I am avoiding Gamestop and switching to online purchase

Very interesting, so far (I watched the first 4). I'll finish the series a little later.

It's not surprising that attempts are being made to take the videos down. And you can be sure that, if they do get taken down, somebody is just gonna re-post them. The best way to draw attention to something is to try to outlaw it.

I usually buy stuff new anyway... I did sell them old consoles few times but I learned my lesson (well I didn't have the internet at that time) but I won't be selling stuff there anymore... Sweet Ebay... :3

I watched this a day or two ago.  Or well I watched some of it, I couldn't stand him mumbling while trying to talk like Yahtzee.  But anyways, from what I remember it was just a bunch of information everyone (or I thought everyone) has known for ages.  The only reason I shop there is because they have a lot of $5 PS2 games that I wouldn't actually seek out online, but if it is just there I would try it out.  They also carry games longer than most large retailers.  A lot of times places like circuit city/best buy won't even have games that are a year old.  The only large retailer that has a good selection (from what I've seen) is Fry's.  I even noticed they had a handful of new PS1 games the other day.

As a current employee, I feel I have to shed some light on this. I'm not defending the corporation as a whole because I personally don't like their business practices myself, but I will give accurate info on how things work.

1) Yes we are. We are encouraged to encourage trade-ins and sell subs, get res, etc.

2) Yes, buy low sell high is the general business plan. Ever been to a CD Exchange? Same thing. Ebay does the same thing with Wiis too, except most of those are new, and it's not one corporation but many people.

3) I have never seen this from any of my fellow employees or any memos from management. All of our corporate info tells us to be on the look out for copies and we've even refused a few that were obvious copies. As far as actual "stealing" (as in the physical taking of someones property, not pirating), that's why we take down the tradee's info. In case someone can prove that we did mistakenly take in a stolen copy, we have everything we need to track down the person who stole it.

4) True, our benefits are almost nil, but most of us are part timers and I think in the US, you don't have to give near as many benefits to those who work less than 40 hours a week. Management get a little more, but they're still sub par compared to other corporations. You have to earn regional manager before the pay or benefits begin to catch up.

5) When you get hired, this is how you first get paid. Yes it sucks, but you can immediately opt for direct deposit which is much easier. The first withdrawl from the card is free, so if you withdraw all of it, you pay no fees. Also, they come with checks that are linked to that debit account, so you can just write yourself a check and deposit it to your bank of choice. Only a fool actually uses the debit cards

6) This is my biggest beef with GS. When we take in a system, we test it for about 6 seconds, then we box it up and resell it. As many of you know, 6 seconds isn't quite long enough to play test anything, so customers become guinea pigs. As far as the games go, we go by the "too many scratches" system. We look at the back of the disc, and if we decide it has too many scratches, we charge a refurb fee and send it to our refurb place where they try to fix it. Sometimes a game doesn't need that many scratches to stop working, but it's hard to tell just by looking. If we had to test every single game we took in per day, we wouldn't have time to do things like help customers.

Once again, this isn't a defense of the company, it's just a bigger picture of how things work. Yes there are rogue locations where there are a lot more unsavory business practices, but on the whole, most stores follow corporate orders. Most of this is standard business practice. Buy low, sell high, etc. Cutting costs makes a business more profitable, and from what I've experienced, everything they've done so far is legal. It may not be "right", like the lack of benefits, decent pay, etc, but it's all legal.

I can't understand this guy, he talks worse that Sly Stallone, I can understand the Zero Punctuation huy perfectly

I watched the whole thing, which re-inforced my saying that Gamestop is a pawn shop.

I will still buy new games and accessories, since there's like four of them a hop, skip, and jump away from my house, while BB is like 15 minutes away, and wal-mart is like 20 mins away.

But I never reserve anything anyway, and I happen to believe that Game Informer is a pretty good magazine, but since I don't trade stuff in, I don't care about the card. I do subscribe every year though, since your guy's hours depend on it, I'll help, I'm not a total douche. But I don't pre-order games unless there's something special about it. And I know they don't keep them anyway.

I miss EB Games.

The videos are still up too, just the first one isn't.

Wow, i live in the UK where we dont have gamestop (at least i dont think we do) and this place always gets a load of abuse around here! Must really suck, or at least be really dodgy