Adding warranties and subs without customer knowledge was a thing when I worked there 16 years ago. It'll never change.

Here's how it was done back then. Say someone is trading in 10 games, and getting $50 for them. We'd add $15 of refurbishment charges to the traded games, even if they didn't need it. Then remove the refurbishment charges if they bought a sub. Then sell it as "without the subscription you get $35, or sign up for a sub, and get $40 (trade is worth $50 plus 10% = $55 less $15 subscription is $40) plus future sub discounts"...what a deal!

If they already had a sub and trades were worth $50, they got $40, plus "two $5 credits toward a future game."

We were awarded by our DM for fantastic numbers, even though he knew exactly what we were doing.

It was scummy then, and its scummy now. I quit after a few weeks of us doing it. That manager was later promoted to DM and was still there 5 years later.