & sealed) for the PSX!! The sticker price which I would have gladly paid was: $39.99. It rang up for $9.96!!! Whoot!! :-D

[The Clonus Horror]

I actually didn't feel too bad about it, since there was only the one sticker on it, which was the wrong one. It wasn't as if someone took the wrong one off of a DVD and then stuck it over the actual price tag. There WAS one other copy of Legends of Wrestling II there for $49.99, so I figured if I could get away with it, fine. Besides, Media Play is a subsidary of Musicland, Sam Goody, etc...who charge WAY too much for their music anyway, so I'm not losing sleep over it. Had there been actual evidence of blatant sticker tampering, I never would've done it, since I probably would've been blamed for it.

[video_game_addict]

Yeah understand. I didn't think you personally were taking advantage of them by knowingly using tampered with tags, but even still, it's not something I would take part in, should I pick up a mislabeled item. If it was a new game, I would have known the price, $49.99, $39.99, or whatever. If I saw one priced $27 and then realized why it was priced that way I wouldn't try to buy it for that. But to each his own.

This thread reminds me of a article on some nes site around here, I know someone here knows which one I'm thinking of, but one of the TIPS involves pulling off the labels on Nes games at places like EB and Gamestop and switching them with cheaper sport title tags, while you are in the store and trying to cheat the company out of a few measly dollars. It's really sad when the collector's tips pages have to suggest STEALING as a way to save money on Nes carts. :(

[bargora]

Yeah, it's pretty lame when a mag tells you to do shady stuff like tag-switching.

As far as a store having to sell you an item at a mislabeled price, well, I don't think it's absolute. The contracts prof summed it up with "if an offer looks too good to be true, then it is." So if the store put a $4.99 tag on Vice City on release day, I don't think you'd be able to "force" the store to sell it to you for that price. From a customer service standpoint, though, I would imagine that most managers would rather eat a loss of a few bucks rather than alienate a customer if the mislabeling was a store error (not customer hijinks) and the mislabeled price was within the realm of reason (like $27 instead of $39).