GameStop Offers $50 Certificate For Coupon Fiasco 147
First time accepted submitter milbournosphere writes "It appears that GameStop has a guilty conscience. They are offering a $50 gift certificate to any person who bought the new Deus Ex at GameStop. You may recall that GameStop has admitted to removing the OnLive codes good for one free game from new, unopened copies of the game. From GameStop's email: 'For your inconvenience, we would like to offer you a free $50 GameStop gift card and a Buy 2 Get 1 Free pre-owned purchase. We want to earn back your trust and confidence in the GameStop experience. Please bring in this email and your store receipt or order confirmation from GameStop.com and present it to a Game Advisor.'"
Corporate humility at its best (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Corporate humility at its best (Score:3, Insightful)
In all fairness, what they are offering sounds much better than the coupon they took out. Unlike the Sony asshats that offered a free month (zero cost to themselves) for unleashing your credit card data all over the net.
IMHO, this seems like a fair deal and an honest attempt to correct a mistake. After all, no one bought the game originally just to get the coupon, so most of the purchasers are getting way more than they paid for.
And...... of course it is a coupon for their own company, plus BOGO offer on used. The people who missed out on the coupon were *already customers*, so it isn't like the $50 will go to waste. In this instance, it seems like they really are trying to fix a mistake.
Re:Corporate humility at its best (Score:4, Insightful)
It wasn't a mistake, it was a purposeful altering of a product prior to selling it as 'new' without telling anyone.
The claim is that they didn't want to sell what is essentially a coupon for a competitor's store, and I don't blame them, but they could very well have been up front about that prior to the sale and included this 'deal' in its place then instead of now.
It is annoying to me and I don't even game.
Re:Corporate humility at its best (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh No Thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, it's not a $50 off on a purchase, it's a gift card. In a class action suit, you'd have to spend $150 in order to take advantage of the $50.
I have no idea what the original OnLive code was worth, but the gift card is genuinely better than a dollars off coupon.
Gamestop's Side (Score:3, Insightful)
I did not see many people taking Gamestop's side in all this. From their point of view publishers have been trying to ruin their business for a long time now. First they debate the legality of second hand sales. Then they begin offering their own distribution methods. Now they are specifically advertising for a competing market but using the old one that got them rich in the first place.
Re:Corporate humility at its best (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhhh...because many of us, in fact I would argue soon ALL of us, have data caps? I'm all for buying online but the fabled "download anytime model" is gonna die hard. Kinda hard to "shop from your lounge chair" and download it if it is gonna cost you $1.50 per Gb if you go over. And if anything thanks to Amazon my family buys more dead tree databases than ever before. With Amazon I can just slap some money in my account and let mom go to town. I do the same for my boys for games, and myself for games and musical equipment.
So I'd say buying dead tree and plastic is alive and well, it is GameSlop douchebaggery that is dying out. You treat your customers right you'll have plenty of business. but TFA shows GameSlop simply doesn't understand that concept.
Corporate naming b.s. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else throw up in their mouth a little bit when they read a corporate euphemism for "store clerk" like "game advisor"?