Sucky customer or did he have a point?

[Ben_Who]

I took home an empty box of GTA IV. While I do consider it the store's fault, I also take some of the culpability for not checking before I left the store.

I don't know if this is normal or not - it comes from my work habits, where part of my job is to check for mistakes that other people make. When a job lands on my desk and I miss someone else's mistake, I'm partly responsible for the result if that mistake gets past me.

I was also a bit worried that they'd think I'd taken the game out and was trying to get a refund - ergo a free game - but apparently that sort of thing happens all the time with that chain. They gave up Niko Bellic without incident, and I got on with pulling my ponytail out over frustration that I couldn't open Alderney.

Love, Who?

[Zoom]

Mid-1990s, right before Funcoland fell apart and was replaced with GameStops. They often changed their policies without telling their customers.

I walked into one store, and as usual grabbed a bunch of NES game boxes off the shelf, intending to buy them.

"Sorry sir," the checker said, "we don't have those games." As usual. Yet the boxes had been put back on the shelf since the last time I was there.

"Can I just have the boxes then?" I asked, so I wouldn't be stuck in this never-ending spiral of shelf-to-counter-to-shelf shipping.

"Sure!" the guy said. I bought a few actual games that had no boxes to make him happy too.

When the time came to leave, the manager grabs my bag with the empty boxes in them and says, "You can't have those, they're for store display purposes."

"B-but!" I stammered. "You can't display boxes for games you don't have, that's false advertising."

"It's representative of the sort of games we do have, even if we don't have those particular ones," was the astonishing and ridiculous response.

Not only that, but at another Funcoland the next week I learned something even worse! Because there were so few NES boxes, they wouldn't let the customer have them even if they had the game in stock!

Of course it was a new policy and I had to walk away only with unboxed games from then on. I stopped going to Funcolands.

Not that it really mattered, though, as the internet turned up shortly after this and made home console emulation a reality, and the need to own physical hardware or boxes a surreality.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I'm with Broom. Although I'm going to cut the guy some slack for being an ass. I guess we get sick of gimmee grabs from SCs, but his time is worth something, as is his aggravation.

The store owed him some compensation, in my opinion. He should not have had to ask for it. The store should have offered it as an apology. He bought the thing in good faith and it screwed him up. That was hardly fair.

Look at it this way...if he bought it in advance (which he clearly did) and did not get what he exchanged for his money, it could be argued that the store owed him interest on the money.

Sorry. I'd be pretty steamed, too. He might have been an ass, but he did have a point.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I presume your store sells used games, in which case the customer is at fault for being cheap with his son's Christmas present

We had a lot of people buying used stuff for christmas gifts. In some cases, the game their kid was after was so old it is only available used or because they are looking to save money.

Last Christmas I bought my mother in law an old used SNES game from Ebay because one she really really wanted. She thought it was one of the best gifts she ever got. The dollar value of the gift does not necessarily indicate how much the receiver will appreciate it.

I've spent over three years working at games stores but even I will sometimes occasionally forget to put a game in a case. It happens to the best of us although I do try very much to take care to put the game in. The reason this becomes an issue at Christmas is because we have a lot of seasonal workers on staff who aren't as well trained as regulars and more prone to forget. If it had been my call, I might offered the guy a $5 gift card instead but my manager decided there was no need to do anything.

[BusBus]

The customer has a damn good point. The store screwed up, plain and simple. Mistakes happen, but it was mentioned that this was a reoccurring problem-should this not be addressed by management? People should not have to check every single boxed item that they buy, just to be sure that the product is in there. Despite his attitude problem, I do feel for the customer- he took the time and effort to go to the store, he ended up giving an empty box to his kid on Christmas (which does put a damper on the holiday), and then he had to additional time and effort to rectify something that was not his fault. I just bought a video game on Thursday and I would have been pissed if I had to go back across town because the cashier f*cked up (seriously, the game was not available at a more convenient location). At least the $15 store credit would have ensured that he returned as a customer. Granted, once you start acting like a douche, then courtesy does tend to get flushed down the toilet Between Christmas and the time he came back to the store, there was plenty of time to calm down and be willing to act like an adult.

[Ben_Who]

I walked into one store, and as usual grabbed a bunch of NES game boxes off the shelf, intending to buy them.

"Sorry sir," the checker said, "we don't have those games." As usual. Yet the boxes had been put back on the shelf since the last time I was there.

"Can I just have the boxes then?" I asked, so I wouldn't be stuck in this never-ending spiral of shelf-to-counter-to-shelf shipping.

"Sure!" the guy said. I bought a few actual games that had no boxes to make him happy too.

When the time came to leave, the manager grabs my bag with the empty boxes in them and says, "You can't have those, they're for store display purposes."

"B-but!" I stammered. "You can't display boxes for games you don't have, that's false advertising."

"It's representative of the sort of games we do have, even if we don't have those particular ones," was the astonishing and ridiculous response.

During the Great Wii Shortage of 2007, I got to talking to one GameStop manager about this. They still had huge stacks of empty boxes gleefully advertising the Nintendo Wii at both retail and used prices, piled high to the ceilings and leaning against the walls. Not only that, all the POP advertising was still up, the display model was still in its housing, and there were huge banners all over the place begging every customer that walked in to buy one.

The manager said that they were contractually obligated to display all that stuff even if they didn't actually have the merchandise in stock. However, not only did they not have any Wiis to sell, they weren't going to get any for a while - the Nintendoes being shipped to our area later that month were destined for stores that had outbid for them. Add to that the fact that they had no way to pre-order or reserve a unit for when they did, eventually, come in.

Consider the logic. They were occupying a considerable amount of purchase and advertising space flogging a product that they didn't have, wouldn't get, and wouldn't make any money off of if they did, all because they had to, on the off chance that someday in the future they might. I can't think of any other store that would wilfully operate that way. And the manager was so frustrated about it that he told me that the Sam's Club just down the road had a shipment of 40 that had arrived the day before. (He probably knew that Sam's Club game selection is crap and I'd be back to buy my games from him. Which I did.)

So maybe GameStop did make a modest profit off sending me to another store to buy a unit they were advertising, but the manager was taking a hell of a risk that I wouldn't just head off to Best Buy - where I have a charge account. Still, I was reminded of all this when I went into GameStop last week to ask about the current price of a used PS3 - only to be told that they had no PS3's, new or used, in stock.

How does that chain stay in business if they don't actually carry any merchandise?

Love, Who?

[Titi]

I am shocked by the responses on this thread. Most of the people whom are saying that it is the stores fault and the guy should have been given extra, are also people whom say that people should check things at drive thru's.

Why in this case is NOT on the individual to check again to make sure, but they have to at a fast food place (that probably makes the mistake about forgetting something more than in the OPs store.) but it is on employees and the store to make sure.

Also on the child's christmas being ruined, unless the child only got one present that christmas then they would only be as upset as the parent is. I know this from experience when I bought a new sealed game for my son, and when he opened it nothing was in there. So what did I do? I made a joke about Santa must have forgotten to put it in case because he enjoyed it too much. But that we would call the manufacturer and see if we could get another. (They did send us another.) and my son played with the other presents he got. And you know what? he liked the other presents just as much as the special I had bought him, which turned out to be empty.

[Broomjockey]

Why in this case is NOT on the individual to check again to make sure,

Ever purchased a used video game? Or one that's been pre-opened and had the disc removed for inventory control? After you pay, they put a sticker on it and seal it. If you break that seal, it's considered "used" and you can't get a refund on it. And *that* is the difference.

[rageaholic]

I'm going to side with the customer on this one, even if he was kind of an ass. I would be pretty pissed too if I thought I was buying a game only to be given an empty box. Why is it his fault when the store screwed up? I know this is a pro employee site, but come on!

[PepperElf]

i'm of mixed feelings on this.

i do think the aggression was a bit uncalled for with the game but im also reminded of what happened to mom at Wegmans.

My older nephew loves chocolate. So for his birthday Mom picked up a chocolate cake for him, but... when they cut it open it wasn't chocolate. They still ate it cos it's a birthday and there's cake.


Mom went to Wegmans the next day or so to tell them. "I'm not asking for anything, I just want to let you know what happened and to check the cakes to make sure they're what they're labeled as." She explained that they did eat it and threw the rest out etc.

The man working the cake area asked Mom to wait for a moment and he checked a cake to make sure it was right, wrote "Paid" on the label and initialed it, and gave it to Mom for my nephew.

Later on, when Mom was getting ready to check out, he tracked her down again and handed her a $15 gift certificate, saying, "We don't disappoint children."

Mom gave both the cake and certificate to my nephew, since it was his cake in the first place. he was one very happy teen.

[Zaiida]

This happened to my cousin and I yesterday. We were visiting his mum (my aunt) and Cousin stopped into an electronics store and bought a a wii, wii fit, a couple of games for his mum as a late xmas present. We live 400k from her so it's a big trek to see her and when we got to her place and set everythng up we found that a game was empty.

Cousin called the electronics store and they fell over themselves apologising and we stopped in when we were coming back home to get the game and bought another wii fit because we found the wii fit funny to use (I forget how many times I fell off that darned board). We were given a $15 discount without asking which was really nice of them. I don't think we'd have gotten the discount if we hadn't bought something but it was a nice gesture.

If we had bought the game, not opened it at his mum's house and got all the way home (the electronics store is nearly 90k's away from our house) we would have been very annoyed, mostly with ourselves because we didn't check to see if the games were all there. We should have known better as very few places have full cases on the floor to prevent theft nowadays.

He came in and bitched to me that his kid had opened the package on Christmas and nothing was inside, I apologized several times and got the game for him, but apparently this was not enough.

This guy did have a right to be annoyed but he should have checked the game was in the case when he bought it, especially when it was a present for his son.

I'vee given a present I hadn't checked to see if it was fine and it was broken. I was mortified and went back to get an exchange. It was my fault for not checking. Luckily friend found it funny.

[rageaholic]

It also means that sometimes we forget to do this and people walk away having just paid for an empty case.

This guy did have a right to be annoyed but he should have checked the game was in the case when he bought it, especially when it was a present for his son.

I'vee given a present I hadn't checked to see if it was fine and it was broken. I was mortified and went back to get an exchange. It was my fault for not checking. Luckily friend found it funny.

I understand that mistakes happen, but the mistakes were with the store for forgeting to give him the game.

Just like in fast food when one orders something and they get it wrong, the mistake is on them. Yes, it's good to check to see what you ordered, but that doesn't shift the blame in anyway.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

The problem is, IMO, there's no real way to keep this from happening. The best that could be done is to have management keep reminding us to put them in there. I suppose they could come up with a penalty for us to try and deter it from happening more, but I would estimate it happens to less than 5% of our total transactions so we're generally pretty good with getting it right.

I think what corporate should do is put in place an official policy on what we can offer customers who have to come back to deal with an empty case. Currently as far as I know, there isn't one. It's up to the manager to determine what to do (or in the case of my original story, NOT do) which causes varying degrees of expectation for customers.

[Titi]

Ever purchased a used video game? Or one that's been pre-opened and had the disc removed for inventory control? After you pay, they put a sticker on it and seal it. If you break that seal, it's considered "used" and you can't get a refund on it. And *that* is the difference.

I have NEVER had any sticker put on the game (new or used) when I have purchased them from a store that just has the boxes on display, but your comment does allow it to make sense to me. (But maybe things are different here.)

Also I mainly buy USED games because I cannot afford NEW games. Just because my brothers can purchase my children a WII, doesn't mean I can purchase the games for it. So all they have are USED games.

Heck, my children love going to gamestop and looking through the used games to find which one is not only the cheapest, but one they would actually want to play. (So far my daughter (7) is the best, cheap used games but something that she knows they will both love playing.)

[mikoyan29]

Mid-1990s, right before Funcoland fell apart and was replaced with GameStops. They often changed their policies without telling their customers.

I walked into one store, and as usual grabbed a bunch of NES game boxes off the shelf, intending to buy them.

"Sorry sir," the checker said, "we don't have those games." As usual. Yet the boxes had been put back on the shelf since the last time I was there.

"Can I just have the boxes then?" I asked, so I wouldn't be stuck in this never-ending spiral of shelf-to-counter-to-shelf shipping.

"Sure!" the guy said. I bought a few actual games that had no boxes to make him happy too.

When the time came to leave, the manager grabs my bag with the empty boxes in them and says, "You can't have those, they're for store display purposes."

"B-but!" I stammered. "You can't display boxes for games you don't have, that's false advertising."

"It's representative of the sort of games we do have, even if we don't have those particular ones," was the astonishing and ridiculous response.

Not only that, but at another Funcoland the next week I learned something even worse! Because there were so few NES boxes, they wouldn't let the customer have them even if they had the game in stock!

Of course it was a new policy and I had to walk away only with unboxed games from then on. I stopped going to Funcolands.

Not that it really mattered, though, as the internet turned up shortly after this and made home console emulation a reality, and the need to own physical hardware or boxes a surreality.

What the hell kind of store would sell unboxed games?


Anyways, I'm kind of with the customer on this one. I don't understand why game stores will leave the PC games in the package and the games for consoles behind the counters. It's almost like they are saying that kids will steal (at one time it was mostly kids buying console games and adults buying PC games) and adults don't. Blaming the customer because he didn't check the package before he left the store is like blaming QA because they missed some parts in receiving inspection. The fault is with the store for the policy of removing games from packages to prevent theft.