Hellraizah
Member
Ok, I'm a bit tired of seeing the plethora of threads about gutted games sold as new so I'm starting a thread about the real reasons EB Games Canada sucks (I don't know much about the US division, but I guess it's pretty similar). I can think of so many things, I don't know if I'll be able to fit them all on my first post so I might add some others later in the thread.
Now, you have to know that I was a manager at an EB Games location in Canada for a couple of years, so these facts and opinions grounded in reality. I'm not working for them anymore and quitting this company was one of the best moves I ever made.
Ok, here we go, I'll try to list as much as I can, with no particular order :
Back in the days, employees were offered SPIFFs on the warranties they sold. It was 20% of the amount of the warranty so, if you sold a warranty on a console at 50$ (for 2 years), you had a 10$ bonus on your paycheck. That was pretty cool. Years later, they introduced the GPGs (Game Play Garantees, the annoying 3$ for a new game or 2$ for a used game for one year). It was still the same thing, you did 20% in SPIFFs (so, 0.60$ for a new GPGs). Then, at one EB conference, the president of the company annonced that SPIFFs were cut on all new products (consoles and games) to incite employees to sell more pre-own. It was said in a vague way and nobody seemed to understand. We did understand after the conference, and we were pissed. Later on, they went and cut all the SPIFFs on used products too. SPIFF was only used to get the employees to accept bothering customers with the warranties, when they got used to it and good to sell it, company laughed in their faces.
At EB, defective stuff is sent back to head office once a week. What they usually do with it is : they send it back to another store as a used product. This is true for games as well as accessories. We learned about this because sometimes the people at head office sent back the stuff with the defective slip on it. Sometimes you get accessories like guitars for any consoles with a little slip that says "Green button doesn't work" and the head office sent that to a store for them to sell it. It wasn't tested, it wasn't repaired. I don't even think I've ever sold a guitar that came from head office that didn't come back within a week as defective. Their quality standards is incredibly low on used products.
Head office also send big boxes of used games to the stores almost everyday. I would say that about 60% of these games are in a condition that made us think it might not even work. They were repaired but the head office never had a proper machine to repair them (or didn't know how to use it). These are the games that are taken back in trade but that employees feel might not work, so they charge a refurbishing fee for the trade in, which is 1$ for Playstation era games, 2$ for Gamecube, Xbox or PS2 games and 3$ for PS3, 360 or Wii games. They take back the games even if they look like shit, and charge you these fees like a sale. You would see REFURB CHARGE on your receipt like it was something you bought. It was a new way of boosting the sales and profit margins. When the games are taken back, they are sent to head office to get them "repaired". They "repair" them and sent them back to any store in Canada. These boxes are so big and full of different stuff that they almost take all day to unpack and place. That's why you will always see an employee taking one register with boxes trying to do the fastest he can to unpack them, he needs one register computer to do it, slowing down even more the already slow and painful process of doing a transaction at EB Games.
Employees are normally noted on the percentage of pre-own stuff they sell. The company never understood how retard that was to calculate it like that. The goal is to have 30% of your sales as pre-own. It doesn't take long for employees to figure out that to get your percentage up, you can start selling more pre-own or go the easy way...... and sell less new stock. Let's say you had 1000$ in sales and you were at 25% pre-own for the day, someone comes in and want to buy a new PS3, would you like to help him?
They now have updated their POS so that you can send and receive e-mails, ten thousand years after everyone in about any industry. Of course, they had to screw it up, so you can receive e-mails from head office or your district manager, but you can only send e-mails to either help desk or reply to e-mail that was sent to you. If you keep your inbox clean, and you want to know something from a buyer at head office, sorry you're fucked, you have to call because there is no option to send an e-mail to who you want to. It's probably to keep communications between stores down to a minimum, they don't think that knowledge might help you run your store. Oh, and of course, you don't have access to the web, unless it has changed.
The return policy of the company is so vague that most stores don't even use it the same way. For example, the signs in the store will tell you that warranty in store is 7 days on pretty much everything. The back of the receipt will tell you it's 14 days on pretty much everything, but that full details are available in store. They didn't want to change the rolls of paper because they supposedly had too much in stock, they should be mostly changed by now but I bet you can still get the 14 days receipt in pretty much any store. If you buy a refurbished console, the EB/Gamestop branded box will tell you you got 30 days of warranty. Which one is real? Never knew, every store interprets it their own way.
Depending on the console, buying pre-own or refurbished will often be something like 20$ less than new. If you take the "extended" warranty, you will often pay more than the new console, for a one-year warranty in store. All the hardware companies now offer 1 year of warranty when you buy a new console. If you see an advantage there, please tell me.
The company changed their policies on extended warranties when they lost so much on defective Xbox 360 consoles. They asked the stores to stop giving new hardware to people that came in with extented warranties and give them refurbished consoles instead. To my knowledge, this is still company policy. They also almost doubled the prices of the warranties on every console. I remember Xbox 360 at the time went from 50$ to 90$, they were trying to control losses.
Buying a refurbished console is probably the dumbest thing you can do at EB. They are hiring people that are not qualified to "repair" the defective consoles sent to head office. Of course, it almost never works and they still send them to the stores. They put their own seal on the console after opening it to make it known it voids the warranty if a customer opens the console by himself. The problem is that, if you buy a console, let's say a refurbished 360, and you don't take the extended warranty, you have at most 30 days of warranty, depending of the interpretation of the return policy by that particular store. If your console breaks after 2 months, EB won't take it back since the 30 days are over, and if you send it back to Microsoft, they'll send it back to you without touching it since it was opened by a third party not approved by Microsoft, great deal indeed.
I'll stop here, for now, I could go on for days......
Now, you have to know that I was a manager at an EB Games location in Canada for a couple of years, so these facts and opinions grounded in reality. I'm not working for them anymore and quitting this company was one of the best moves I ever made.
Ok, here we go, I'll try to list as much as I can, with no particular order :
Back in the days, employees were offered SPIFFs on the warranties they sold. It was 20% of the amount of the warranty so, if you sold a warranty on a console at 50$ (for 2 years), you had a 10$ bonus on your paycheck. That was pretty cool. Years later, they introduced the GPGs (Game Play Garantees, the annoying 3$ for a new game or 2$ for a used game for one year). It was still the same thing, you did 20% in SPIFFs (so, 0.60$ for a new GPGs). Then, at one EB conference, the president of the company annonced that SPIFFs were cut on all new products (consoles and games) to incite employees to sell more pre-own. It was said in a vague way and nobody seemed to understand. We did understand after the conference, and we were pissed. Later on, they went and cut all the SPIFFs on used products too. SPIFF was only used to get the employees to accept bothering customers with the warranties, when they got used to it and good to sell it, company laughed in their faces.
At EB, defective stuff is sent back to head office once a week. What they usually do with it is : they send it back to another store as a used product. This is true for games as well as accessories. We learned about this because sometimes the people at head office sent back the stuff with the defective slip on it. Sometimes you get accessories like guitars for any consoles with a little slip that says "Green button doesn't work" and the head office sent that to a store for them to sell it. It wasn't tested, it wasn't repaired. I don't even think I've ever sold a guitar that came from head office that didn't come back within a week as defective. Their quality standards is incredibly low on used products.
Head office also send big boxes of used games to the stores almost everyday. I would say that about 60% of these games are in a condition that made us think it might not even work. They were repaired but the head office never had a proper machine to repair them (or didn't know how to use it). These are the games that are taken back in trade but that employees feel might not work, so they charge a refurbishing fee for the trade in, which is 1$ for Playstation era games, 2$ for Gamecube, Xbox or PS2 games and 3$ for PS3, 360 or Wii games. They take back the games even if they look like shit, and charge you these fees like a sale. You would see REFURB CHARGE on your receipt like it was something you bought. It was a new way of boosting the sales and profit margins. When the games are taken back, they are sent to head office to get them "repaired". They "repair" them and sent them back to any store in Canada. These boxes are so big and full of different stuff that they almost take all day to unpack and place. That's why you will always see an employee taking one register with boxes trying to do the fastest he can to unpack them, he needs one register computer to do it, slowing down even more the already slow and painful process of doing a transaction at EB Games.
Employees are normally noted on the percentage of pre-own stuff they sell. The company never understood how retard that was to calculate it like that. The goal is to have 30% of your sales as pre-own. It doesn't take long for employees to figure out that to get your percentage up, you can start selling more pre-own or go the easy way...... and sell less new stock. Let's say you had 1000$ in sales and you were at 25% pre-own for the day, someone comes in and want to buy a new PS3, would you like to help him?
They now have updated their POS so that you can send and receive e-mails, ten thousand years after everyone in about any industry. Of course, they had to screw it up, so you can receive e-mails from head office or your district manager, but you can only send e-mails to either help desk or reply to e-mail that was sent to you. If you keep your inbox clean, and you want to know something from a buyer at head office, sorry you're fucked, you have to call because there is no option to send an e-mail to who you want to. It's probably to keep communications between stores down to a minimum, they don't think that knowledge might help you run your store. Oh, and of course, you don't have access to the web, unless it has changed.
The return policy of the company is so vague that most stores don't even use it the same way. For example, the signs in the store will tell you that warranty in store is 7 days on pretty much everything. The back of the receipt will tell you it's 14 days on pretty much everything, but that full details are available in store. They didn't want to change the rolls of paper because they supposedly had too much in stock, they should be mostly changed by now but I bet you can still get the 14 days receipt in pretty much any store. If you buy a refurbished console, the EB/Gamestop branded box will tell you you got 30 days of warranty. Which one is real? Never knew, every store interprets it their own way.
Depending on the console, buying pre-own or refurbished will often be something like 20$ less than new. If you take the "extended" warranty, you will often pay more than the new console, for a one-year warranty in store. All the hardware companies now offer 1 year of warranty when you buy a new console. If you see an advantage there, please tell me.
The company changed their policies on extended warranties when they lost so much on defective Xbox 360 consoles. They asked the stores to stop giving new hardware to people that came in with extented warranties and give them refurbished consoles instead. To my knowledge, this is still company policy. They also almost doubled the prices of the warranties on every console. I remember Xbox 360 at the time went from 50$ to 90$, they were trying to control losses.
Buying a refurbished console is probably the dumbest thing you can do at EB. They are hiring people that are not qualified to "repair" the defective consoles sent to head office. Of course, it almost never works and they still send them to the stores. They put their own seal on the console after opening it to make it known it voids the warranty if a customer opens the console by himself. The problem is that, if you buy a console, let's say a refurbished 360, and you don't take the extended warranty, you have at most 30 days of warranty, depending of the interpretation of the return policy by that particular store. If your console breaks after 2 months, EB won't take it back since the 30 days are over, and if you send it back to Microsoft, they'll send it back to you without touching it since it was opened by a third party not approved by Microsoft, great deal indeed.
I'll stop here, for now, I could go on for days......
