Shocking behaviour by Gamestop.....

jonc24

I'm writing this posts as a cautionary tale of shopping with Gamestop, particularly online. I'm am literally raging at the shockingly repugnant way they think of and treat their customers. First off, this is not a problem I've encountered with Gamestop's in store staff, who have always been amazing to deal with but rather(and more worryingly) the "service" provided at their Head Office level.

On Monday Dec 9th (9 days ago!) I ordered a game as a Christmas present for my son, from Gamestop's online store. At the time of purchasing, the item was in stock and my card was charged for the full amount. After a couple of days, the order status hadn't changed to "shipped" so I emailed Gamestop to see when I could expect them to post it. After no reply, I emailed them again, and again. After 4 emails, numerous phone calls (to their phone that never gets answered) and a private message through Facebook, I still got absolutely nothing. Then today, I received this email-

Hi John
Unfortunately we are out of stock on your order at the moment. I have gone & cancelled your order as well as put through a refund request for. I cannot guarantee if we will receive this item back in stock so I feel it best to refund you the money & hope you might have more luck with another retailer.

Apologies for any frustrations or inconveniences we may have caused.

Kind Regards

WTH!!?? They cancel my order without authorisation or request and tell me to look elsewhere?? Now I should also point out that the game I ordered was Gears of War Judgement, reduced to €8.88 in a daily deal. It seems that Gamestop simply don't want to honour games they have heavily reduced in an attempt to attract traffic.

I have also bought( yes, bought at €16.99) their "loyalty card" as I was told by staff in Henry St. that points accumulated through purchases and trades would turn into value which can be used off purchases( like any other loyalty card) but I've since found out that this is a LIE and that the only thing the points do is "level you up" to a higher rank!!! So I have to spend another €11,000 at Gamestop THIS YEAR to qualify for the next rank!!!!! WTH???!!!

After trawling through their Facebook page, it is evident that many other people are having the same issues I am and are simply being ignored. Orders not shipping, points not being allocated and customers being ignored en masse.

There are several other issues going on at the minute with Gamestop but for fear of this post becoming a novel, I'll leave it till other people post similar experiences. I will attempt to direct anyone I see online with a similar problem here and hopefully it might put Gamestop under pressure to actually treat their customers with a bit of respect!

Tiddlypeeps

jonc24 wrote: »

WTH!!?? They cancel my order without authorisation or request and tell me to look elsewhere??

Why would they need your authorisation to cancel and order?

I can understand being pissed about how long it took them to deal with you, especially this close to Christmas. But if they don't have it then they don't have it, what else can they do at that point other than cancel your order.

jonc24

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

Why would they need your authorisation to cancel and order?

I can understand being pissed about how long it took them to deal with you, especially this close to Christmas. But if they don't have it then they don't have it, what else can they do at that point other than cancel your order.

Of course they can cancel an order but there stores are sitting on stock of this very game. They just don't want to honour the price they advertised. At least I got a response though. There's a woman who posted on their Facebook page that she placed an order Nov 30 and has had no response at all!

Penn

jonc24 wrote: »

Of course they can cancel an order but there stores are sitting on stock of this very game. They just don't want to honour the price they advertised. At least I got a response though. There's a woman who posted on their Facebook page that she placed an order Nov 30 and has had no response at all!

Their stores might have stock of the game, but that might be different to the online store which would have its own warehouse or something with dedicated stock.

D3PO

if its available in store then why don't you go in store and buy it ?

I think its bordering on insanity to believe that their business model is to trick people into buying something online only to then cancel it in the hope that that person buys something else at the same time on their online store.

Not a very customer retentive framework and not plausible. I don't know why you would be pissed off they cancelled the order, if the guy has told you they don't have it and wont have it again what other option did they have ?

If it is infact available in store as you say, then Id go in store bring it to the desk have a printed out copy of your original online order and demand they honour the price you paid online.

jonc24

D3PO wrote: »

if its available in store then why don't you go in store and buy it ?

I think its bordering on insanity to believe that their business model is to trick people into buying something online only to then cancel it in the hope that that person buys something else at the same time on their online store.

Not a very customer retentive framework and not plausible. I don't know why you would be pissed off they cancelled the order, if the guy has told you they don't have it and wont have it again what other option did they have ?

If it is infact available in store as you say, then Id go in store bring it to the desk have a printed out copy of your original online order and demand they honour the price you paid online.

Maybe you didn't read the original post. It was quite long! But I bought it in a daily deal at €8.88 online where as its €49.99 in their stores. Quite a difference.....

jonc24

Penn wrote: »

Their stores might have stock of the game, but that might be different to the online store which would have its own warehouse or something with dedicated stock.

I know from somebody who used to work their that their online store and bricks and mortar are supplied by the same warehouse. In fact they often ship stock from stores to cover online sales. Hence why you can buy preowned stock online.(they obviously don't trade it in online!) but they simply aren't willing to honour an advertised price!

Cabaal

dropped from 50 to 9e, sounds like a pricing error more then a deal, thats a massive discount.

jonc24

Cabaal wrote: »

dropped from 50 to 9e, sounds like a pricing error more then a deal, thats a massive discount.

It was dropped to €8.88 along with several other titles. It is still showing at that price on their site now despite it being out of stock. It was obviously showing as instock when I ordered as it allowed me to place the order.
I know this thread might feel a bit "me against the world" but as can be seen on their Facebook page, on nearly every one of their posts. Somebody is complaining about their online orders not shipping and that GameStop Head Office simply don't answer emails or there phones.
This issue isn't isolated to this one title.

GrumPy

Defo a case of: If same price in-store, just get it in-store. Gamestop have only had an online shop feature quite recently, and I imagine it's a bit dodge until it's around longer to find their *online feet*...

jonc24

GrumPy wrote: »

Defo a case of: If same price in-store, just get it in-store. Gamestop have only had an online shop feature quite recently, and I imagine it's a bit dodge until it's around longer to find their *online feet*...

But it's €41 dearer in store! And they've been running they're online store for over 2 years now....

petes

Seems fairly odd that on the site it is €8.99 new and €24.99 pre owned!

Retr0gamer

Sorry but that's they way it works if they don't have stock then they don't have stock and they are perfectly entitled to cancel your order. Also as far as I'm aware Gamestop's stores and their Bricks and Mortar shops are separate entities so they can't just request stock from the bricks and mortar stores. It just doesn't work like that.

They haven't really done anything wrong in this case, it happened to me a while ago, I thought I was getting a bargain on a really rare game and it turned out it was out of stock so got refunded. It's all they can do.

Bepolite

Legally fully covered etc. etc. shocking service mind you, don't offer stock unless you have it to sell. If you do make an error stand over it unless it's a genuine error, this clearly wasn't.

maximoose

£12.99 on amazon. Take the free Amazon Prime trial, order tomorrow using Parcel Motel and you'll have it Sat for about €18e total.

Tiddlypeeps

It's not really all they can do tho. They can quite easily update their site so it knows how much stock they have so that it will only process sales for that amount. It's a fairly common thing to do on an e-commerce site.

I can't imagine this is a deliberate scheme by Gamestop to gain more traffic tho as I'd imagine it's actually kind of expensive in man hours to manually process refunds for people. I'd say it's just bad management.

Saying that I do think the OP's anger is a little extreme. It's annoying for sure, but not something I'd get my knickers in a twist over.

jonc24

maximoose wrote: »

£12.99 on amazon. Take the free Amazon Prime trial, order tomorrow using Parcel Motel and you'll have it Sat for about €18e total.

Might just do that buddy. Thanks for the tip. I'm never going back to GameStop again! Lol
To whoever mentioned that they are separate entities to stores, they aren't. In fact GameStop's whole European business online and off is run from their office in Swords. They get the preowned stock from stores to sell online so why not new stock!
Ah we'll, I'm done debating it as the Amazon Prime offer sounds good. I wasn't aware that Prime was available to ROI too.

jonc24

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

It's not really all they can do tho. They can quite easily update their site so it knows how much stock they have so that it will only process sales for that amount. It's a fairly common thing to do on an e-commerce site.

I can't imagine this is a deliberate scheme by Gamestop to gain more traffic tho as I'd imagine it's actually kind of expensive in man hours to manually process refunds for people. I'd say it's just bad management.

Saying that I do think the OP's anger is a little extreme. It's annoying for sure, but not something I'd get my knickers in a twist over.

You're right about the anger thing mate. But I've been emailing them fir two weeks about allocating the points I earned on my ps4 preorder that didn't go to the card. Since then I found out they lied to me when I was told that points accrued would translate to discounts( like pretty much every single loyalty card) but they are just a farce. I was actually told by a week ago by a Manager in store that the points don't really do much, when I was trying to get my Ps4 points!!!
And I had 3 separate incidents this year where I never got preorder DLC with a game that they said I would. It took three weeks worth of emails to sort out the last one!
So whilst I may seem a bit angrier at GameStop than may seem reasonable, it's been building up all year LOL!!

WildCardDoW

Gamestop are expensive even judging against other Irish retailers...

You've got Smyths and Xtravision / HMV as well as Argos for a few games.

In terms of online retailers: shopto.net (never used them myself!), thehut.com / zavvi.com (owned by the same company IIRC) and of course Amazon.

Looks like you've got some understandable annoyances against Gamestop. My mate was furious when they never told him he wasn't on the release day for the Xbox One, luckily he was warned in advance by someone else! He's never going back there himself!

I used to work in Smyths so I tend to go to them, but they have been the cheapest for day on releases for me so far this year! (bar the Tesco style retailers!)

jonc24

Yea, you're right. They are definitely the most expensive place to buy games. Their trade in offers can be ok and the staff are generally great. It actually feels like work, shopping at GameStop! Hehe. Unless of course, there isn't a problem with your purchase. In my opinion, that's the test or a proper retailer. It's how they treat you when things go wrong.

WildCardDoW

Oh, we all treat you like crap generally . I worked for five years: some people had good experiences some had bad, especially regarding Xbox games being broken (scratched) etc.

I could tell you some stories!

jonc24

WildCardDoW wrote: »

Oh, we all treat you like crap generally . I worked for five years: some people had good experiences some had bad, especially regarding Xbox games being broken (scratched) etc.

I could tell you some stories!

Hehe. I'd well believe it buddy!

locustfurnace

jonc24 wrote: »

Might just do that buddy. Thanks for the tip. I'm never going back to GameStop again! Lol
To whoever mentioned that they are separate entities to stores, they aren't. In fact GameStop's whole European business online and off is run from their office in Swords. They get the preowned stock from stores to sell online so why not new stock!
Ah we'll, I'm done debating it as the Amazon Prime offer sounds good. I wasn't aware that Prime was available to ROI too.

it's not, you have to use parcel motel / uk address.

Dard23

I completely agree with this post. Their customer service is just dire! I bought a controller with 90 days PSN online off them almost a month ago and still haven't received it! Emailed a number of times and called customer service which is basically just a lie machine. I bought through PayPal and have now opened a claim against them. At this stage I just want my money back so I can purchase a controller elsewhere. Total Shambles!

jonc24

After I posted this, somebody from Gamestop contacted me and told me they'd reinstate my order. That was a couple of days after Christmas and as of last week, having heard nothing since, I emailed to cancel the order as I'm sick of the whole debacle. They responded and cancelled it. A whole week later, I still haven't gotten my refund. They are an absolute joke of a company and need a serious shake up