Major Bad News for Rhino Shoppers - Rhino Bought by GameStop

What clearances? It was mentioned in the thread the b2g1 on older games will continue until they are gone, they will stop accepting trades on anything PS1 and under, and every current game will just get retagged at the Gamestop price.

They won't clearance anything, more than likely, they don't need to.
 
[quote name='Roufuss']
They won't clearance anything, more than likely, they don't need to.[/QUOTE]

Actually, our manager said today that all of the old school stuff was being shipped out as soon as possible to Gamestop warehouses and then possibly to some 3rd party vendor or something. He told me to buy any old stuff that I wanted right away and that a clearance on it isnt coming.
 
[quote name='suko_32']
Also, thanks for your help in advance Jayce :)[/QUOTE]

Hey man, good to see you today, glad you got the chance to take advantage of the 2 for 1 and all. And youre definitely welcome.
 
I had a friend that worked at the HQ, actually. Really nice guy. Managed to ship me out a Rhino hat and cup and a few other odds and ends as well as a $20 gift card.

I'll sit the hat and cup and remember a day when it awesome to get a good deal.
 
[quote name='Roufuss']Man, I might make a trip up to Gainesville to go to this awesome Rhino.[/QUOTE]

Really? I should say hi while you're here if you're serious lol.
 
[quote name='suko_32']Really? I should say hi while you're here if you're serious lol.[/QUOTE]

Gainesville is only like two hours from me, right?

At least I know the staff wouldn't screw with me doing the trade 2 get 1 free :lol:
 
Right now I'm inclined to say any Rhino employee will try and squeeze the best deal they possibly can out of your trades as a small way of protesting the buyout.

My roommate works tomorrow, time to head in and buy up all the used stuff I want with his discount before it's all shipped out.
 
I'll be straight up honest and this post may sound really cheesy but I find myself disappointed and sad about this decision. I have a bright side to this. We are all sad and complaining about how the video game company is going to be ran, but I can assure you that most of the sales rep you are use to getting advice from should still be working for the company(unless you just totally hate gamestop and refuse to work for them!). Rhino can still live, if we help out. Rhino employees have the dedication and ability to make gamestop turn into Rhino Video Games. I believe that every Rhino employee should continue to work by their old core values and sooner or later there will be standards set for stores that are being out-performed on sales by these old Rhino locations. We as customers should continue to shop only at these old Rhino location. If they do this long enough, gamestop should have no other choice than to set standards for stores that are being out performed by the stores that employs some hard working Rhino employees. Customers love great customer service, they feel appreciated and respected when helped by a Rhino employee. They greet you when entering a store and they thank you evertime you finish shoping and they continue to this over and over again because they have a true dedication to their job and what the Rhino name means and stands for. This means alot. We as customers should start appreciating those who help us and provide great service to us. I think that would make those employee value their jobs a little more and start realizing that they are the reason for the Rhino success. If we can all do this, we can soon see great rhino service at every gamestop you visit.
 
[quote name='Hilltop8203']I'll be straight up honest and this post may sound really cheesy but I find myself disappointed and sad about this decision. I have a bright side to this. We are all sad and complaining about how the video game company is going to be ran, but I can assure you that most of the sales rep you are use to getting advice from should still be working for the company(unless you just totally hate gamestop and refuse to work for them!). Rhino can still live, if we help out. Rhino employees have the dedication and ability to make gamestop turn into Rhino Video Games. I believe that every Rhino employee should continue to work by their old core values and sooner or later there will be standards set for stores that are being out-performed on sales by these old Rhino locations. We as customers should continue to shop only at these old Rhino location. If they do this long enough, gamestop should have no other choice than to set standards for stores that are being out performed by the stores that employs some hard working Rhino employees. Customers love great customer service, they feel appreciated and respected when helped by a Rhino employee. They greet you when entering a store and they thank you evertime you finish shoping and they continue to this over and over again because they have a true dedication to their job and what the Rhino name means and stands for. This means alot. We as customers should start appreciating those who help us and provide great service to us. I think that would make those employee value their jobs a little more and start realizing that they are the reason for the Rhino success. If we can all do this, we can soon see great rhino service at every gamestop you visit.[/quote]

No one goes to Rhino for the customer service, we go for the 2-for-1 deal, whch will be abolished.

Some Rhino employees are huge dickheads, actually.
 
[quote name='Scorch']
Some Rhino employees are huge dickheads, actually.[/QUOTE]

Quoted for fucking truth.

I mean, in general most Rhino employees were nice and friendly but there is one guy in every store who was always a HUGE asshole.

I'd say 9 out of 10 times the employees at Rhino were great, as oppposed to like, 5 out of 10 at Gamestop, the difference is that 1 out of 10 at Rhino was worse than any experience at Gamestop.

But damn that post sure had some delusions of grandeur though.
 
:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

Even tho I'm all the way up in MN reading this sucks since I still remember when Gamestop bought up Funcoland up here. Indeed Gamestop is turning quickly into too big of a giant. Which is not good for the game industry, the retail world, and certainly above all else is NOT GOOD for us consumers.
 
God. I loved the variety in my area. Although there are four GameStops/EBs within 5 miles of me, I had Rhino on the border of the next town over. And right across the street, a little independent store. At least I'll still have that store. They sometimes get in boxed NES, SNES, etc. But Rhino, God, you'll be missed bigtime. I'm visiting that store tonight.
 
I've heard of Rhino Games ... none near me though. It's a goddamn shame that Blockbuster ended up selling the chain to GS.

RIP Rhino Games.

edit: if it were up to me ... I'd start emailing the FTC and your state's AG and politely asking them to investigate GS for anti-competitive practices.
 
After running an EB for the last 8 years, until the mereger with gamestop determined I made to much money, I have come to a few observations.

1. Gamers who trade in crap they buy at k-mart to "work the system" are the reason stores like rhino's goes out of buisness. You never looked at the long term ramifications of trading in 20 copies of win-back. You left Rhino with crap inventory no one wants to buy.

2. Lifetime warranties are a bad idea for a gamestore. All data corrupts eventually no matter what the format. And what is with the assumption that if the customer scratches or damages the item the store should be responsible for replacing it.

3. Carrying old games in a brick and mortar store is a waste of space. You either have to many of the games people already own (35 goldeneyes were at my store) or the ones nobody wants(10 copies of antz anyone).

4. 1 used game has to pay for the 5plus copies behind it because they won't sell for a couple of months if at all. ammortization of goods takes a heavy toll on profit as well as price erosion on slow selling products.

5. Hardcore gamers won't take chances on new things. How many copies of psychonauts, odd world strangers wrath, and other titles did i try to sell to my hard core customers and they wouldn't go for it.

6. As much as I hated EB/Gamestop tactics the market seems to favor them
they survive until someone does a more profitiable way of doing things.

7.One day maybe the next generation of machines will be download content
only and there won't be any trades or stores that carry the games.

8. Customers try to scam as much as the company does. Really your brandnew ps3 with the missing cords came that way in the sealed box and now you want a refund? Oh that game of sega soccer slam offends you because of a team with a devil logo but you want to replace it with manhunt.

oh well flame me now
 
[quote name='davidjinfla']
1. Gamers who trade in crap they buy at k-mart to "work the system" are the reason stores like rhino's goes out of buisness. You never looked at the long term ramifications of trading in 20 copies of win-back. You left Rhino with crap inventory no one wants to buy.

[/QUOTE]

While this isn't the reason Rhino went out of business, not even close, if Rhino didn't want to get such shitty games they should have started dropping values like crazy.

Who gives $10 for Ape Escape 3 in the first place, and who charges something like $24.99 used for it anyways? Rhino was sold because Blockbuster is a sinking ship and will do anything for $$$.

There is a system to work because their system had huge holes in it.

To EB and GS's credit, their trade-in system almost NEVER has these huge holes for it, where certain games trade in for 2 and 3 times the value you pay for them. Even when EB / GS run a deal, you can still make some extra credit, but nowhere near the amount you can make at places like Rhino / Gamerush.

If they don't like it, I'm sure it was easy to easy multiple Ape Escape 3's were being traded in en masse, they should have just dropped the trade-in value for it.

At least for every shitty game I traded in, I also traded in a good one.
 
Man. This sucks. I used to play football with the HQ guys. Couldn't have happened to a better group of people. They definitely don't deserve this.
 
[quote name='Roufuss']While this isn't the reason Rhino went out of business, not even close, if Rhino didn't want to get such shitty games they should have started dropping values like crazy.

Who gives $10 for Ape Escape 3 in the first place, and who charges something like $24.99 used for it anyways? Rhino was sold because Blockbuster is a sinking ship and will do anything for $$$.

There is a system to work because their system had huge holes in it.

To EB and GS's credit, their trade-in system almost NEVER has these huge holes for it, where certain games trade in for 2 and 3 times the value you pay for them. Even when EB / GS run a deal, you can still make some extra credit, but nowhere near the amount you can make at places like Rhino / Gamerush.

If they don't like it, I'm sure it was easy to easy multiple Ape Escape 3's were being traded in en masse, they should have just dropped the trade-in value for it.


So first you complain that EB/ gamestop doesn't give enough on trade and then Rhinos was dumb to give to much. Maybe Rhino's was trying to compete and got screwed by thier customers.
 
If anything with Rhino's business practices brought this on - which it didn't - but for the sake of argument, if it did, it would be that it took them an incredibly long time to get in new releases, they didn't get in all new releases, and they almost never restocked games once they sold through the initial few they received.

I'd say those issues hurt them FAR more than a few people taking advantage of a trade system they themselves put in place.
 
Well it wasn't the only thing. But trying to cater to the hardcore gamer or collector just isn't the way to stay in buisness. Rhino's never seem to get the new releases fast enough for the hardcore, who cares if you could get them for trading in just 2 games if I have to wait a week I just go to BB, CC or worse EB.
 
[quote name='Roufuss']Gainesville is only like two hours from me, right?

At least I know the staff wouldn't screw with me doing the trade 2 get 1 free :lol:[/QUOTE]

I work all day Sunday. If you swing by say Hi
 
[quote name='davidjinfla']

So first you complain that EB/ gamestop doesn't give enough on trade and then Rhinos was dumb to give to much. Maybe Rhino's was trying to compete and got screwed by thier customers.[/QUOTE]

I never once complained about EB's / GS's trade-in values since I don't shop there, ever.

Nice try though. Like I said before I traded alot of my own games in as well, and alot of my friends did the same, so I wasn't just dumping shitty games by themselves.

If by competiting you mean Rhino had extremly high used prices on shitty games, then they did a good job competiting.

And yea, what Argyle mentioned as well... the fact that they got new releases in late never bothered me, its the fact that once they sold out, they almost NEVER got games back in.
 
[quote name='davidjinfla']After running an EB for the last 8 years, until the mereger with gamestop determined I made to much money, I have come to a few observations.

1. Gamers who trade in crap they buy at k-mart to "work the system" are the reason stores like rhino's goes out of buisness. You never looked at the long term ramifications of trading in 20 copies of win-back. You left Rhino with crap inventory no one wants to buy.[/quote]

We sell so much "crap" inventory everyday, it would make your head spin.Sure there are some things people wont buy, but we had a lot of customers in our store who couldnt afford next gen or even current gen. Or people who decided to come back to gaming after years in school, military, out of country, whatever. Its good to give customers an option and thats what we did. If EB would get rid of DVD's and all of that other garbage they have cluttering up their floor maybe they could cater to more of the masses.

[quote name='davidjinfla']
2. Lifetime warranties are a bad idea for a gamestore. All data corrupts eventually no matter what the format. And what is with the assumption that if the customer scratches or damages the item the store should be responsible for replacing it.[/quote]

Having the lifetime warranty showed that we cared about our customers and backed our product. Sure some customers may milk the system, but we have a notes field under exchange's in our computers, if we feel thats happening, we'd leave a note and we'd take it on a case by case basis (for example the ring formed on 360 games from moving a system - we'd inform customers about the issue and to contact Microsoft, if they didnt take the advice we just wouldnt take the game back next time). That and with the amount of business we do, we just couldnt test every game obviously. This gives the customer the benefit of the doubt, and was a sound business decision, imo.

[quote name='davidjinfla']
3. Carrying old games in a brick and mortar store is a waste of space. You either have to many of the games people already own (35 goldeneyes were at my store) or the ones nobody wants(10 copies of antz anyone).[/quote]

I think I already commented on the amount of wasted space that goes on in almost every EB Ive walked in.

[quote name='davidjinfla']
4. 1 used game has to pay for the 5plus copies behind it because they won't sell for a couple of months if at all. ammortization of goods takes a heavy toll on profit as well as price erosion on slow selling products.[/quote]

I cant speak for all stores in our district but I know for a fact our store pulled in some serious profit, especially over the holidays. Unfortunately not enough to keep from being bought out by the suits, but it did well. If the product is selling slow then you arent pulling in the right customers to buy it or are overpricing everything to alienate those same customers. Sure you are going to have the oldest Madden games on the PSONE that few people want, thats, why they trade for next to nil and sell for the same.

[quote name='davidjinfla']
5. Hardcore gamers won't take chances on new things. How many copies of psychonauts, odd world strangers wrath, and other titles did i try to sell to my hard core customers and they wouldn't go for it.[/quote]

Were you force feeding a strat guide and a magazine sub down their throat at the same time? And have you ever played either one of those games? Ive played both and went over the best qualities of each game to the point that the customer really wanted to give them a try. If for some reason they didnt like it, hey we got the 7 day exchange. Sounds like you didnt have a good rapport with your customers, if you dont have that good luck selling GTA much less Psychonauts to them.
 
[quote name='Jayce']I work all day Sunday. If you swing by say Hi[/QUOTE]

Just need to find out how far Gainesville is from Tampa :lol:

Was there ever a note system in for trades?
 
No I never forced a customer to do anything. Eb employess were encouaged to expand the sell by offering a related items. Latter when gamestop moved in we were given specific goals to meet on units per transaction, presell goals, and trade-in goals, used game goals, i quit in march 06 so I didn't have to deal with the Game informer. Most of what I would call Hard core customers couldn't leave the GTA, Halo, MOH, FINAL FANTASY, MGS, and such to try or support new things.
 
[quote name='Jayce']We sell so much "crap" inventory everyday, it would make your head spin.Sure there are some things people wont buy, but we had a lot of customers in our store who couldnt afford next gen or even current gen. Or people who decided to come back to gaming after years in school, military, out of country, whatever. Its good to give customers an option and thats what we did. If EB would get rid of DVD's and all of that other garbage they have cluttering up their floor maybe they could cater to more of the masses.



Having the lifetime warranty showed that we cared about our customers and backed our product. Sure some customers may milk the system, but we have a notes field under exchange's in our computers, if we feel thats happening, we'd leave a note and we'd take it on a case by case basis (for example the ring formed on 360 games from moving a system - we'd inform customers about the issue and to contact Microsoft, if they didnt take the advice we just wouldnt take the game back next time). That and with the amount of business we do, we just couldnt test every game obviously. This gives the customer the benefit of the doubt, and was a sound business decision, imo.



And yet having a lifetime warranty didn't help rhino stay in buisness. Back in the day when I started with EB we use to let people exchange open new items and we would watch as they would come and try every new release with just one purchase. We tried to restrict it to a one time exchange and then after a quiet agreement with gamestop (before the merger) EB home office determined we weren 't getting any new or repeat buisness by offering an exchange so we ended it. It's not that we didn't care about the customer there was no benefit to our company offering this service to our customers. Not to mention the "why is this game open" complaint . Of course I would take care of a customer If they had a legit beef.
 
[quote name='davidjinfla']Well it wasn't the only thing. But trying to cater to the hardcore gamer or collector just isn't the way to stay in buisness. Rhino's never seem to get the new releases fast enough for the hardcore, who cares if you could get them for trading in just 2 games if I have to wait a week I just go to BB, CC or worse EB.[/QUOTE]


I did, Id rather wait a week or longer (when doing 2 for ones on used 360 games) to get a game for 20 or less out of pocket as opposed to buying it $60 new from another store (can I afford 60... yes, do I if I can get it for a third of the price, you figure that one out). Yes there were some dedicated 2 for one traders here (myself included, but I spread a variety of games over 4 different stores), but Joe 6-pack doesnt know any better, it took months of praising this system before my friends finally caught on, the average gamer who knows no better would probable bring in 2 new released they just played for their 2 for ones (or get paid very low cash values, they dont care)

My talks with different employees yielded the info that Rhino's did very little of these 2 for 1's as opposed to straight up selling and trading, most people I'd seen go in there would trade for cash.

Rhino was one of the few stores (video games or not) in which I felt important buying from them, all GS is is a barrage of questions about game trades, discount cards, and pre-orders. Its the whole homogenization of America, everywhere you go you will see the SAME stores, over and over, for instance I have counted no less than 4 Starbucks locations going up in my area AT THIS MOMENT... its crazy
 
[quote name='suko_32']davidjinfla, didn't Rhinos go out of business mostly because it wasn't part of Blockbuster's "core" business.[/QUOTE]

Exactly, this is the ONLY reason it's getting sold.

Blockbuster is hemmoraging money in an attempt to catch Hollywood and Netflix and is selling off every asset that dosen't appeal to their two main goals - their total access program and their rental services.

Gamestop offers money, Blockbuster takes it in an attempt to keep afloat... they are throwing TONS of money at the whole online thing.
 
I remember back when blockbuster bought them I didn't think it was a good move for either company. Sadly this looks to be the case.
 
[quote name='davidjinfla']I remember back when blockbuster bought them I didn't think it was a good move for either company. Sadly this looks to be the case.[/QUOTE]

Blockbuster went through a period where it bought a ton of assets in order to improve its standing... then Netflix got popular, renting in store kind of died, and Blockbuster got screwed.

From what I saw, Blockbuster bought the company but took a very hands off approach to running it until now.
 
[quote name='zman73']I did, Id rather wait a week or longer (when doing 2 for ones on used 360 games) to get a game for 20 or less out of pocket as opposed to buying it $60 new from another store (can I afford 60... yes, do I if I can get it for a third of the price, you figure that one out). Yes there were some dedicated 2 for one traders here (myself included, but I spread a variety of games over 4 different stores), but Joe 6-pack doesnt know any better, it took months of praising this system before my friends finally caught on, the average gamer who knows no better would probable bring in 2 new released they just played for their 2 for ones (or get paid very low cash values, they dont care)

My talks with different employees yielded the info that Rhino's did very little of these 2 for 1's as opposed to straight up selling and trading, most people I'd seen go in there would trade for cash.

Rhino was one of the few stores (video games or not) in which I felt important buying from them, all GS is is a barrage of questions about game trades, discount cards, and pre-orders. Its the whole homogenization of America, everywhere you go you will see the SAME stores, over and over, for instance I have counted no less than 4 Starbucks locations going up in my area AT THIS MOMENT... its crazy[/quote]

Unfortunately Gamestop believes this is the most effective way to do things.
I've tried to tell them it's annoying and they looked at me like I was from another planet. I've had customers go off in front of my DM and he was blaming the employee for not being sincere enough when pestering customers. So until they lose money they won't change their motto is Every customer/ Every time. no matter they come in at least once a week ask about trades, used games, pre-orders, add ons.....
 
[quote name='Roufuss']Blockbuster went through a period where it bought a ton of assets in order to improve its standing... then Netflix got popular, renting in store kind of died, and Blockbuster got screwed.

From what I saw, Blockbuster bought the company but took a very hands off approach to running it until now.[/quote]

They claimed they were going to start trading and selling games from the Blockbuster video stores and Rhino was going to show them how to do it effectivly. In return Rhino was supposed to get some of that Blockbuster Buying power and it looks like neither end of the deal was held up. Whenever a company merges with another watch out someone is going to lose it's almost never a win win for either company.
 
Local Rhino is normally pretty dead, but I know they did some sales this holiday season. They sold out of PS2s, which was a bit of a suprise to me, and there were actually occasions where I had to wait in line, which normally would be rare for rhino.

I suppose I am one of the lucky few who has a good EBGames. Short of the standard company wide stuff, the emplyee who practically lives there always helps me out, and even if only stop by every few months he still remembers me. The manager has on multiple occasions found ways to get me a better deal through stacking promotions. Hell my Edge card is printed bad and they don't care about it.

I suppose it's hit or miss. These guys were there prior to the GS takeover, and I have overheard them say how annoying things are now.

As far as Rhino's lifetime warranty went, sure people abused it, but if I buy a used game that has a few scratches, and it runs fine for a month until I do the one little thing that is located on a scratched area, I should be entitled to a version that works. Every Rhino game I own has the reciept inside the case for this very reason, even the new ones. I'm sure people remember days where rushed production times led to certain versions of a release that would currupt memory cards and the likes, this was one way to insure your investment.

A personal aside, to me it seems like Blockbuster has been in trouble since Hiesinga(sp?) dropped them years ago when pay per view started to take off. The only thing they have going for them is the mix of netflix style mail order and in-store use for subscribers. Their no late fees, as great of a marketing idea as it was, is probably being exploited more than they had hoped.
 
Its funny how a few people come out of the woodwork saying we killed Rhino by taking advantage of the system. I actually did a fair amount of shopping outside of the flips there as well...

For the record even thought Blockbuster sold them it wasn't because they were failing. They were actually set for a large expansion this year. They did close some stores last year that were underperforming or outside the southeast(Utah, Colorado). Overall blockbuster is trying to do whatever it can to have some cash to pay the debt while they try to catch Netflix. Last year the closed/sold 4 other chains in January for the same reason. They are doing whatever they can to try to ensure they have capital and don't have to chapter 11. Remember first they did no late fees and now the total access program. Both are cutting into revenues, but they are trying to catch customer from Netflix. Rhino was just not part of the business model for Blockbuster.

Blockbuster is pushing the hell in store with the total access program to try and add customers now and they add more in the 4th quarter then the last year. Netflix still outnumbers them 3 to 1 and the B&M stores are stilll not performing. The question really is do they have any assests or anything else to throw at Netflix...

As someone pointed out Gamestop and Blockbuster are just dinosaurs when it comes to content. As we move more to digital models both are screwed...
 
Hey Jayce,

I was just in your store last night. Maybe I saw you, lol.

Personally, if I were GameStop, I'd just buy all the brands but let them stay as their own brand as long as they were profitable. If you own all the "competitors" then it's no sweat.

Question: does EB/GS/Rhino ever reject trade-ins? For example, if you have 50 copies of Enter The Matrix, will you not let someone trade it in? Or do you just give them 50 cents for it instead?
 
Enter the Matrix is worth about 50 cents at Rhino anyway, but the general rule at the stores I ran was one copy of a game only. We made an exception if it was a high-demand game and had none in stock, but we'd send you packing with 49 copies of Enter the Matrix left over.
 
[quote name='hxhawkeye']Enter the Matrix is worth about 50 cents at Rhino anyway, but the general rule at the stores I ran was one copy of a game only. We made an exception if it was a high-demand game and had none in stock, but we'd send you packing with 49 copies of Enter the Matrix left over.[/quote]
He meant if the store already had 50 copies in stock, would you take the guys one copy or turn him away because you have excess inventory?
 
I'm actually considering going and trading all of my excess games that I know don't qualify and see what I can get for them.

You know...because no one is checking out my TL and I need to get rid of them.
 
Bah. I had just woken up, and apparently my reading skill was on cooldown.


Rhino never had any inventory limits. If we had 50 copies of Enter the Matrix, we'd take yours.
 
Posting this here and the bads new rhino thread just to make sure everyone sees it. I was told tonight Gamestop computer systems are going in Sunday and inventory is going to be done this weekend. The store manager said he was told to expect to box up all old school items to ship them out on Sunday. Last Saturday a manager at another store told me the old school gaming would be disappearing soon. As far as they know the 2 for 1 will be valid through Saturday.
 
[quote name='Roufuss']So um... where is the old school stuff going? Gamestop dosen't sell it in store or online anymore...[/quote]

Not sure we heard alot of rumors the last few days on the old school items. He seemed pretty sure of himself telling me the gamestop crew was arriving at 8 to work with them on inventory and place new computer systems into the store. I asked about the old school directly and that is when he said they were told they would be boxing it up and sending it back. As with everything else there isn't a guarantee, but if you were holding off on buying something old school I would suggest grabbing it.
 
Retro stuff goes back to the HQ and sold off to other places. I can't remember where eactly...damn. Remember years and years ago K-Mart used to sell used SNES, Genesis, NES, GB games in cardboard boxes?
 
I'm hearing rumblings that the 2for1 will continue at converted Rhino locations for a month or two after they're gone. I immediately disregarded the rumor, but with the guy above me saying the lifetime guarantee will still be honored, who knows what's going to happen..
 
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