Author Topic: What Place You Think Is Worst/Best Place To Buy Video Games In-Person Or Online  (Read 8125 times)

SO? who have you had a bad experience with when buying games or gaming devices online or offline? and also who have you had a good experience with buying games offline or online.


I never even want to try shopping on Ebay, I heard a lot of people said on this forum alone that Ebay is not the best store, but others on here stand by Ebay and shop from them all the time. But I personally shop at Walmart and am aware that a lot of people hate on Walmart and rater shop on Ebay instead of buying from Walmart

My local flea market has quite a few excellent vendors that sell quality goods for a low to reasonable price, and the games are all in much better shape then my local GameStop


I have a love & hate relationship with my local GameStop because a lot of the PlayStation 3 games I got from them, had disc rot but sold at a vary low price range. back in the day although I don't have proof they sold me some dirty consoles in the past but for a low price again. but GameStop is not the worst game store out there. In my opinion

these are my best and worst stores to shop at

Best
1: Local Flea Market Vendors
2: JJ Games Online Store
3: Walmart (Where I Got My New Hori Pad for N64)
4: Disc Replay
5: Amazon
6: Game Stop

Worst:
1: Any Place that sells a broken used game or barely functional or not working device for any price
2: Any Place that charges a ton of money for a single video game
3: Any digital service that takes away the game after you purchased it

I don't really know of any stores that are in the worst category, If you think of something please share your story :-\
« Last Edit: June 21, 2019, 06:38:51 pm by oldgamerz »
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Warmsignal

Best place - eBay, GameStop, Amazon

Worst place - eBay, flea market resellers, scalpers


I do 90% of my video game shopping now between Gamestop and Ebay. Unfortunately the days of finding cheap retro games essentially anywhere in my area are long gone, and aside from the occasional retail store slipage I pretty much expect to pay ebay or close to ebay prices for everything I buy now. I have become very jaded and disenchanted with the local independent game store scene in my state on account of all my favorite stores now being out of business and the ones that were okay and now overpriced like all the rest. This essentially has motivated me to do most of my retro game shopping on ebay where I'd honestly rather buy games than support a local store that is absolutely out of touch when it comes to pricing games now. Other than that I do deals with local collectors via a facebook gaming group I belong too. in fact, I have to contact one of them regarding a pretty rare game I'm hoping to buy from him this weekend. But yeah, the scope of where I buy games has dramatically shrunk over the last few years, and sadly I'm not sure I'll ever have the selection I once had in my area as I did not that long ago. Luckily I own 90% of all the retro games I've ever wanted.

Best is Best Buy and worst is GameStop.

Best Buy
Pros: Well stocked on current titles, frequent sales, no glass cases = no needing employee assistance, fast shipping online and easy to track, price matching, easy to purchase without a hassle.

Cons: Pretty much nothing that's older than five years available in store and limited amount online.

GameStop
Pros: Some exclusives games, older games available in store, even older games online usually at decent prices.

Cons: Opens games up, leaves the case for anyone to grab and crams their discs in a paper sleeve then still sells them as new, makes employees harass anyone that enters the store with a barrage of promotions, less frequent worthwhile sales, annoying transaction process, terrible online ordering with high shipping costs, more stuff that I don't want to waste time trying to remember.

Best & worst is pretty subjective. Let's take Gamestop as an example: It's a great place for last-gen games due to cheap pricing & being able to check inventory online. It's not nearly as good for new games (due to gutting titles) and retro games (due to lack of ability to inspect for authenticity/quality).

I tend to do most of my shopping on Ebay & at Gamestop, simply due to convenience. I'm usually after a specific rare-ish title, and between those two I can find things much faster than from other places. My favorite place to shop for games is at one of my local retro cons, since the selection is usually good enough to find some of my rare-ish choice titles, and get to look it over before purchase, often for no more or less than ebay prices. Not a big fan of shopping at big box stores (like Walmart or Gamestop) due to the overly mainstream selection- although to be fair, Target has good sales.

NickAwesome

PRO Supporter

In Person: FB Marketplace/ Offer Up/ Craigslist, got a ton of competition but I still get the occasional deal here.  This is the best and worst place to buy stuff, the highs are high and the lows are low haha.   I also have a lot of good luck at local game shops, just have to really dig around to find the deals.  We have some good competition so stores frequently run sales to get traffic.   Lot of stuff is priced at market so you have to be patient or catch em slipping.  Conventions are great too as usually I can get close to 100% trade value from my doubles and get some stuff I'll never get outside of eBay. 

Online: eBay and surprisingly, Lukie Games has had some decent deals as I've been attempting to track down a complete ps1 set.  90% of their games are over ebay but, every once in a while I catch them slipping a bit and some of their prices are better than anything I've been able to find locally or on eBay.  I've had less luck with estarland and jj games but i've been checking occasionally as it is a good way to get uncommon ps1 games for cheaper than eBay. 

Worst is definitely DK Oldies, those guys suck.........

wartoy

PRO Supporter

Best places to go shopping in my area

1.Games to Gold by far the best store ever great prices and selection and I always get special pricing and free games.
2.Land of Electronics good selection but prices usually on the high side but I do receive a discount the more I spend the bigger the discount.
3.Bowser's Basement good selection but prices are high about 5 dollars more than going rate but sometime you can get a deal but rarely.
4.Reality A Games decent selection but prices are high.
5.The Time Capsule poor selection and high prices.
6.Toy Vault decent selection very high prices.

Worst place to buy games in my area
1.Gamestop
2.Movies games and more worst selection and high prices
3.flea market

The first two places on my list receive most of my business they are also very successful I wish all businesses would realize the best way to make money is by being reasonable. People will spend more when you give them great prices.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2019, 10:52:29 pm by wartoy »

I mostly only buy my games from Best Buy since I still have the gamers membership till like...January or something of next year.  I do go Gamestop for toys and just to browse.  Otherwise it's just buying through the store of what system I'm using.  Amazon once in awhile, but really only for sales.

empovyle

Best: eBay, local game shops, local pawn shops
 
Amazon is good too, but most sellers don't provide any pictures. I'm not going to buy a game from you if I can't even see what it looks like. It should be a requirement from all sellers to provide at least one picture.
I've gotten lots of cool finds at local pawn shops, like Kirby's Return to Dreamland and Klonoa on Wii for only $5 each, both in great condition. The people who work at pawn shops normally don't do any research on what games they take in. The shop I frequent runs a policy that every "retro" game is only $5 and sometimes if they're having a good day they'll drop it down to $3 or $4.
 
Worst: GameStop
 
I think everyone on the planet shares this sentiment.

Here's some lovely stories from my local GameStop. Recently I went into the store to browse. I found a pre-owned copy of The Witcher 3 on PS4 which had lots of extra goodies including the slipcover, map, etc. It was also their only preowned copy. So I take it up to the register and check out, and after the guy rings it up and is taking my card he stashes the slipcover away below the counter and hands it back to me without it. I ask for it back and he says its "for display purposes". For what exactly? A new copy? A different game? There wasn't even a price sticker below the slipcover. Obviously someone traded it in the way it was sitting on the shelf. So frustrating. I almost wanted to say, "never mind, I don't want it anymore."

That same day they also forgot to put something I bought in the bag, which is fairly normal for them to be honest, however as I was walking out of the door he shouts at me to not forget the piece of paper he handed me that shows all upcoming releases, you know, the thing they use to shill pre-orders to every person within a one mile radius. Maybe you shouldn't forget to put something I already paid for in the bag. Really shows where their priorities are. I had to walk back in and get it 15 minutes later. 

Just recently I went to pick up my preorder for Crash Team Racing (pretty much the only reason to go to GameStop anymore - their preorder bonuses). The lady behind the counter (she was sitting on the floor for some reason...) decided to give me my preorder bonus by chucking it on the counter. There's absolutely, 100%, NO reason to throw a collectible on the counter. Luckily, it wasn't broken but now the box has some scuffs.

Another time I found a preowned game there which had chunks of a Dorito slathered all over and under the manual and disc. Who knows how old that thing was. Disgusting. They could have at least cleaned it out before putting it on their shelf. They already have to open up the case to take the disc out, they definitely would have seen the mess inside.

I have more stories but I think those sum up the experience pretty well. I can't imagine a game store with worse service than GameStop.

I mostly only buy my games from Best Buy since I still have the gamers membership till like...January or something of next year.  I do go Gamestop for toys and just to browse.  Otherwise it's just buying through the store of what system I'm using.  Amazon once in awhile, but really only for sales.
My GCU just expired a couple of days ago.  :'(

80% of my stuff comes from yard sales
15% comes from goodwill
5% comes from other misc thrift stores

I get new games on amazon , but the used games are a touch overpriced usually so I get used games from ebay mostly. I don't have any local shops to work with and no flea markets.

ferraroso

Book Off/Hard Off used to be a wonderful place to find good (and cheap) stuff around here. However, as it seems retro game collecting has finally caught up in Japan, game hunting in these traditional shops isn't as fun as it used to be... Takarajima and A-Too also used to be great places to find some rare games for reasonable prices, but recently trading card games are taking almost all the space they used to dedicate to retro games.
So, nowadays, I usually try finding used games in what is called recycle shops (the equivalent to second-hand shops or thrift stores), the farther from the larger cities and the dirtier the store is, the better.
Other than that, when I'm looking for something specific, I rely on Yahoo! Auctions to buy online.

megasilverx1

I guess GameStop is the worst for me, but I don't have a huge beef with them outside of when I got a "new" copy of Shantae: Half-Genie Hero on Wii U a few years ago and while the game came in the box with the CD, the disc was in a paper sleeve rather than the actual case. The few used game I've purchased from Gamestop have worked fine. I have no intention of trading used games there though however; would rather go to a more local-ish chain like Disc Traders or The Gaming Warehouse for that.

Best place though for me would be where I work since I get a 10% discount off games. Only problem is that occasionally we don't get a game or a certain version of a game the day it comes out because it's stuck down in receiving or late. Also the selection of games seems limited to bigger releases or games from bigger publishers (occasionally smaller games like Owlboy appear at the store).
« Last Edit: June 23, 2019, 10:22:41 pm by megasilverx1 »

For me, the best place locally is big box stores. Bestbuy, Target and Walmart in that order.
Pros: new games are usually in stock, older games are heavily discounted.
Cons: when the games are gone, they’re gone. Don’t expect them to be restocked.

Least favorite to shop is GameStop.
After all these years they continue to open the games and say they need a display case.
I’ll go there if I have gift cards etc, but don’t tend to preorder or make any special trips.


I usually only do Ebay for online purchases. Mostly out of stock or retro stuff.