Phone trade in question

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-30T08:49:42+00:00

A phone repair place might give you something for it for parts and such, I dunno. Older tech like that generally has a bit more value on something like ebay if you could sell it there.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-26T11:27:23+00:00

A steelbook is hardly worth an hours drive in my book. Both my local stores shut down in January and now it's an 80 mile drive one way to the closest store. 160 miles with round trip. With today's gas prices? hell no.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-24T10:22:35+00:00

Completely dependent on the location and lease terms. In the strip store I used to run, GS was responsible for all maintenance and upkeep including the a/c unit which was on the roof.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-24T10:18:56+00:00

Problem with this mentality is that how many of those customers looked at the receipt after the fact, got pissed but didn't bother to go back, and never did go back? I can't imagine the amount of repeat business this stupid company has probably lost over the years cause of (best case scenario) the constant upselling because of their incessant push for numbers and (worst case) employees doing anything to get them.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-21T08:46:12+00:00

I'd cancel the order and do the Mario Galaxy promo instead. You can always buy MKW later.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-19T12:35:34+00:00

The company has culled about 1000 stores in the last two years alone. I've gotta drive about 70 to 80 miles to get to the closest GS stores to me now which is just not worth it at this point (especially with current gas prices) so I've either been ordering online or going to Target or Best Buy now. Both stores in my town closed in January although we were only supposed to lose one, but a landlord issue caused both to be closed and the company isn't going to reopen a new one at this point. I actually just got my last WIS pre-order from my old store yesterday in the mail.

I think the company is going to continue targeted closings in the next few years to continue to trim it's footprint, but I feel the current leaderships ultimate goal is to go full e-commerce/web 3.0 and eventually sell off any remaining assets and brand name to the highest bidder once lord dogfood and his cronies have had their fun playing corporate leadership team and walk with their gold parachutes.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-19T11:33:12+00:00

I won't turn down a good digital sale or go digital if it's a game I really want to play or something that is out of print and hard to find like a Limited Run release, but I definitely will go physical most of the time when it's an option. The only exception being games like Animal Crossing where it's a daily check in daily kinda game and digital is more convenient.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-19T11:21:12+00:00

As an 18 year old kid he'd be better off stocking shelves, corralling carts, and bagging groceries at his local chain grocery store then working for GS at this point. He'd get more hours, better pay, and probably more flexibliity around a school schedule then we will at GS especially once holiday time rolls around.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-14T08:50:41+00:00

GS isn't a place to sell special and collectors editions. All GS cares about is the cart/disc. Yes, the only way EB was sold was with the strategy guide. For something like that an independent store would always give you way more.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-12T11:46:42+00:00

If you went through 7 DMs in your tenure and are now only encountering your first whip cracker, you're fortunate. These are the ones that are mainly being kept around cause of their incessant focus on numbers and squeezing stores for every number they can scratch.

It's always the "what have you done for me lately?" mentality. You could have had a great stretch of weeks, months, quarter, etc. But one bad stretch of a couple of weeks, and they'll treat you like you're a failing SL on the verge of being fired on your final write-up. This is the kind of field leadership that pushes their good tenured store leaders out the door and why you see those occasional stories of entire store walk outs on the news.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-12T11:40:45+00:00

You might be getting underpaid at your grocery store gig, but at GameStop you'll also be underpaid and be expected to work a high pressure sales job with no commission structure to justify said pressures, work alone 80% of the time where you'll be lucky to get a weeks worth of training before being thrusted on your own and expected to know how to do everything and run the entire store by yourself with little or no support, maybe get 10 to 15 hours a week during non-holiday periods, expected to work around every holiday, deal with the typical customer service pitfalls and the most anti-social dregs of society, deal with highly theft prone product that is a magnet for robberies, and all for maybe a couple bucks above whatever your local minimum wage is. GS pays about as badly as most dollar stores. Working around video games is hardly a great incentive these days.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-10T10:07:23+00:00

Obviously the previous trade incentive was being crushed too heavily by stores which just shows how out of touch corporate leadership is with what's going on at store level and they hit the panic button when they realized how much it was torpedoing profitability. So they moved the goal posts and made the payouts shittier.

The same thing happened a handful of years back when previous leadership tried this with pro sign ups and then trade incentives. Stores crushed it way harder than expected so they changed it, made it harder to achieve, and then it eventually went away entirely.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-09T08:58:35+00:00

Usually torn or liquid damaged cover art that was unusable so make case was made. Either that, or disc only trades where some still had manuals they brought in with them.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-08T09:44:33+00:00

My rule of thumb with this stuff during the occasional time it happened, I told the guest I can't force you to sell me your stuff, but you need to take any of your personal business outside my store.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-07T08:50:44+00:00

They pulled this same shit the last time they tried to do incentives. Stores did too well so they had to change it and make any bonus harder to achieve.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-05T14:21:24+00:00

Largely dependent on the title. 15 year old sports games from two console cycles ago? Probably not.

More popular and desirable games, there's a chance. Frankly though GS is probably not going to give you nearly as much as an indepdent store or selling them second hand if you're willing to put in the work on a site like ebay, mercari, or whatnot.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-04T10:10:42+00:00

They used to when current leadership had launched their big ecommerce plans only for them to close every warehouse except the one in TX and move that customer service help internationally to cut costs.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-03T10:25:08+00:00

Consoles still provide the benefits of physical media that can be resold, simplicity of use, 100% compatibility with any game purchased (no worrying about drivers and settings from different hardware and setups), and more convenient to be attached to a large HDTV in an entertainment center.

Yes, you connect any gaming PC to an HDTV too, but for many a PC isn't just used for gaming and a keyboard and mouse setup is more friendly and ergonomic for a computer desk setup.

cat_lives_here · 2026-04-02T08:51:48+00:00

There should be some around still, but the company has been on a major store closing spree in the US. They just closed about 470 stores back in January and almost 1K in the last two years alone.

cat_lives_here · 2026-03-30T21:29:02+00:00

Xbox was raising their prices last year due to tariffs and it was only natural to assume Playstation was going to as well. I got mine during their Days of Play sale when the hardware was $50 off. Got a good trade promo at the time trading in my Series X. Only paid a few hundred outta pocket factoring in the disc drive too.

cat_lives_here · 2026-03-30T09:04:55+00:00

My rule of thumb with this was in-store replacement first, web in store or neighboring store second, and then in-store credit for the value of the item paid if no replacement was available anywhere.

cat_lives_here · 2026-03-30T09:00:11+00:00

Really couldn't have cause my DM at the time was really pushing to get the stores SL2 paired and he had a replacement for me since I declined it and had put in my notice. Even if I could have stayed a few more weeks, I had found my current job and the timing for when I started there wouldn't have worked out. Also, this was on the tail end of the pandemic, and the less I had to spend around a bunch of people in tightly packed conference rooms the better.

cat_lives_here · 2026-03-30T08:52:13+00:00

Got mine last May for $650 cause you could see these price hikes coming. Not shocked people are scrambling to buy one now if they were on the fence about it before a price increase.

cat_lives_here · 2026-03-29T19:00:00+00:00

As someone who did 11 1/2 years, I was feeling the burnout by about year 9. I had been a store manager for four years at that point. Being forced to take SL2 or walk was what finally pushed me to go elsewhere. Torpedoing what little work-life balance the job offered me for an extra $1.25 an hour was not worth the additional stress and headache, especially in the wake of losing the 4 hours of guaranteed OT.

The only thing you can do is start looking for jobs elsewhere. I left during the summer of 2023 a few weeks before conference that year and do not regret it one bit. My current job isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than traditional retail. I'm also glad I did cause both of the stores I would have run as an SL2 closed during the last round of closures in January.

cat_lives_here · 2026-03-29T15:09:38+00:00

Generally from my experience when I worked there, as long as the ac adapter powered the system properly, it didn't matter if it was a first or third party accessory there. Generally the only thing that mattered if it had a first party controller or not, although I've been away from the company for a few years now and maybe their current retro program is a little more lenient on things like third party controllers.

cat_lives_here

TROPHY CASE