Undercutting game stores?

[bikingjahuty]

What are your thoughts and feelings about offering someone at a game store who is trying to trade their games into that game store more money then what the store is offering?

The reason I ask is that today I had a chance to counter a particularly low offer from a local indi-game shop to a customer trading in his childhood NES and SNES collection; the guy had roughly $500 worth of games, and the store was only giving him about $130 cash for everything. I thought about offering him $250 right then and there, but for one, I didn't know if I should, in addition to probably really pissing off the manager at the game store. I wanted to give the guy more for his games then what he was being offered and also get a good deal on some games I would have loved to get my hands on. In the end I didn't say anything and let the guy take his cash from the game store. This has not been the first time I've thought about doing this for the same reasons, but have never done it because it doesn't feel right for some reason, even though the people trading the games in are getting less for them than what I would pay. In essence, is it undercutting the store on the property?

So what are your thoughts on this issue? Have you ever stepped in and countered a game store's offer to a customer, offering them more money for their games than the store? I would like some perspective on this seeing how I feel torn on the issue.

[burningdoom]

I don't think it's wrong at all, you get games you want, and the other guy gets more money. You both win. I'd at least ask the guy to step-aside for a second, then ask him out of earshot of the manager; just so it doesn't cause a scene.

[turf]

How much do you like the gamestore?  It's kind of a dick move, but it's fair.

If you watched my last pickup video (and I know most of you didn't) you could have heard a story about my wife doing something like that. Dude brought in a bunch of N64 stuff and didn't like their offer. He was walking out and my wife made an offer in the store. She bought it for $25 more than the store offered. Since the dude had already turned the store's offer down there weren't hard feelings.

I've jumped in a couple of times at Game XChanges. The kids running those places don't give a damn. Dick move or not, I'll pull it if I don't have a relationship with the store.

TL;DR   DO IT!  but be ready for the store to be butt hurt.

[argyle]

Especially if it's a local "mom & pop" store, expect them to ask you to leave if they hear you.  After all, the money they've spent on a lease, advertising, etc. brought that customer in in the first place.  If it's a big chain like GS, it would probably depend on the manager - they probably wouldn't care as much, but again, just depends on who is running that particular store.

Personally, I've done it at least once but only after the customer turned the store's offer down.  Strange thing was, the guy acted like I was trying to sell him drugs when I offered to pay him more money than the store - he acted really funny and said he'd just keep them (didn't even let me make an offer).  *shrug*  And that was a GS where I knew the manager pretty well, and he flat-out told me he didn't care just to handle the transaction outside.  Oh well.

I've also sold something I was taking to trade in to a GS employee instead of trading it to the store. 

[atariboy]

I've done it a few times and the people I offered more money to were quite grateful, I did ask to speak with them outside and offered them a price before the game store did. I've also done it at a pawn store. I don't see anything wrong with it, I just happen to be there at that moment when someone came in with games I wanted. I don't spend all day there waiting for people.

Personally, I've done it at least once but only after the customer turned the store's offer down.  Strange thing was, the guy acted like I was trying to sell him drugs when I offered to pay him more money than the store - he acted really funny and said he'd just keep them (didn't even let me make an offer).  *shrug*  And that was a GS where I knew the manager pretty well, and he flat-out told me he didn't care just to handle the transaction outside.  Oh well.

I've had the same thing happen to me also a few times. It was like I was dealing drugs. The guy ask me to go to his car to finalize the transaction. He opened the trunk and everything. I thought it was strange.

[pacpix]

I personally would not offer to buy the games unless the person turns down the game store's offer.  I would have no problem making a deal outside the store though if they are interested.

[soera]

Ive been in that situation twice. Both of them were at local retro game chains. The first time was at Vintage stock and I didnt say anything and the store undercut them bad and they accepted the offer. The second time was at Game Xchange and, luckily for me, they were not buying Gamecube items at the time so I made a pretty decent score including a GB player with disk, couple of Pokemon games, system and everything for $15.

[blodwast]

I've worked in a gaming store similar to GameStop for a year and a half and I've seen a couple of trades between customers right on the counter. Personally, it didn't bother me at all and I never asked them to go outside. Most of the time, I talked with them both and gave them information/value of the games they were trading as they asked for my advices and if it was a fair trade haha. I mean, I was not the manager, simply a part-time as I was still going to school back then, so I didn't care much. I'm not losing money, clients are happy, they will come back and buy again anyway and to be honest, I didn't really care if the store didn't get the games as they were generally not rare/interesting games.

My boss never complained about it either. It's not as if it happens all the time, or a dude just keeps filtering people coming in to get all the games before the store.
The only thing our boss ever said was that we should not personally offer money to a client before he knows how much the store offers and declines that said offer. Then, if we wanted to offer, we could, but we had to do the trade outside our working hours. I haven't personally offered to a client but one of my coworkers did twice if I remember right and he just met up with the client over the weekend to get the games. The boss knew about it but it was okay with him.

Honestly, I really encourage this, as it makes both parties pretty happy. This way, the person coming in to sell their games gets more money and the buyer gets a good deal. Win win situation and I get to chitchat with happy customers. Win win win situation.

Also, I've had people coming in to trade Zelda, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Pokémon, etc. games on the GameCube pretty often and we were giving $0.10 (no, that's not a typo, yes, it is 10 cents) store credit (back when the store focused only on new games and was trying to get rid of GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2 games. Now they don't do this anymore haha). Most of them agreed on that cheap offer as they didn't know the value of their games. I always told them something along those lines : "Are you seriously going to trade in those games for $0.10 each? You may not know this, but your games are worth a fair bit of money, you should probably take a look online or at another store that is more specialized in retro/old games as we, unfortunately, focus on recent games.", and generally, they were pretty happy about it and thanked me for my honesty.

So yeah, in the end, I guess it all depends on how you perceive it and how the store clerk does.

[exonerator]

I'd at least ask the guy to step-aside for a second, then ask him out of earshot of the manager; just so it doesn't cause a scene.

This. When I was reading the OP, this was the solution to the scenario that went through my head. It is a bit of a dickish move, but in the end, it's all about the games. Muttering an aside to him would easily be the best solution, and if the manager found out after, just say that you wanted to give him a better deal, and buy a few of his games just to ease the situation if need be. That's just what I would do. :p

[dashv]

Especially if it's a local "mom & pop" store, expect them to ask you to leave if they hear you.  After all, the money they've spent on a lease, advertising, etc. brought that customer in in the first place.  If it's a big chain like GS, it would probably depend on the manager - they probably wouldn't care as much, but again, just depends on who is running that particular store.

Personally, I've done it at least once but only after the customer turned the store's offer down.  Strange thing was, the guy acted like I was trying to sell him drugs when I offered to pay him more money than the store - he acted really funny and said he'd just keep them (didn't even let me make an offer).  *shrug*  And that was a GS where I knew the manager pretty well, and he flat-out told me he didn't care just to handle the transaction outside.  Oh well.

I've also sold something I was taking to trade in to a GS employee instead of trading it to the store. 

Dead on.

The store owner is at something of a disadvantage for all the reasons mentioned above. I like to take it all in context. The store I frequent never rips me off and more often than not sells to me at prices better than the internet. The more I buy the better the discount. I've dropped $100 bucks before and walked out with 17 AAA titles across a variety of platforms.

His wide selection and lower than market prices can only come from an expensive to maintain storefront and paying less for the games than he plans to sell them for.

In some cases he's buying broken stuff on nothing more than the possibility the item may be fixable. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it was a waste of his time and money.

This same store also provides equal value trade in as on option for folks that aren't determined to walk out with cash.

So if he knows he is going to sell it for $15 he is willing to do an even trade for a $15 item currently in his inventory. He goes out of his way to deal with folks fairly.

I had a friend that was disappointed he only got $5 for his SNES copy of SimCity (cart only). When I told him I bought a copy of SimCity at the same store a month earlier (in box with manual) for $5 he realized the store owner actually gave him a pretty good deal.

I've been tempted to counter some offers he's made to other folks but never do because his wife, kids, and store are counting on him to keep their rent paid and their fridge full.

Remember some folks just want to come in and dump games for cash. Never to return. Those folks are likely to walk away a bit disappointed much of the time. They likely saw ebay and Amazon prices and that's what they thought they were going to get. But folks looking to buy, trade, and occasionally offload a dupe that's entered their collection get pretty fair treatment because the system as a whole is fair and the local shop is paying/charging what the local market will bear.

Of course I am talking about a pretty specific instance here. I am sure there are some stores and especially chains out their just trying to milk people. But that's kind of the nature of the second hand market.

Now that I think about it, I'd have no problem doing it (counter offering) at a GameStop. But I wouldn't do it at the local mom and pop I frequent. Some evenings his 8 year old son and 6 year old daughter are sitting in the back playing a board game because the owner himself is working double shifts to ensure the store is open for folks.

[jcalder8]

I have done it before, probably more than a dozen times. I always let the store make the first offer and if the offer is unjust, unfair or less than I would be willing to pay then I let the person trading them in know that I would be willing to offer more. I would say about 50% of the time they say they just want what the store is offering though. I have never had any hard feelings from the store but this is almost always at Gamestop. I would still do it at a game store but while I have been in those I haven't heard any outrageous offers.

I have also gotten free items by waiting to hear if there are games that the store doesn't want and then offering to take them.

[dashv]

I have done it before, probably more than a dozen times. I always let the store make the first offer and if the offer is unjust, unfair or less than I would be willing to pay then I let the person trading them in know that I would be willing to offer more. I would say about 50% of the time they say they just want what the store is offering though. I have never had any hard feelings from the store but this is almost always at Gamestop. I would still do it at a game store but while I have been in those I haven't heard any outrageous offers.

I have also gotten free items by waiting to hear if there are games that the store doesn't want and then offering to take them.

I've gotten free stuff from store owners because they can't sell something they bought and don't want to deal with Amazon/ebay. :-)

Scored a broken ColecoVision that way. Had it working 5 days later. Also got a (working) 6 switch atari and set of controllers (joysticks and paddles).

[burningdoom]

I have done it before, probably more than a dozen times. I always let the store make the first offer and if the offer is unjust, unfair or less than I would be willing to pay then I let the person trading them in know that I would be willing to offer more. I would say about 50% of the time they say they just want what the store is offering though. I have never had any hard feelings from the store but this is almost always at Gamestop. I would still do it at a game store but while I have been in those I haven't heard any outrageous offers.

I have also gotten free items by waiting to hear if there are games that the store doesn't want and then offering to take them.

I've gotten free stuff from store owners because they can't sell something they bought and don't want to deal with Amazon/ebay. :-)

Scored a broken ColecoVision that way. Had it working 5 days later. Also got a (working) 6 switch atari and set of controllers (joysticks and paddles).

I got a 2nd original XBox that way, once. Which I then used to trade in exchange for a guy I knew modding my original XBox, loading it with ROMs and a few choice albums from his rather large CD collection, and burning me some XBox games. Came back the next day to pick it all up. I also got a few games from the guy that gave me the XBox.

I just told him where a local used movie/game shop was in town after GameStop told him they no longer took original XBox stuff, and he didn't even want to bother and offered it all to me. I would have been an idiot to say no.

What's funny is that the GameStop guy did say that we had to take that outside (wasn't rude about it or anything, though); which I thought was funny since he just got done telling the guy GameStop has zero interest in original XBox stuff.

[mastafafik]

If I want to buy a game - I don't care about shop's prices. There's no mercy in show business

[Warmsignal]

Think Starsky and Hutch - DO IT. I'd do it, in fact, have done it. If you hang around GameStop long enough they still get people trying to bring in SNES or whatever. We snagged a bag of SNES this way one day. You could do the same for any modern trade ins as well and save lots of money. Just ask them what they're trading in, if you want it, make an offer that is worth their while, isn't hard to do when you're cutting out the middle man's profit.