Fairly recently, my girlfriend has been getting into gaming. I don’t mean "getting into gaming" like she just ran out, reserved the Legendary Edition of Halo 3 and installed Civ 4; basically, she bought a DS. She’s played and owned a few games (Puzzle Quest, Animal Crossing, Lunar Knights, and some used GBA games like Chain of Memories), and she wanted to get something new to play while I write, talk on the phone, or play games myself for review.
So off we went to the nearby mall to get some lunch, and afterwards browse the EB and GameStop stores to see if there were any DS games she felt like purchasing. After 20 minutes of looking through DS titles, she finally decided on Mario 64 DS, and I asked if she was ready to leave. "Yea," she said, "but let me buy it alone." (The other times she’s been with me at GameStop or EB, I’ve just tagged along while she paid, and that’s always ended with me chatting up the sales guy if I knew him, or stopping after purchase to look at "just one more thing.")
I warned her not to mention any games she was looking forward to, and to make sure they knew that she didn’t want to buy the used copy and save the whole $2. I hung out near the Wii demo kiosk by the door watching some old man try to play Wii Sports (at least I think it was Wii Sports) while she took care of business with some new clerk I’d never seen before.
I could hear her say, "No, just this game" and "Yeah, new — I’m sure." She paid, we left the store, and after a quick stop at the Disney Store (for her) and Sony Style (for me) we took off.
It was as we were leaving the parking lot that she opened the case to look at the instructions and went, "Hey, the game isn’t in here!"
Looks like she got sold one of the dreaded gutted display aames, and since it went straight into a bag I never noticed or had a chance to tell her to check it; she just assumed the game was in the case the whole time, since she saw the guy take something out of the drawer. Sighing, I re-parked, and we headed back in. "Can you come with me this time," she asked. "The guy who sold the games was a real jerk."
I asked how so, and she told me that when he was ringing up the purchase and tried to push the used copy on her, he mentioned "The guy you’re buying this for can return it if you buy the used one and he doesn’t like it." She told him it was for her, and he laughed and said "If you say so, girlie." (I heard someone say girlie, but I figured it was the group of kids looking at the Bratz Ponyz case and laughing.)
I went to the counter with her, she took out the case and told him, "You forgot to give me the game." The guy took one look at it, and said "No, I didn’t," then went back to helping another "customer" by talking about how awesome Two Worlds looked (by customer I mean a group of four guys eating McDonald’s on top of the Final Clearance bin). I was shocked, and my girlfriend was extremely pissed. I didn’t want the guy to die (even though he was being extremely unhelpful) so I took the case.
I explained that the case they sold her was the open display box, and he must have just forgotten to put the cart in it since he was too busy being condescending and trying to look down her tanktop. (Actually, I told him it was probably an honest mistake since he was busy doing other stuff, too.) He looked at it again, and said, "No, I didn’t. I’m sure I put it in there," then went back to chatting it up.
I asked for the manager and he wasn’t there that day. The guy told me it didn’t matter anyway, because he was sure he put it in there, and the manager would believe a GameStop employee more than my girlfriend and me. I told the guy working that I’m 100% positive he forgot the case, and he told me once again he didn’t, and I don’t do his job (who would want to? I’ve worked retail at Best Buy, and I know how much it sucks) so I shouldn’t tell him how to do it. So I went higher up.
Sometimes it’s good to have the connections in this biz (both from writing here and some other PR work), because on my work cell phone I have the numbers of a few of the managers of the local stores, including that specific one. (I also have some higher-ups from GameStop/EB, but really, this wasn’t THAT important or pressing.) I called the manager of the store, and got him on the third ring. I told him that some new guy working there was treating my girlfriend very rudely, and trying to convince us he gave us the game when he clearly didn’t. He then asked me to hand the phone over to the guy, who listened for about 20 seconds, handed the phone back, then went to the little cupboard and took out a copy of Mario 64 DS in an envelope.
He handed it over, saying "Enjoy your game, sir" with the fakest smile I have ever seen — and I did door to door sales during summers in high school. I told him (again) that it wasn’t for me, but for my girlfriend. He looked over at her, and right into her chest said "Enjoy the game, miss." Then he turned back to the Two Worlds guy he was helping, and under his breath muttered something about pissy customers ruining his day. Total time to solve what should have been an easy, 2 minute fix? 25 minutes, give or take.
Had I not had the connections to force that moronic pre-college asshole of a kid into getting my girlfriend the game she paid for but never received less than an hour earlier, I am 100% sure that she wouldn’t have gotten it for several days until the manager came back in. I know it may be embarrassing, but is it really that hard to just check if you made a mistake? I guess with how little GameStop pays people these days, you get what you pay for. All I know is that next time I begrudgingly go to trade in some old games (sadly, I will — there are too many games to afford on a writing salary, and the only way to get some new ones is to trade in old titles), if New Guy’s working I’m heading across the street to Blockbuster and getting some DVD money instead.
How about you guys? Do any women reading this have tales similar to this? (Probably…) And have you ever had as much trouble getting something simple done at a GameStop or EBGames? What kind of horrendous customer service situations have you been part of? I’m curious to find out.
