What do you think about the people who buy games, only to sell them back...?

the_grimace

the_grimace

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This is something that really bothers me, and im curious to see what others opinions are on it.

Im talking about people who buy games that are clearanced or on sale JUST to sell it on ebay or even worse, return it to walmart , gamestop, or some other retailer "as a gift" for full value.

Had a friend once that would buy games whenever they were on sale no matter what the game.... and then he would return them to retailers.... and his gamestop is frigging stupid, because unlike walmart, this gamestop kept accepting his "gift" games for like 7 months before a manager said he needed a reciept.

what really kills me about these people are 2 things though. 1 is that they are money hungry. they would rather try to sell you the game for full price instead of telling you where you could get for the price they did. and 2. i absolutely hate when they buy multiple copies of games, and screw other people of being able to buy it and actually enjoy it...

i mean, ok, if you got a game as a gift or free somehow or won it in a contest, then thats fine to sell it, but i just think its wrong to buy something then try to sell it back for more, especially to another retailer...

so, what do you think about doing that. nothing i said will ever stop it from happening, but im curious to see if other people think its as low as i do.

*puts on flame suit* might need that, probably a lot of people that use this site do exactly what i hate. so no offense to you.... lets try to keep it clean :p
 
I think it's fine as long as you're just selling them on Ebay, or trading them into a Gamestop.

But if you're committing fraud, by returning them to a store you did not purchase them from, then you're breaking the law, and that's not cool.
 
[quote name='Short Round']
But if you're committing fraud, by returning them to a store you did not purchase them from, then you're breaking the law, and that's not cool.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. Flipping on ebay or returning it as "used" to EB/GS is one thing (which I don't really agree with, but it happens), but returning it new to a store you didn't buy it from is plain wrong.
 
This is the age old debate of morals vs. flipping. It's kinda hard to convince people either way, especially since people are either for it or against it, period. I'll try and give my 2 cents, as I've been on both sides of the coin.

When I first joined CAG, I had no idea what flipping was or how it was done. I figured that this is a free market, let the people decide the price of the item on the open market. Then I found out that people were "gifting" cheap unopened games to a store that they never purchased it from, which was not cool in my book. The day that I got really fed up was when I went to a Toys R Us to find a game I had been waiting for months to drop in price, only to walk in and have the CSR tell me that someone bought out the entire stock of that game the day before. He/she was flipping, while I wanted to play it. I was fed up with it and couldn't stand flippers, just like you.

However, a few months back the TRU flip of ROTSS for the Wii to Blockbuster was too good to pass up. They were $5 at TRU and $30 trade in credit to BB. I decided to buy a few since I didn't have much money at the time and they were hard to find. I figured I would find 2 copies at the most and I would be able to get a game later on from BB. Turning $10 into $60 was brilliant. I called around and finally found a store that had some. The guy asked how many I needed and I told him 2. He put me on hold for a minute, came back to the phone and said, "We have 10 copies." I nearly crapped my pants. I rushed down and bought 8 of them and left the other 2 for other flippers or kids who wanted one. I ended up spending $32.xx because they had a sale on the games to bring them to $4 a piece and traded them in for $240 in trade credit. I bought 4 brand new games in November and December from BB with my credit, only spending a few dollars to get the last one. Was it worth it for me? Heck yes it was! I was broke at the time and got 4 brand new games for $32.

So is flipping bad? Not if there's a market for it. While writing the last sentence I sold a brand new Sixaxis controller that I bought at Target for $12 for $40 on Amazon. I originally bought it as a back up but now want a DS3 as a back up. Did I buy it to flip? Nope, but did it work out for me in the end? You bet. The market rate was for $40 and that's what it went for. Retailers do it with merchandise all the time. Do you think they buy games at $50 a piece and resell them for a $10 mark up? Not even close. In other words, you buy marked up items everyday of the week. You just have to strike while the iron is hot in some cases and that boils down to luck and perseverance. I would rather spend $32 and get $240 worth of brand new games any day of the week.
 
There's definitely nothing illegal about flipping, that's part of capitalism... but it's a douchebag thing to do. I just don't do it. I'll buy a copy for myself (and I don't do the whole, "oh, I bought a second copy for my brother/friend/mom/cousin/dog") and sometimes for other CAGs at cost+shipping.

But the thing is, if there's one person who doesn't do it, there are always 10 others who will... especially due to all the pricks from FW and SD...:whistle2:\
 
If you sell buy them and then resell them for less money than what you bought then for (as for commercial purposes only NOT FOR PLAY) . then your are the game fairy!!1 and the most considerable human being EVER!!!!!!
 
The golden rule for me about flipping is if you're gonna buy 2+ copies of a game, ALWAYS leave at least 1-2 copies for others to buy.
 
With the Blockbuster deal that just went on, I bought 3-4 games for myself to try, and probably 10 for sale or Goozex. Why? To cover the gas and time I spent going to 5-6 stores, and to cover the cost of the games I bought (essentially, getting them for free), not to mention the stickers on some of the games had been there for MONTHS. I think it's fair game, especially if the clearance prices are marked and up here, that after say a sale like the 9.96 one at Circuit City, if the games are still sitting there after a week to take advantage of the sale before it ends. Snooze you lose. Other CAGs are in my area and horde things, I know. Especially in Brockton, I guess some dude prints out the list of everything and goes Supermarket Spree over the R-Zone, haha.

So basically, if you can, go for it. I don't ripoff Wal*Mart or any of those stores though, too risky. I just sell on Amazon to keep me by since I'm in my senior year at college in a graphic design program and my school schedule is too demanding to permit me time for a part-time job right now.
 
Personally, I buy games to play them (or at least backlog them :) ). I think it's cool to "share the deal" with other people who actually want to play a game rather than buy something up just to resell it. That said, there's nothing wrong or unfair about it. If you don't like what someone else does with the games that they bought, you should have gotten there first, simple as that.
 
How can you fault anyone for doing it if they are reselling it through an ebay or as a used game to gamestop? Just seems like good business sense if they can make money at it and are willing to invest the time. I've seen people get burned trying to do this though, friends of mine grabbed PS3s and Wii Fits and just got back what they paid so a lot of extra work for nothing.
 
[quote name='nativetongue88']sorry to break this to you OP, but people like making money.[/QUOTE]

its called a job... last time i checked, flipping wasnt a job.
 
[quote name='hopeunknown']With the Blockbuster deal that just went on, I bought 3-4 games for myself to try, and probably 10 for sale or Goozex. Why? To cover the gas and time I spent going to 5-6 stores, and to cover the cost of the games I bought (essentially, getting them for free), not to mention the stickers on some of the games had been there for MONTHS. I think it's fair game, especially if the clearance prices are marked and up here, that after say a sale like the 9.96 one at Circuit City, if the games are still sitting there after a week to take advantage of the sale before it ends. Snooze you lose. Other CAGs are in my area and horde things, I know. Especially in Brockton, I guess some dude prints out the list of everything and goes Supermarket Spree over the R-Zone, haha.

So basically, if you can, go for it. I don't ripoff Wal*Mart or any of those stores though, too risky. I just sell on Amazon to keep me by since I'm in my senior year at college in a graphic design program and my school schedule is too demanding to permit me time for a part-time job right now.[/QUOTE]

If the games are sitting there and you can make money from them, you might as well take them. If I left all the clearance games behind that I have seen at Kmart half of them would be out of the system, then they would be re-priced to full retail again. No one wins in this case, except the retailer. Now if I buy the games and sell them on ebay my buyers are getting a discounted price from the full retail price and I am making money. Some of those games sit there for months without anyone even looking at them.

I would never take a game back to wal-mart or target and expect full price for it, I think most of us here can agree that if you do that and keep doing it you will get caught eventually.
 
i find it pointless to even care what other people do. i have fliped games one time, and i had no intention of doing so, i got 1 copy for me, and 1 copy for my friend for xmas, then found out i could get double the price from gamestop in trade in value for the games if i put them towards reserving re5, so i did, call me a asshole call me a con artist or whatever, at the end of the day it still happens and will continue to happen so whats the point in caring about it.
 
it's called capitalism...welcome to America...now find something important to irritate you, like our inability to feed the homeless or our reliance on foreign oil.
 
[quote name='the_grimace']its called a job... last time i checked, flipping wasnt a job.[/QUOTE]

I'll make almost as much flipping as I'll make at both my jobs combined (as a law clerk for two firms.) It's called capitalism and extending your dollar. It's an amazing option, a more accessible way to make money for a lot of us who haven't settled in to our full time careers yet.

Returning to wal-mart is pretty shady though, since that's highly illegal.

I don't think there's any debate about the morality of flipping. We're talking about retail shopping...stores have things for sale, for anyone to purchase in whatever quantity they choose. It doesn't matter what your intent is in buying it. I don't believe in little Jimmy Cancerpatient crying his eyes out because he didn't get the last copy of Tom Clancy's Swollen Vagina for $9.99. Instead, it's another ebayer who grabs those clearance games--they're on clearance because nobody wanted them. If it's a sought after item, it's a mixture of savvy ebayers and savvy buyers and savvy collectors who go after it...may the quickest man win.
 
Returning games to retailers from which you did not buy the games from is return fraud and it could send your little friend to jail.

Flipping games on eBay, amazon and gamestop are legit ways of earning money. If someone wants to spend time looking for deals and reselling them for more money, more power to them. No one is gonna earn a fortune on this, but it is a way to make a few bucks.
 
I have no problems with people buying them to sell them back to gamestop or on eBay.

I have a huge problem with people committing return fraud however.
 
Fraud is illegal and thus considered bad.

Flipping is legal and can be very good to you and your wallet.

Allowing yourself to get worked up over either is pointless and won't change a damn thing.
 
I flip because it's basically the only way I can make money. I'm 14 and my parents won't let me get a job during freshman year because they want me to concentrate on school. And if I don't end up getting the copies of whatever game is the new good flip, people who want to play them won't be the ones getting them. Other hoarders will. My city is filled with hoarders I've talked to on CL who do this as their full time job and lurk here.

Returning things to Wal Mart or other stores is wrong, though. I wouldn't do that.
 
[quote name='darkslime']I flip because it's basically the only way I can make money. I'm 14 and my parents won't let me get a job during freshman year because they want me to concentrate on school. And if I don't end up getting the copies of whatever game is the new good flip, people who want to play them won't be the ones getting them. Other hoarders will. My city is filled with hoarders I've talked to on CL who do this as their full time job and lurk here.

Returning things to Wal Mart or other stores is wrong, though. I wouldn't do that.[/quote]

Wow, 14? Good job! I started selling online when I was 15 or 16 and haven't stopped since. :D I didn't get my first part-time job until I was 16, and even at that between 14-16 all you can really do is grocery store or fast food jobs (outside of family businesses) and you're only limited to like 8 hours a week or something. I always felt bad for the kids who would come to EB and get totally ripped off on their Sonic games or whatnot.
 
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