Why Gamestop Employees Should Never, Ever Speak
August 14th, 2010 
Nathan Schmidt
Two weeks ago was a very happy Saturday for me. Since Microsoft is looking to clear the older 360 models off the shelf and dropped the price to $149.99, I decided that the Xbox 360 was finally a purchase I could feel good about. I walked into my local Gamestop smiling, ready to make my purchase of an arcade sku along with a few games that I had missed like Modern Warfare 2 and Final Fantasy XIII.
The fact that I had to wait 20 minutes while the father & son in front of me pondered on whether to take the $35.00 in store credit for their trade-in, didn’t diminish my excitement a bit.
Finally my turn in line came. I sauntered up to the counter, slapped down my plastic with the games, and said “I’ll take a 360 arcade my good sir!” Actually, I just asked for a 360 arcade, and in no way sauntered. I could never pull off a good saunter. Anyway, this is the point when the manager of this particular Gamestop opened his mouth to speak and my day went to hell.
“You know that you need to purchase a hard drive to play online, or even connect to Xbox Live, right?” the manager inquired of me. Now being a somewhat savvy consumer I had done a bit of research before heading to Gamestop as I thought this might be an issue. I informed the store manager that the Gamestop website lists the arcade model as having 256mb memory installed, and that it is in fact Xbox Live enabled. As the manager hit me with a “dumb shit customer doesn’t know what he is talking about” look, he began to explain to me that there was in fact only 128mb memory installed and that while I would be able to log-in to Xbox Live, I would not be able to access the dashboard, my friendslist, etc…
Of course this witless turd had a solution in mind for me. “Why don’t you purchase one of our used premium models which come with a 20gig harddrive?”
I think it’s important that you understand something here dear reader, this is not my first Xbox 360 purchase. It’s not even my second, or third. It was in fact my fourth purchase of an Xbox 360 console. All previous 360′s I have owned fell to the dreaded RROD. Three of those previous consoles had actually been used models from Gamestop, so you can understand my hesitation when the manager suggested this course of action.
While all of this was going down, my inner bullshit detector was registering off the charts. I asked the manager if he was sure that his information was correct, and he confirmed it was. I wasn’t willing to plunk down anymore cash for a console that might come with a gallon of milk’s expiration date, so I told him thank you but no thanks and left the store.
Depressed that I did not have a new 360 in tow, I spent the ride home thinking about what the manager had told me and that his information just didn’t seem right. I hit home and immediately jumped online for some more research. It would not be the first time a Gamestop employee had led me astray with misinformation. After confirming that the store manager in fact did not know what fuck he was talking about, I printed out the page from Gamestop’s website and drove back to the store. I was fully prepared to confront this douche who tried to pawn a used system off on me by straight lying to my face. The thought never even crossed my mind that the manager just wasn’t that familiar with the products he was peddling.
Upon entering the store, I secured my spot in line to the counter and waited. Gamestop employees are not known for their speed of service as it was another 10 minute wait. In this case the wait only served to push my righteous fury to new heights, and finally my the time came to unleash it. As I approached the counter, once again there was no “saunter”, I put the page I had printed out down on the counter and asked “Dude, this is from your company website and I don’t appreciate being lied to so you can sell more used consoles”.
The manager read the print out, looked up at me, and apologized for not giving me the correct information. He even thanked me for bringing in the print out so that he could make sure his employees weren’t giving other customers the wrong information. The realization dawned on me that this guy didn’t try to screw me, he was just a bit dopey. My rage dissipated and I proceeded to purchase my 360 arcade and the games. While I had planned to make my purchase at Target after giving the manager a piece of my mind, I felt a little guilty about suggesting this clerk was a scam artist, instead of just being retarded.
This entire experience wasted three hours of my Saturday, and seriously cut in to my gaming time. If you take anything away from this post please let it be this, do your research before making a purchase, and never trust anything a Gamestop employee tells you. 9 times out of 10 a monkey flinging his poo is more informed.
http://pixelapocalypse.com/2010/08/why-gamestop-employees-should-never-ever-speak/
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LOL how can managers have the nerve to just lie like that!!! Thats so stupid I think the man could have sued them!
