Shrapnel Games Blog

We saw The Mist this past Friday. Excellent holiday fare, I highly recommend bringing the whole family for the uplifting ending.

The ending…wow, that was seriously messed up. Someone failed a couple of SAN checks, that’s for sure.

All right, so last week I was awash with cartoon cash (as in financial gain made by cartooning, not I was drawing my own money…though not a bad idea…and okay, maybe not awash…more like slightly damp…) and finally got around to picking up Call of Duty 4 (which is now my SOTY). I got it at my local Target, and it went sorta like this…

[Please imagine wavy flashback images taking us back to that day]

I pulled into the parking lot, dodging the idiot in the Benz who apparently thought he was in England and was cruising down the wrong side of the aisle, and parked in front of the store. Walked in, went to the electronics department. Told the guy behind the counter I wished to purchase Call of Duty 4 for the 360. Followed him as he unlocked the cabinet and handed me the game. Walked back to the counter and paid for the game. Left the store.

Total time from pulling in until pulling out? Maybe a little over five minutes–if that.

Now let’s discuss the last time I was in a Gamestop, a store that is dedicated to selling digital gaming products. I repeat, dedicated. They don’t sell towels, microwave ovens, roach spray, or even power tools. Just games and gaming systems.

I don’t recall what exactly I was looking for so let’s just call it Awesome Game. First, I checked the EB Games/Gamestop/Babbage’s/Software ETC/WhatevertheHellthey’recallingitthisweek site and saw that it was supposedly in stock. I then proceeded to the local shop.

Dear readers, you may wish to interject that I should have also called the shop before beginning my trek at this point. I did not call them, and there are two reasons for this. The first is that the store is literally about a mile away, so if I end up wasting my time it’s not that major of a deal. The second reason is it doesn’t matter. You get some idiot on the phone who can’t be bothered doing his job, and so any response he gives is suspect.

“But you said you had it in stock.”

“Umm, well, I guess someone bought the last copy before you got here.”

“I called you from within the store. You never stopped playing the Guitar Hero demo while supposedly looking for the game I was asking about.”

“Umm, yeah, well, hmm. Hey, you want to pre-order something?”

I hit the store right after they open and do a quick scan of the shelves. No Awesome Game. I ask the guy behind the counter who has a manager tag. He’s also wearing a Sprint shirt, not a Gamestop shirt. He looks it up on his computer which tells him that he has two copies in inventory. Behind the counter are about half a dozen boxes filled with stock that has never been shelved.

He asks if I found it on the shelf. No, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking for it at the counter, now would I? He then proceeds to search for Awesome Game (of which the computer says they have two copies). The Sprint/Gamestop manager searches cabinets, tears apart the boxes, looks in back. Spends a good twenty minutes doing this. To be fair, this somewhat impresses me because I’ve been in a Gamestop before where the counter guy was looking through the new shipment, shipping manifest in hand, and I was the only customer in the store and he refused to even check the manifest in his hand to see if they had just gotten the game. The definition of excellent customer service? You have someone standing before you willing to fork over money but it’s too much trouble.

Eventually the guy came up with a copy of Awesome Game and I made the purchase. Total time from walking in until walking out? A good thirty minutes.

About the only time I’ve ever seen good customer service is when they have someone from district working. In fact, I can recall being politely served one time, and quite shocked, made mention of it to the guy ringing my purchase up. He told me that he was from corporate and that they had just fired every single employee at that location. What other business do you know that needs periodic purges just to reach something akin to being considered civilized?

Where’s the problem? Poor training? A corrupt managerial system? How is it that a store who only has one specialty manages to be eternally FUBARed? I know this is not the sole store that behaves like this. Please share any Gamestop tales of woe with the group. You’ll feel better.