Are people lazy or they have no morals?

Idk about any of you guys, but I refuse to do any kind of business with GameStop, not just regarding selling them my old games, systems, and controllers; but also buying anything from them.

The reason being I decided that I cant support that kind of a business, I mean they wanna give you 5% of what a game is worth (or even less) ? Obviously it depends on how old the game is, how in demand it is, etc; and yes they have to make a profit, but they want to make too much of a profit.

When I heard they may be going out of business (unless someone else buys the business and tries to turn it around), all I have to say is that it is about time.

I have probably bought 1 game from them the last 3 or 4 years simply because it was half the price I expected it to be, otherwise I am not doing business with that kind of company.

I'm surprised anybody would lug their old stuff in and maybe get 20 or $30 (probably less though) for what is probably $200 or $300 (which is pretty reasonable on an old system if you have a bunch of really good games and extra controllers and whatnot)

BabyTyrant said:

I'm surprised anybody would lug their old stuff in and maybe get 20 or $30 (probably less though) for what is probably $200 or $300 (which is pretty reasonable on an old system if you have a bunch of really good games and extra controllers and whatnot)

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If you can sell your used games for ten times as much on your own with minimal effort, by all means do so. However, you probably already know that it takes up a non-trivial amount of time and effort and you may get scammed once or twice as well. You're paying (through lower price) for not having to deal with that in this situation.

Well, I know you probably wouldnt get $200-$300 for that much money worth of stuff, but even putting in a little work is worth it because after that first 20-$30 of sales you are in the clear, even double that up to $60 for your time and labor take $200 for $300 ($140 above 60 for value, time, and labor) of stuff is still way better than 20 or 30.

Also there is Game Craze which is much more fair than GameStop, that's why you dont see a lot of Game Crazes.

If they were making way too much profit they would not be going out of business.

ORBaby said:

If they were making way too much profit they would not be going out of business.

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Well, the problem there is when enough people realize they are being given almost nothing they won't want to trade their stuff in any more.

That is where they try to make insane profits and they hope people are stupid (or lazy) enough to go "hurr durr, okay I will take $20 for $200 of stuff", and if they can quickly sell trade ins they make a lot of profit, if stuff sits or they cant get enough stuff traded in they wont make much profit.

At least I'm pretty sure stores don't make a lot of profit when they sell brand new games for $60+ tax.

Never done it with games, but I've definitely traded in other stuff well under what I knew it was worth. Sometimes the convenience just outweighs the monetary loss. Really comes down to how much your time is worth to you.

BoundCoder said:

Never done it with games, but I've definitely traded in other stuff well under what I knew it was worth. Sometimes the convenience just outweighs the monetary loss. Really comes down to how much your time is worth to you.

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If it is worth paying eBay + PayPal Fees + shipping it is usually not hard to sell stuff, OTOH trying to sell things locally can be a headache and if I cant sell a game, controller, or system with minimal effort locally I will trade it in to Game Craze, they at least seem to offer 1/3rd of what stuff is worth instead of the 1/10th you may get at a GameStop.

I did trade about 90-$100 of stuff to GameCraze (a bunch of cheap games mostly, but also a like new SONY PS3 wireless controller that nobody thought was worth $15, even though store price on the same controller would have been $55+ tax) and got $30 or $35 in credit, whereas I have had GameStop offer $5 on a $35 game

The same thing is true with records, CDs and books. Usually, they don't sell the used stuff for a whole lot either.

dogboy said:

The same thing is true with records, CDs and books. Usually, they don't sell the used stuff for a whole lot either.

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Depends how old the games are, if they are pretty recent they are still desirable and hold a lot more value than games 2-3+ years old, a 6 month old game could still be worth $30 or more.

The worst thing for value of games though is when it is on the last generation of consoles, which is both too old to have value for people that want the newer games, and also too new for the "retro" game crowd.

There is still millions of dollars in the used game market though, and I don't object to businesses making profits, but I do object to that profit being due to offering unfairly low values.

What I was saying is that there must not be much profit to be made on freshly released games since they cost basically the same no matter where you go (Walmart, GameStop, GameCraze, online sellers, etc), and the vast majority of the $ from sales will go to the game studio/licensing companies first, and then the places selling the games will make a little.

I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm guessing it isn't much.

also there's the excuse for it, at least digital content. That you'd rip it and sell the original. Even the ones which are deader than dinosaur droppings.

Something is only "worth" what someone else is willing to pay for it. You feel that your games are "worth" more than what you're offered from a secondhand business retailer. That may be the case and so you are more than welcome to sell your own materials. As you know and has already been raised on this thread once, selling your own games is not the easiest thing to do. If you can do it, more power to you.

For most, the time and commitment to selling your own games far exceeds the convenience of a centralized, brand name, retailer that readily offers you a monetary reward for your stuff. The reason for the price difference in what they offer you versus what you feel they are "worth" is not that difficult to reason out:

1) You are paying for the convenience of a nationally recognized brand name acting as a re-seller of your junk.
2) You are paying for access to a nationwide network of stores for selling your junk
3) You are paying for the cost of that organization to store, catalogue, and maintain your junk. Overhead.
4) You are paying for that company to be able to pay its employees.
5) You are paying for the companies profit margin on they sell. It isn't a charity, they are a business and would like to make money.

Another consideration that you have to take into account is that physical media isn't nearly as popular as it once was. A LOT of people don't by physical copies of ANYthing anymore. Streaming sites are a huge reason for the death of vide stores simply because people don't have video collections anymore. The same with games. A lot of people simply buy digital copies. With the decline in popularity of all forms of physical media, prices have to be adjusted to maintain some profit for a physical media reseller. They don't move as much product as they used to, which means they have to hold on to it longer.

Housing physical copies in physical locations costs money; the more you store, the longer you store it, and the less you sell, means that either prices have to increase to the purchasing customer or offers have to decrease to selling customers. Decreasing the offer to a customer that wants to sell serves two purposes:

1) It maintains the same end price for the purchasing customer. An increase would reduce sales even more which means more storage, more cost.
2) It reduces the intake from selling customers. By reducing the offer to a selling customer, it drives a few people away which reduces the amount of product the company takes in. The product is most likely already over-saturated, and they don't really need another copy of Halo. This reduces intake, reducing their costs, but maintaining the same selling point to the purchasing customer.

A very good analogy would be selling your car. You might be able to sell your car for what you think it's "worth", but it takes time and effort. You have to advertise, display, show, and keep maintaining that vehicle until you can find a buyer. Then you enter into negotiations with that buyer to reach an agreement. Selling your own car can be very time consuming and aggravating. Or...you can take it to a nationally recognized reseller of cars like CarMax. CarMax will offer you a price that is most likely less than what you could find on your own, but again you're paying for the convenience.

So, BabyTyrant, my question to you is what exactly do you find "immoral"? You posited a query of morality and laziness, and yet I am unsure of your case. Who is lazy? Who is immoral? Why do you feel that way? Those are some strong claims, and I have yet to see any reasoning to support either of them. It sounds more like name-calling because you didn't get offered what you felt something was "worth".

The morality part is about choosing to not support businesses like GameStop that offer ridiculously low money.

Like I said I understand businesses are there to make money, buy that doesn't mean all they can give you is $5 on a game they will put on the shelves for $25 or $30, maybe it will sit if that price is above online discount sales sites like eBay, or if it isn't a very good/well known game.

Chances are however if it is a fairly recent (let's say up to maybe 6 months old, so yes the game isn't completely new, but the next one isn't released yet, and $30 beats nearly $65) game people have heard of that has a lot of fans it will probably sell within days, and when a location has hundreds of games constantly it doesn't really increase cost to have a few more copies of games on the shelves.

As for prices I "assume" my stuff is worth; I NEVER assume, my starting point is LOWEST on eBay, if i decide for whatever reason to sell a game selling on eBay for $30 (like i said, I start at eBay lowest), and I decide I don't want to pay shipping, eBay and PayPal fees I will offer the game locally for $20, if I was taking it to a Game Store, i would want at least $10, which i could get at a GameCraze (but there aren't so many of those compared to GameStop which is everywhere), maybe I would even do $15, but $5 is completely out of the equation.

I know video games and know that game will probably still be $50 or $60 at Walmart (and basically any other place that tries to sell games at retail long after the game has been out) ; but I know that isn't a realistic price to most people, so it's not like I'm asking for insane money, and I usually sell games pretty easily.

My only dilemma is I find fees and shipping costs so much I do not sell games on eBay at anything less than $35 anymore, any less than that I will sell locally, or wait until I have a bunch of stuff and sell to GameCraze instead of GameStop and get offered 2 or 3 times what GameStop would offer.

TLDR, if you have something worth $30 and a place offers you $5 for it, you probably aren't gonna let them have it.

I don't have a problem with people that understand the value of what they have and knowingly sell/trade it in way too cheap, but if a place isn't going to make the customer aware what the value is, hoping they will just want to trade in unwanted stuff for new stuff, not knowing how badly they are getting screwed over, that I have a problem with.

I really think people SHOULD take a little time and effort to sell things if it is worth it, obviously I wouldn't advise anybody to sell a game on eBay if it's only worth $10 and then spend most of that on fees and shipping, but if they have $300 worth of stuff, even if they sell at a really good deal (say they sell at $200, the seller gets way more than GameStop, and the buyer gets a good deal) , it is still way worth it to sell their own stuff to a private seller online such as on eBay.

I really think places like GameStop SHOULD go out of business and I think some people are starting to realize how badly GameStop rips you off and it's not worth wasting time on them.

I always knew since I was 15 they don't give you much for the product you are trading in and they sell the item for way more. Their excuse is "That is how we make money." But the game I had traded in to you guys said you would only give me two bucks for but then you are selling it at $9.99? Why give me very low amount of money and then sell the game for lot higher price? I never understood this. I know all stores give you less than how much they would sell it for but Gamestop is way too low.

Yeah, there is being reasonable and then there is ripping people off, GameStop is the latter; that being said though it really comes down to margins, with more expensive stuff I would sell it on eBay every time, if it's too cheap local sales or a GameCraze is much better.

I just wish people were more serious about wanting stuff, I had a guy that said he lived in town and wanted to buy a game I was selling, my price was 1/3rd of Walmart; and I told them hours ahead of time and playing CoD was more important than buying a basically new game at 1/3rd the price of retail.

I actually wholly agree with you OP. Gamestop is the worst. I haven't been there in years. I stopped trading games in and just kept them as collections now. Whats the point of trading in a 1 year old sports game for $5? Thats minuscule - and they would resell it for probably $40-$45. You could go in there, buy a brand new game, trade it back in just a few weeks later and only get maybe 1/4 of what its worth, and they would then resell it at nearly full price, maybe $5 less.

That shits for the birds. Some places have local game / electronic trade in places. Pawn shops for nerds, and they tend to be much more fair.

Also someone else touched on this- but digital downloads have to have taken an enormous toll on brick and mortar stores