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0
 11.19.2011 10:11am


Big Tall
Taller Than Tall
Onyx said:

Funny because I'm also a (former) GameStop employee and working for them only made me more critical of their bullshit.

Your Gamestop shopping experience will vastly differ depending on how much of a Corporate Kiss-Ass the store manager is. If they aren't, you won't get much crap. Maybe the token "anything you want to reserve coming out? question, but that's about it. If they're a major kiss-ass, you'll get the entire spiel to the point of annoyance. From experience I've noticed that badgering the customers actually results in less subs/preorders (which are a huge part of how many hours per week the store gets for its non-salaried employees, not overall sales).  And I've worked under both types of managers. The guy who didn't really make a huge deal about it was infinitely more pleasant to work under. He also had a lot more "core" customers that would not only give the store a lot of business, but also were pleasant to sell things to and reserved stuff fairly often. The guy who was a kiss-ass was really miserable and critical about every little thing, even things done exactly as they were supposed to be. I once got six reserves in a single shift (which is usually pretty fucking good), and he bitched at me because I didn't "earn" those reserves.

This, this, 1000x this. I just started working at a GS in March and I just laugh at half of the inane things corporate wants us to do. The spiel is jammed down our throats thanks to mystery shoppers and District Managers who want nothing but 100% on them. You can get written up (and presumably fired eventually) for not going through everything. I don't care enough to do it because it's just a side job for me and it's just too much to throw at a customer, but some people I work with do. Then again, they're also not exactly people-persons who realize if the customer is actually paying attention. I've had both types of managers as well, currently with one of the later Onyx mentioned, and all I ever hear is about doing the goddamn spiel. Thankfully she can't do anything but sell so I get a free pass because I'm about the only one in there who knows how to merchandise properly/at all.

As far as the used game issue, most of the time I agree, yeah it's crazy the markup on the trade-in value (which seems to come from someone throwing a dart at a board some days). In some cases though, the customer is getting a couple bucks for something the company marks up 300%, but it's one everyone there knows we'll never sell (ie - most Wii trade-ins, pretty much any non-controller accessory). Depending on the value I tell people to hawk their wares elsewhere to try and get more money for what they have, which in most cases is shit games from the last gen they think should be worth $10 each or something.




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0
 11.19.2011 10:22am


Mavilu
Yep, still gaming



 I buy most everything from Amazon, but sometimes I just want to buy something right this moment (as it was with my latest purchase, Oblivion) and so I go to a Gamestop (there's a bunch around here).
I had never been asked anything more than if that's all I'll be buying, honestly; I used to have employees ( usually kids) sort of snickering at the old lady, possibly a clueless mom? that they thought I was (like I can't see them) but in the last couple of years, nothing but courtesy and some small talk about the game I have been buying, once a kid told me he thought Star Ocean 2 was better than Star Ocean 1 and then go into a confused  tirade about how cool it was that I was playing games and this last time the guy told me Oblivion was a lot of fun but made him very dizzy.
But that's about it.
The only thing I don't like is that they keep the discs separate behing the counter but I can see why they do that.




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0
 11.19.2011 11:04pm


Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you
Big Tall said:

 The spiel is jammed down our throats thanks to mystery shoppers and District Managers who want nothing but 100% on them.

You'll notice the people who want 100% on the spiel are the very people who will never have to say the spiel to a real live customer.

And, in a way, they're kinda right.  If you badger and annoy your customers enough some of them will say yes to shut you up.  Looks good on the quarterly P&L statement.  Large corporations in truth don't give a shit about customers at all, just the money in their pockets, and they'll make up whatever shit they can to extract that money.

I've been inside a Gamestop exactly once in my life, and to be honest I didn't see much use for it.  Yarr, a pirates life for me!




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0
 11.20.2011 2:54am


Onyx
Butts
Administrator
Southern Comfort said:

Big Tall said:

 The spiel is jammed down our throats thanks to mystery shoppers and District Managers who want nothing but 100% on them.

You'll notice the people who want 100% on the spiel are the very people who will never have to say the spiel to a real live customer.

And, in a way, they're kinda right.  If you badger and annoy your customers enough some of them will say yes to shut you up.  Looks good on the quarterly P&L statement.  Large corporations in truth don't give a shit about customers at all, just the money in their pockets, and they'll make up whatever shit they can to extract that money.!

True story: the regional director visited one of the stores up north near where I worked when I was in college. The sales person, who was just a regular game advisor (aka, cash register jockey) just sold the game, casually asked if they wanted to reserve anything, person didn't, but paid off part of another reserve he had (it was one of the store's regulars). Then the regional director took the register to show him "how it's done"... and scared away the next customer who didn't even buy anything.




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0
 11.20.2011 10:15am


Big Tall
Taller Than Tall



 At the end of my job interview they opened the floor up for my questions, which was a bad move on their part and probably no better for me. I asked if they'd ever been able to convince any employee that "sales associate" means anything more than "poorly-trained sales monkey". There was some awkward silence after that.




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0
 11.20.2011 7:00pm


kjonez
with a Z



 I can't say I've ever had a problem with the Gamestop near me in CT. The mall it's located  in used to have 2 stores. The main one and a smaller one which used to be a Electronics Boutique. I had a EB card and went there before it changed, it was always easier for me to go there because of it's location in the mall. I hate shopping, especially the mall, so EB was conviently located near an exit with minimal traffic. When it was turned into a Gamestop, the GS employees were the same EB guys and gave me a free rewards card and put a bunch of credit on it that would have been on my EB card.

Eventually they shut the smaller store down and made the larger one the main store. The employees that work there are easy going for the most part. Aside from asking about pre orders I never have to listen to any sales pitches about other offers. Most know me when I come in and are FF fans as well, so it's nice to chat about the good ol days of RPGs with people. None of my actual freinds like that genre of gaming so it's refreshing to have a conversation with someone who actually likes RPGs. It's a very relaxing environment and really no pressure into buying anything I don't want.

The thing is, that video should represent just about any store these days. Barnes & Noble wanted all kinds of information, asking about clubs and rewards, and saying I need to give them an email for my purchase: A BOOK. Same thing happened when I was using a gift card I got for American Eagle. I just tell these people Idon't have an email address and to just give me my stuff. I hate shopping, and I wish I wasn't so terrible at buying things online.




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0
 11.21.2011 2:17am


Arckanghel
Pirate.



 Funcoland was a wonderful place. My experiences with Gamestop are never going to reach that level, but I've had good experiences with them as well. But I honestly think it's only because most of the Gamestop's I've gone to are run by friends of mine. When I moved to Alabama and had to go to a store I wasn't familiar with, my experience was awful.

I asked if a game that was $27 could be transferred to the local Gamestop since a store about 50 miles away had it. I emphasized I only wanted the game because of the price. They said yes. The game arrived, I came to buy it. They remarked it $49. Long story short, it was the same employee that transferred it, who called to tell me it was in, remarked the price and then attempted to get me to buy if for twice the price I agreed. No one at the store had any interest in fixing the issue. After I called the manager and he said there wasn't anything they were willing to do, I never went back. At any point someone could have told me they doubled the price.




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0
 11.21.2011 2:47am


FenixDown
The King's orders are absolute



 My most recent experiences with Gamestop were a lot like in that video, to the point where I will only go there if I'm looking for something hard to find or if there happens to be a preorder bonus for something I'm willing to get on day one that's better than what's offered on Amazon.com. About this time last year I did have a positive experience with the guy behind the counter, talking about what we'd like to see from Nintendo regarding Zelda's 25th anniversary. If I had more experiences like that, I would be willing to stop in more often.



Let's Play Chrono Trigger
Let's Play The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past
Let's Play Final Fantasy VI




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0
 11.29.2011 11:29am


Lews
Lord of the Morning



 i work at a holiday inn express, and our spiel of answering the phone is "it's a great day at holiday inn express & suites, this is YOUR NAME, may i help you?".  it's actually written on the phone, and i've even heard the hotel owner has people call the place and hang up just to see if we're answering the phone correctly.  i fail every single time, and i know this because i've had the owner himself to call and check up on things and every time he says something to me about answering the phone the right way (without being a dick about it, and to his credit that's the only time he's ever said anything about anything really; for an indian, he's not so bad).

as short as it is, i feel silly answering the phone by first saying a mouthful that nobody even cares about.  it's 100x worse if you call a gamestop, where you'll get nearly a whole paragraph before you can actually talk to someone.  it's something along the lines of "thanks for calling gamestop LOCATION where you can preorder LATEST BIG-NAME GAME (maybe even a couple of them) for only $5 and save up to %15 percent on used games, this is CASHIER'S NAME, how can i help you?".  i can't remember the whole thing but it traumatized me into never calling them again (btw, i only halfway memorized it because i've also heard them answering the phone that way many times while i was in-store).  i'll go out of my way to find the info i need, even waiting forever for a non-smartphone with shitty internet just to get the store hours, etc. before i call them again.

i understand there's a polite and professional way to answer the phone (and other things) at your job.  but you don't need all that shit, especially when they say it so rapidly that one can barely understand them and is probably not concerned with it anyway.  i've heard similar complaints from several people concerning customer service in general and i tend to simply answer the phone with the basics ("holiday inn express, this is roger") and in person i don't pressure anyone to sign up for the points card or have a rehearsed monologue about the amenities.  instead i talk to them in a polite way, yet in a manner that i would talk to pretty much anybody off the street.  i approach the situation as if i'm helping them get points on rooms they are already spending money on, first asking them if they frequently even stay in holiday inn-affliated hotels in the first place, and if not then i don't go on with it.  i judge whether or not they're in a hurry to get into the rooms (i work graveyard and see mostly travel-weary people who just want to lay down and stop driving instead of listening to a guy talk about this and that) and decide whether or not i'll say much at all other than how to get to their rooms.  it's usually "here's how to get to your room, if you need anything give me a call".  it's something i think a lot of customer services reps disregard: the feelings of the customer.  to be fair, it's usually because they are told to say all these things and not because they are terrible human beings.  luckily i've not been hounded to recite a brochure's worth of info by the manager (who, thank god, is very down to earth).  

and although game stores and hotels are different businesses, they are more alike than you think, with pre-booking being pushed more and more lately.  but the thing is, as with onyx's story about the apparently clueless regional director, they're already buying something from you so why are you scaring them away by hounding them about other things?




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0
 11.29.2011 8:35pm


Spidey
So Sigh Ety



 Yeah, the local store that used to be Funcoland really has transformed in the last 12 years or so.  At that time I would try to pre order a game and they didn't even know what I was talking about. (The employees didn't even realize you could pre order games at their store)  Now I'm asked 50 times if I wanna pre order something. Like many of you I get my games at amazon, but if the pre order goodies are good enough and I want the game at midnight release I'll still go to gamestop, this happens like once or twice a year. Sometimes I also go when i'm walking by and bored and want to play some of the newer games for a few minutes.




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0
 11.30.2011 6:12pm


Colinp42
Registered Member

 Amen, Lews.  I had a 2nd job at Blockbuster for a while, and the day I quit was the day they gave us scripts.  We weren't even allowed to do something (like scan) and say something at the same time.








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0
 11.30.2011 7:53pm


kjonez
with a Z



 I bought a pair of shoes today, and it sucked. I get to the register and hand them my cash. Then the game of 20 questions begins: name, address, phone number etc. I ask the girl if they actually need that info and she says yes, but gives no reason. I lie and tell her I don't have an email address because I get enough spam and junk email already, so she makes one up on the spot and enters it in. Then the rewards card and membership bonus, which I decline for both. Then I have to choose what free magazine I want: Sports Illustrated, Health, etc.

I gave my address and said no to everything else, and she looks at me like I'm the biggest asshole in the world, shoves the receipt in the bag and says "You're done." Maybe it's because she was of a younger generation, maybe customer service is only scripted these days and if you don't follow the script you get the short end of the stick. I don't know. What I do know is that I wanted to buy a pair of shoes and nothing else. I guess that's a hard concept to grasp in the world of retail now.




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0
 11.30.2011 7:56pm


Catastrophe
I'm Catbug!



 There are two EBGames that I frequent. One out of convenience since it's close to me, but has gone WAY downhill over the years, and the other, which was closer to wear I work, but kind of out of the way, and I still enjoy frequenting. The one at the mall closer to me, I stopped visiting as often right about when they stopped selling strategy guides. They used a spinning rack that was full of them, and then suddenly, it was gone. Then the employees who would converse with you and actually knew what they were talking about disappeared. Now they (it seems) only have two girls who work there, who are nothing more than cash register jockeys. So I rarely go to that one anymore.

The other one, is bigger, has a better selection, has friendlier staff, that don't give me a major shpiel when I do purchase something, aside from "Do you want to reserve anything?" "No." "Okay" and then they give me my receipt and one of those stupid most wanted trade-ins flyers which I really wish I had the guts to refuse because all I do is recycle them when I get home.




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0
 11.30.2011 11:18pm


Spidey
So Sigh Ety



 kjonez - You can buy shoes at gamestop now? Or are you using that as an example when talking about the general corporate desperation of retail to get your info and sign you up for stuff nowadays?




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0
 12.01.2011 2:21am


Ashilyn
Career GM



 THe GameStop near me had some new people working there when I went to trade a game towards my Old Republic purchese, and they were actually really decent and straightforward, a HUGE change from how the people there normally are. Which is nice, since that's the closest place to me, thus I have to go there most of the time if I'm not going to Best Buy.







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