The Bad - Gamestop Screwing Me Over...Twice
During my senior year of high school, I pre-ordered Mario Kart Wii. As with any pre-order I had done with anyone in the past, I expected to be able to pick my item up the day. Gamestop had other plans though. When I went to the counter to pick it up, this was roughly what our conversation went like:
"I have a copy of Mario Kart Wii on reserve."
"I'm sorry sir, but we just sold our last copy in the past few minutes."
"But I reserved a copy of it."
"I understand, but we no longer have any copies of it."
"How can you run out of copies for a game that I purchased the right to have a copy on its release date?"
"All of our release date games are available to anyone, so they snatched up some of them. We should be getting new copies either tomorrow or the next day, so check with us then.
"What was the point of me pre-ordering then if I can't get it the day it comes out?"
Silence. There was nothing that could be done, so I left. I did get it the next day, but that left a bad taste in my mouth. Less than a year later, Gamestop struck again.
I wasn't planning on pre-ordering Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts because of my previous reservation problem, but they were offering a bonus that was too good to pass up: A code to download Banjo-Kazooie. I already had it for the N64, but I wanted a backup copy. It should have been simple, but it wasn't.
I picked up my copy just fine, but as I was in my car, I opened it up and didn't see the download code insert that was supposed to be there. I went back in the store, and told them what the problem was.
At first, they had no idea what I was talking about. After talking for a bit, they decided to check it out on their computer, and they were surprised to find out that I was telling the truth. They refused to open any other case to see if they had one, so they told me to contact customer service through e-mail.
I did that night, but it didn't get resolved. They told me that all codes were already distributed in the cases of the reserved copies and that they wouldn't do anything on their end. They said that I had to contact the manager of the local store and resolve the situation with him. I reluctantly did that and the manager was of no help either. He wouldn't open the case despite the fact that they do it anyway. Knowing that the situation was a lost cause, I left and didn't bother to do anything else about it.
That was two straight times that something could have been easily prevented, but Gamestop failed to have preventive measures or resolution protocol in place. I haven't shopped at Gamestop since.
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