According to Eurogamer, GAME staff were “told to buy Nintendo 3DS consoles and games from supermarket rival Tesco” last Thursday night, and then sell them in-store as pre-owned.
The website cites an internal memo that was presumably leaked out by an employee. “Whilst we are unable to competitively match this offer in terms of a mint price,” says the memo, “it offers a great opportunity to gain 3DS consoles and games for your store’s pre-owned stock.”
The plan, it appears, was to use cash from the tills to pick up a 3DS and a game (for £209.99) and then trade it back to GAME for cash at the same price, with up to £1049.50 authorised per visit to Tesco, enough for five bundles. “Your store can do this trip multiple times,” said the memo.
The console would then be sold to any customer as ‘mint’ for the same price, but only once the brand new stock had run dry. Staff were not to “up sell” the pre-owned machines.
One GAME staff member allegedly told Eurogamer “the store he works at was reprimanded for not taking part”.
A spokesperson for the retailer told Eurogamer that “Some of our stores wanted to move quickly last weekend to build their pre-owned stocks of 3DS at the same time as their local competitors, so we gave them a process to do that. It was not mandatory, and happened in small volumes.”
source: http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2011/03/29/game-staff-told-to-buy-3ds-from-tesco/
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
- George Orwell, ‘1984’
