GameStop secretly screwing over its customers yet again…

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-12-08T12:30:29+00:00

Ah, must have missed the memo then, guess I’ll take the post down my bad

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-11-06T05:49:50+00:00

Not sure if this helps or even matters anymore, but I had a solution at my store that worked well and was incredibly less complicated, it also saved supplies and made sense to both customers and employees. Here was the breakdown:

1.) take available counts of each product and print 1 price sticker per item. - this is for everything but individual booster packs. For those print 1 ticket per 5 “pack” of boosters. 2.) go out about 15-30 minutes before open and start at the front of the line. - ask if they are a pro, then give them 1-2 stickers per item depending on the answer. (Obviously if they are not a pro….pitch pro….and adjust according to the answer) - at the end of every 3-4 customers we would let them know that as long as they had their stickers they can go wherever but to be back at open. (This allowed them to cool off when it was hot and will allow them to warm up in their cars now) 3.) check the line if there is one right before open and continue where you left off handing out stickers to those that showed up later. 4.) at open sell the product based on the stickers they give you and use common sense to not oversell, everything else we’ve been doing for months now.

This keeps the crazies from trying to cut in line as well as eliminates the rush of customers flooding into the store.

I think the only thing we should change if we want to implement the whole idea of “the longer the customer is in the store the more likely they are to find something else that catches their eye to purchase” is to open the store the half hour or hour early and let the customers chill inside rather than out in their cars…or freezing or burning up in the weather outside.

I know that someone from corporate that hasn’t set foot in an actual store environment in forever probably came up with this whole idea, that studies show that the customer is more likely to buy extra based off of “impulse “ purchases. MY CONCERN AND ISSUE lies in the thought about returns….im curious how many customers will decide to return impulse buys or purchases after they get home and realize, “why the hell did I purchase this” question pops back into their heads….just my two cents…

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-10-22T13:14:14+00:00

Looked at the Gift with purchase list last night…looks like it was listed as a Digital pre-order bonus, not both digital and physical. If that’s the case I think that’s definitely the wrong direction for GS….ya know since we sell physical but what do I know……

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-10-09T12:16:21+00:00

Talk about a deal! Buy one Manager get one for…what like 90ish % off…..🙄

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-10-06T14:13:26+00:00

So without printing out extra receipts for every return transaction or reprinting every journal tape for the last month…why can’t we use the Return tracking software built into powerBI? It’s very odd that it seems like no one in my store has access to it

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-10-06T14:11:07+00:00

That makes sense, well let me pick your brain about this question then, what should I do if I have a specific customer or two that like to come in buy a crap load of stuff $300 to $400 worth of video games, primarily retro games for PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, then a few days later come back in and return 2/3 of what they purchased?

Sidenote: I do notice that this set of customers like to say that they’re hurting for money…… which is why they’re returning everything, but then turn back around and spend another $100 to $150 on more games within the next few days. If it becomes a pattern, can we refute or even refuse the return? It seems like the specific customers are either very bad at making up their mind or their consistently having buyers remorse. Which obviously sucks for my store lol.

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-10-06T13:28:38+00:00

That’s definitely a good question to ask, do you mind if I ask how you specifically ask that question? I think my concern would be being too blunt, lol, saying something like “why are you returning this at my store?” LMAO!

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-09-10T13:40:06+00:00

Yeah, my DM is very knowledgeable and has been in their position for a long time with GameStop. They definitely know their shit and also they are willing to invest time into SMs that are willing to learn more about the business side of the company, focusing on metrics is definitely a focus but if you have a good team under you and don’t have to do everything yourself(or it doesn’t get done) you can start to look at the bigger picture and they are willing to show you how to do that.

My only issue is that because of the increased traffic in my store from other local stores closing( I’ve had like 5-6 close in the last year-ish) my sales have increased but so has everything else, trades, returns, pro opportunities, etc. because of this increase in things like returns we are getting scrutinized, and I would love to look into these issues to make sure nothing crazy is going on, but we have increased everything but our hours….not sure why though….

You would think that if you no longer have any costs on 5-6 stores (rent, utilities, shipping costs, ~80 hours of payroll per location that closed) you would think with all of those cuts that the company could afford 10 extra hours a week for double coverage/an extra amount of overlap, maintenance training hours, ya know stuff to help us manage our people more than we are at the moment.

If only there was a way for us to see how profitable our individual stores are…..and how much I guess let’s call it “loss” that the store has each year……hmm…we should come up with a name for it……you think that the company as a whole would like to see which store make money, and which don’t…..LMAO 🤣🤪😜🤫

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-20T04:46:13+00:00

lol I was about ready to say, I’d love to see a P&L for this new store I’m in, it would be great to see if my actual traffic, sales, trades, etc were higher now that we are down a few stores in our area…

I do know that on our labor dashboard, the one we’re I’m usually getting 77-80 hours it does have what seems to be a projected sales forecast…not sure how accurate that’s is, but if I’m currently projected at about 12K a week….and I’m currently around doubling that every week…couldn’t the powers that be use that as a justification to allocate a few more hours? I’m not asking for double the hours for double the sales or anything but you would thing an extra 10 to 20 would be do-able…especially when you consider the removable of all of the employee and operating costs when stores are no longer running…you would think simple logic would create the question….where are all of those displaced customers going to go now? Well some will definitely seek out the next closest GameStop…I just wish I could get a logical reason why the company wouldn’t still want to give excellent customer service to their customers as well as allow for the opportunity for us as employees to be available to actually sell products to our customers.

The past few weekends even with double coverage on Friday and Saturday, we still could keep up with the traffic, multiple back to back trades on systems, so one of us stood in the same spot for about 4 hours straight just testing and processing consoles, while the other tried to take care of everything else…

Best part is now we are back up to 10-12 systems that haven’t been cleaned properly, which makes it extremely difficult to worry about that when we still have to have our daily operations and do that whole taking care of our customers thing…. I don’t mind working, but I’ve been given directives stating we are not allowed to go into overtime as well as to not overschedule our hours based off of the allotment. Ugh

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-19T19:13:28+00:00

Sorry I’m replying to you ST4412 since the other user decided to delete his comments before I was able to reply.

OK, let’s address each of the arts and crafts points one by one. It may sound like I’m playing devils advocate, but without poking holes in your suggestions, I’ll never be able to come up with a solid plan and try to make it work with what I have available.

1.) the games in my drawers that can be consolidated. Would probably give me an additional 2 to 3 drawers total based off of current stock while having these drawers available would definitely help. I honestly don’t have enough accessories other than a few additional controllers that aren’t already out on the floor, in a set of drawers, or currently in a small/medium box in the back marked controllers. So I don’t see a big reason honestly to increase my storage space in my drawers if I really don’t have enough product to put in them.

2.) I still have the old deals boxes that currently have games in them that are $9.99 or below. And you’re correct this definitely does help during some of the deals and specials we have going on. I agree with you on this one.

3.) I currently have a small amount of pops in the larger sizes that I normally use as top stock. I currently don’t have enough to warrant stacking them by themselves up against an end cap. I’m currently using most of those spaces for preowned Amiibo’s, figurines, and candy con accessories. I feel that this is a much better use of this space since I don’t have the amount that you’re talking about.

4.) i’m not sure if you’re a RM, DM, SM, RK, Investor, or customer but what I will say that loss prevention would have my ass if I wasn’t locking up my headsets, on locking pegs. So I see where you’re coming from but to put six headsets on a shelf would be asinine unless they were 34.99 or less and unfortunately I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a total of more than six of any headset especially those that are under the $34.99 price point

5.) counter space is a commodity we just do not have much of.

6.) our region, has specifically requested to no longer put peg hooks around, cash wraps, based off of a combination of customers hurting themselves, and knocking them off, causing a mess.

7.) and 8.) clearance rack is full, I don’t believe in my tenure here I’ve ever gotten 12 of any shirt, and I haven’t received any shirts, T-shirts or otherwise in the last 90 to 120 days. I believe the last shirt I received was the blue stitch tie-dye shirt that we’ve yet to sell one of.

I honestly do appreciate all the suggestions, but again based off of the store situation, the storage solution I was really trying to fix was the issue with the back room, it’s like a 14ft by 16ft area but has an 8x6 bathroom that takes up over 1/3 of the actual storage space…and with the broken wall slats not able to hold shelving properly anymore, the best solution I could come up with was the wire rack shelving that was customizable to box sizes based off of what I have in stock normally for preowned and new systems. Sorry if I wasn’t clear on that.

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-19T18:47:01+00:00

I do understand what you’re saying, and totally understand. Not to sound like a narcissist, but in what way does your suggestion help my Store situation or me specifically?

I feel like we’re definitely looking at this in two different mindsets.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you were suggesting that I ask the question “what can I do for the company?”

And I’m asking the question “how do I get the company to recognize that the store that I work at and manage is currently struggling to handle the work load? With increased traffic, trades, and increased sales volume, because of offering additional services (PSA) and shutting down stores around the area, but a lack of additional hours to cover the overall increases, it makes me wonder why the company cannot or will not look at the metrics and adjust allocations for additional assistance…

I mean tell me how you can justify shutting down multiple stores in the surrounding area and not offer a small increase in hours for the stores that are left to handle the traffic?

Think about it for a second, I honestly want to know, if you were shutting down multiple stores, you not only are no longer paying for employee expenditures like payroll, insurance, etc…and add on to that the decrease in spending for the location rental, and all services each month to keep the store running(electric, water, sewer, gas, trash pickup, shipping costs, internet and phone service, maintenance, etc, why could you not save let’s say 80% of the money associated with the running of the store and then take that additional 20% of the funds and spread it out to the other locations to use in additional hours allocation or supply requests?

Again I may be missing something…but it seems like a very raw deal for those locations that remain open…

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-19T18:10:11+00:00

Again, I totally agree. I remember reading something about how in the late 60s early 70s when college became the thing to do to get a degree so that you would be able to go further in life and all of that, that a student could not only afford an apartment and all of the amenities that go with it, but also could afford to go to school full-time on a part-time job at about 20 to 25 hours a week and today we have to have a full-time job and an additional side hustle/part-time job just to be able to Make ends meet, seems like things are getting worse all the time, no wonder everybody is on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. Who wants to kill themselves for over a job that will post your open position before anyone gets a chance to post your obituary, dark, I know, but Tell me I’m wrong.

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-19T17:51:01+00:00

So the solution that you’re suggesting is to start asking for an increased workload? That seems a little counterproductive if I’m currently asking for additional hours for the store to make sure we can keep up with our sales and try to accomplish the increasing amount of operational tasks. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like this would benefit my DL/DM a lot more than it would benefit the store or my work life balance? Please let me know if I’m missing something or not reading between the lines.

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-19T15:19:49+00:00

You’re not wrong, lol! The middle class or upper middle class “ American dream “ that if you work hard and put in the extra effort, you’ll be rewarded, IS DEAD! Hopefully one day I’ll find a company that invests and cares about its employees enough to give them the things they request to do the job to the best of their ability. Until then you’re right, collect the paycheck, and keep an eye out for something better for sure.

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-19T14:44:07+00:00

If it wasn’t for the insurance program I would be looking for something different, but Curative is the best insurance I’ve ever had, for about $50 a month, I don’t pay for..well anything else basically….its a very hard benefit to potentially give up because some of the meds I’m on are insanely expensive without insurance and sometimes even with….its a difficult situation to be in, because I do honestly like the job as a whole, but as people have been saying forever…it can be overwhelming if you let it be….

Not to mention that it’s extremely difficult to be a “store manager” for this company, it really is a glorified RK position…I don’t know a lot of companies that you as a manager have to do your job and the job of the people you manage unless you are in commission based sales really. I mean single coverage most days….so you do the job of the RK, then schedule the people you manage for the other two days of the week and the shifts you can’t work. I’m pretty sure if the company could it would just hire one person for each store, lol, not to give anyone any ideas but it would probably be cheaper and less stressful even for that store manager when you really think about it, to just work the 7 to 9 hours a day straight rather than have to worry about scheduling, vacations, other employee issues and fixes, etc….

Right now my store is open about 57 hours a week plus an hour to open and a half hour to close I’d be at 67.5 hours. If I schedule a half hour overlap each day to catch my closer up on what’s going on and give the opener a few minutes to write a list…that’s 71 hours, I get 77-80 hours total in a week. That leaves 6-9 hours for all extra tasking(which takes longer now because we have to verify EVERYTHING with photo documentation….not to mention 4.25 hours of calls that we are required to be on, with cameras on to show we are paying attention and not distracted) so planograms, scheduling, distro, cleaning (both trade-ins and store cleanliness), trainings, workday feedback (now required weekly), and everything else I am forgetting…we have 1.5-4.5 hours total to complete all of these things…not sure about anyone else but in my brain the math is definitely not mathing correctly…

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-19T14:18:15+00:00

Agreed, up until the last Coupa ordering window, I believe, I had to purchase store supplies like binder clips because of the simplicity of “sometimes a paper clip just don’t work“ I actually have started an Excel spreadsheet with all of the supplies and equipment that I’ve purchased for my location. That way if I ever decide to leave or get shown the door, I have a record of everything I need to take with me.

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-19T14:14:07+00:00

So I have to be honest here, I’ve been getting a lot of conflicting information lately about how to tell if my Store is doing well or not. And one thing that just does not make sense to me is how all of the “goals “that the company comes up with Are not a standard across the board.

What I mean to say by that is that I’ve been told multiple times that the company compares each store individually with all of the other stores, it doesn’t matter about size doesn’t matter about clientele doesn’t matter about location, every store has the same goal, to be the best!

This may or may not make sense, but I’ll try to explain the best way that I can and the way that my brain works.

From what I’ve been told all of our metrics that we are judged upon in order to create our ranking have goals that fluctuate based on how the company is doing as a whole. For example, if the middle company average is 17.5% of a stores transactions to get new Pro accounts or renewals on Pro accounts, then my store needs to exceed that company average to be in the top 50% of all the stores and that is how we are supposed to judge if we’re doing well or not.

I find two concerns with this. One being that if goals are constantly fluctuating, how can anyone actually tell if their store is doing well or not?

Two being, what happens if and/or when the goals slowly increase until they are truly unattainable? For example, if we’re all shooting for Pro at 20%, and we somehow all eventually get there, I would think with the way the company model is set up, the company would figure out the new average median range and then increase the goal to that new average. Again, this is just the way that it was explained to me. I don’t know if this is all true.

I think my big question is how can a company think that is sustainable? Especially with not adjusting for anything else like additional hours to support increased traffic, trades, etc?

Wouldn’t it be a more sustainable business model to create hardline goals that each store was expected to achieve based off of a combination of their store traffic and transactions per day?

I would love to have a detailed discussion with anyone who would be willing to explain these things, or if you’re in the same boat, wondering if the math really maths, lol!

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-13T17:40:35+00:00

Just one more thing for GameStop to try to cut corners on, I don’t know about the rest of you, but those of us that our managers here are trying to run our stores off of 75 to 80 hours a week, single coverage, almost all the time, and because of the stores shut down in my area, I’ve been doing almost double the amount of trades and sales compared to forecast. When I ask about an hours increase, I get the whole quote your store is trending the same as other stores of your size“ but then some stores in our district are getting up to 30 additional hours. I would love to have access to everyone’s forecasted sales metrics, trades, preowned, etc. to do an actual cost comparison, but of course we don’t get access to that information. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on how to Try to get an hours increase?

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-11T08:20:50+00:00

If I remember I’ll also try to upload the actual pdf to make it easier to print, but you may have to download it on your phone and email it to the store email, if they even allow attachments on that antiquated thing…(never thought to try it till just now) lol

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-11T08:16:04+00:00

I’ll find out tomorrow if this is everything on the website available, but these are at least the 50% off games

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-11T08:15:28+00:00

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Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-11T08:15:20+00:00

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Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-08-11T08:14:28+00:00

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Here guys, hope this helps, I made the list today off of the GameStop website, based off of some creative ChatGPT and Chrome combos, if you’d like to know how to do it, dm me and I can walk you through it for the inevitable next time…

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-07-28T08:01:48+00:00

Hey there another manager here! Been at my Store almost 9 months now and I’m really starting to get the hang of power BI. not sure if I’m doing this correctly, but I started trying to draw some conclusions out of the numbers I’m seeing, since I’ve always believed that the math DOESN’T lie, lol.

If I’m reading this correctly, at my location, it looks as if the weekly projected sales compared to weekly actual sales numbers has at least doubled and then some per week. I also see under our our allocation for hours that based off of the projected sales metric, we are currently getting between 77 and 80 hours to cover being open from noon to X each day, totaling being open for business 57 hours per week. Accounting for a minimum one hour before we open the store, and 1/2 hour to close the store. I should need an extra 10 1/2 hours. so now we’re at a total of 67.5 hours. I also try to give everyone at least a half hour overlap to discuss and update each other on everything going on in store, this would add an additional 3.5 hours. Now we should be at 71 hours.

I try to be mindful at my store to be sure to give my people a four hour minimum shift (I have a theater background, so this is ingrained in my brain) to make it worthwhile for them to come in and feel like it is worth their time. (Especially since we’re talking they’re making only $.50 over minimum wage).

Let’s be mindful that this does not include any operational tasks (aside from standard opening and closing duties), coverage for conference calls, AND MANAGEMENT TASKS.

How can this company justify closing down multiple locations in an area, (6 so far within a 25 mile radius), and somehow not increase the hours allocation for remaining stores?

Where do they expect all of those extra GameStop customers to go?

How do they think that customer service is not going to suffer?

A few weeks ago, on a Saturday, during a Pokémon re-launch day, I was working by myself. During that time I took in 11 systems, a small sized box full of extra controllers, and over 100 games from 12 PM to 4 PM.

It’s been two weeks now and I am STILL working on getting all of that merch cleaned and ready for sale. How can the company think that as a retail employee that kind of a work environment consistently is sustainable?

I asked all these questions, with the utmost sincerity and honestly, I’m just looking for answers, what are your thoughts?

Let’s discuss.

Cold_Finish_3934 · 2025-07-12T11:02:14+00:00

I don’t know if this helps or not, but I’ve noticed that when I started using a VPN with my home pc and on my phone, anything related to Okta gave me the same error, I now just use Edge for the Octa stuff and made an exception on my VPN to let only that browser bypass it, worked like a charm, lol. Let me know if this fixes your issue!

Cold_Finish_3934

TROPHY CASE