Bad experience at local retro shop

ferris182

CAGiversary!
Hey guys,

I wanted to share a bad experience I recently had at a local retro shop.

I mainly go to this store to get my games resurfaced and occasional they have a deal. Most of the time the retro games are way overpriced.

I found a copy of Power Punch 2 for NES with a torn apart label with a price tag of $4.99. I tell the owner that I'd like the game and he pulls it out of the case and starts to ring me up.

He then pulls up Amazon on his computer and says it sells for $40 and he won't sell it to me for the price marked. I then asked why he won't sell it f the price marked. Then he says that another employee priced this game and he wont do it. I had a 1-2 other games I wanted to buy as well and then said forget it and walked out.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?
 
Retro stores are pretty much all garbage from a CS standpoint from my experience.

Sure they'll have some games you're looking for, and pretty good inventory, but you certainly don't go there expecting them to be courteous or nice when it comes to issues of money.

I've had this happen once when I was at a store in Colorado, and they had a BoF2 marked for $10, and then the guy was like, "Oh, I think this one is mislabeled, so I can't sell it to you."  I didn't have anything else I wanted, but still, kind of crappy they wouldn't do it even though it was their fault.

In the end, I guess it wasn't a huge deal to me.  Retro stores are mainly mom and pop operations, so they can pretty much do whatever they want as they don't have to answer to a bigger corporate policy.

Aw well. :D

 
not at a retro game store, but at a small general store... they had boxed master system games (since they released) and i saw the clerk bring up ebay, search, and quoted the highest selling price. now while sealed, these where all sun bleached (faded). i went to ebay and found equivalents for $30-60 less that what the clerk quoted me and bought them while still in store. haven't been back since (then i moved out of state).  my cousin called me last weekend from the same store and they did the same to him with a bunch of loose toys.

 
I suggest putting up your experience on yelp or Google reviews if you want to get back at them. they'll probably close down that way.
 
I suggest putting up your experience on yelp or Google reviews if you want to get back at them. they'll probably close down that way.
I left a 3 star review on Google for a local game store and though the review didn't contain anything that I thought would warrant it from being removed, my review was removed within a week.

There were tons of reviews for this place with things that simply weren't true: great prices, great selection, great CS, etc so I figured they were just paying people/friends for fake reviews and to report any negative reviews. They had like a 4.5 average but later shut down shop. Local news outlet reported that the owners weren't playing the unemployment insurance (so all the employees got screwed) and that they actually did return people's stuff (they repaired systems, phones, etc.), not to mention that with the sudden closure, people lost their in-store credit.

I love how GS gets ragged on for anything but I've had much worse experiences at mom & pop shops.

 
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Growing up the only used game store in town (aside from EB/Gamestop) was a little independently-owned store located in the mall. Everything was overpriced and we always wondered how they stayed in business.

We later found out the shop was a front for drug trafficking. People would come in and ask for a certain game. The owner would ring them up for it and tell the person they'd get the game from the back and bring it to the food court. In a brown paper bag.

Surprisingly, this went on for several years before the police caught on and set up a sting operation.

 
We had a great used game store here awhile back, but they kept all of their games that were displayed on the floor in a single binder.

Needless to say, someone jacked the binder, and all of the games along with it.

The store ended up closing down, and then months later it was revealed it was an inside job by a few of the employees there.

Honestly though, that was just some straight up stupidity right there.  The binder wasn't even in a locked safe or anything, they were just in a drawer, lol.

 
The one by me is pretty much junk. When people were asking about local Boston shops like two years ago I gave an honest review which I would say was like a 3/5. The owner then fired back on here and told me I wasn't a real video game fan.

Just in case anyone ever needs a review - Sudden Impact in Winthrop / Boston is pretty crappy. Like most of the retro stores they are professional scalpers. When they aren't doing retro they line up outside of Target every morning and clean them out of amiibos, NES classics, and any other hot/hard to find item.

My local store specializes in scalping Zhu Zhu Pets and Silly Bands when they were the hot item.

90% of the game stores don't survive because of unsustainable business plans and not having knowledge/love of what they are selling. Many are just latching on to what they think is the easy money making item and it is the same reason they sell Zhu Zhu Pets and Hatchimals.

 
Makes me think of the baseball card stores and comic book stores that were on my area back in the 90s. There was probably 4-5 in a town of 100,000

Now the town is much bigger over 250k and there are 2 comic shops left
 
Makes me think of the baseball card stores and comic book stores that were on my area back in the 90s. There was probably 4-5 in a town of 100,000

Now the town is much bigger over 250k and there are 2 comic shops left
 
The problem the store clerk did was that he did nothing to make the best of the situation.

There isn't really hope for a pricing error to be upheld. When a store lists a tv for $23 instead $230, chances are your order will be cancelled.

That's just the way it works.

But this guy didn't even offer a discount or even sympathy.

If he had been like, look man, I was gonna charge $40, but I'll give it to you for $30. Sorry that it got your hopes up at 4.99, but I just can't sell it so low.

Even if that wasn't an option, the least they could do is understand the situation.

Instead of coldly stating "The price is wrong. It's $40.".

 
These mom and pop type retro shops are almost exclusively run by Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.  I might go there to browse but I rarely actually buy anything because they are so overpriced.  Its amazing how some of them manage to stay in business.

 
Growing up the only used game store in town (aside from EB/Gamestop) was a little independently-owned store located in the mall. Everything was overpriced and we always wondered how they stayed in business.

We later found out the shop was a front for drug trafficking. People would come in and ask for a certain game. The owner would ring them up for it and tell the person they'd get the game from the back and bring it to the food court. In a brown paper bag.

Surprisingly, this went on for several years before the police caught on and set up a sting operation.
My hometown had a similar thing happen with an arcade in the early 2000's after I moved away. Police finally raided it, guess it was mainly a heroin ring, and they held a police auction. My friend went and got a Die Hard Arcade Machine and Capcom vs. Marvel in great shape, a Terminator 2 (that needed calibrated) and a 1960's or 70's looking old west shooting game that was busted, but was dirt cheap. Said he missed out on a bunch of Neo Geo cartridges as he was getting his paddle and stuff just as the auction was ending. We played through the Die Hard Arcade game pumping quarters into it and beat it. Then I found the free play switch on the back of Capcom vs. Marvel and we played a few rounds and he stomped me every round, but it was still a lot of fun.

As for local game shops, all we have here is a Buy-Sell-Trade (but no pawn) store with various games from NES through new stuff along with DVDs, CDs and other stuff like a lot of power tools. The games are priced a bit high for the area (at least to the CS deals I get at yard sales and thrift stores), but they're not awful, awful and it's the only steady place to find retro games that I know of for 30 miles or so. And the owners are nice, but I've only bought DVDs from them.

 
I heard that in some U.S. states that retailers have to sell their product to you at whatever the sticker/rang up price said.  I usually back out of the transaction whenever I have an experience like the original poster. 

My last bad experience with a retro game store was when I bought a used Sega Genesis game.  I thought I was going to get the plastic box with artwork and manual.  Guy said it was for display only.  Tried to be fair by giving me the manual.  Needless to say, I never shopped there again.

They moved out of my local mall into a strip mall.  Last time I heard, the new place smelled like weed all the time.  Kind of shocked, cops haven't raided the place.

 
I heard that in some U.S. states that retailers have to sell their product to you at whatever the sticker/rang up price said. I usually back out of the transaction whenever I have an experience like the original poster.
IANAL, but I think this type of stuff would fall under bait and switch law. However, the actual follow through wouldn't likely be worth the time or money involved to pursue it and it's probably just easier to walk away and wait for word of mouth to run it's course.

 
We have a consignment shop that has a dedicated retro gaming section now. Good selection, but you can tell they're not moving anything other than Nintendo stuff. Guy tells me to bring in my old games they give 50% of PriceCharting Price cash or 70% trade. So I bring in some games I didn't need expecting to get $50-$55 trade credit. Week later I go in he then tells me he doesn't want to buy any of them he only buy Rare Nintendo games now (aka Mario, Zelda, etc). This was the 2nd time he's wasted my time. Now I have a GI Joe Nes game listed on Offerup app that he needs and he wants me to give him a deal on it. No Thanks. 

 
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