Yeah they are a pretty shit company. I am also one of the many that worked there for a few years, as an assistant manager. When I first started was right after the Electronics Boutigue merger, and things were GREAT. They only expected realistic reserve and sub numbers and they even gave the employees spiffs for exceeding those numbers. Then once all the GameStop corporate bullshit took over, the company went to hell and they pretty much forced me out in a totally stupid way.
This was around the time the first big WOW expansion was coming out, Burning Crusade. Well we had a pretty regular customer that all of us knew who had preordered with Best Buy but wanted to change his preorder to my store because we were doing a midnight opening later that night and Best Buy wasnt, basically he wanted that game. He called early that morning and I told him I wasnt allowed to remove any money from any of his other preorders over the phone or anything. I was covering MY ass. But I did tell him that on my break I would lay down the preorder for him out of my own pocket to guarantee he could come in and get the game later that night. This made the customer happy. But corporate saw me as a liability. And those assholes kept me around for a few months after and waited until one night when I had worked a FULL SHIFT and stayed over to help with inventory to pull me to the back and explain they had to let me go. Giving me all this bullshit about "we appreciate all youve done, youre a great asset, you always go above and beyond, but this conduct is a liability to the company". I later found out that my manager above me was putting himself in a district manager training program and he wanted to show he could be stern, so he made an example out of me. Fucking piece of shit. He still had the nerve to try and be cool with me over XBOXLive afterwards too.
I no longer use them EXCEPT for in very rare cases where I really want something that day and I happen to find it in the exact condition I want or they have one of their ridiculous sales, which I take advantage of. Otherwise I tend to stay away.
At my local store though, there is a pretty cool ASM that I have become friends with, we actually met through other gaming channels. She knows I am a collector and tries to help me out with a few things. She cant really do much about the manuals/promo materials that are set to be field destroyed, which I think is a horrible practice. But she does hook me up with cases when I need them. Like the DS snaplock cases with the GBA slot. Just this week she gave me a bag of at least 40 of them.
I wont lie, I really do miss the days of when you preordered you actually got something TANGIBLE that made your preorder valuable to you. And if you wanted it you had to be one of the first 20 or so to pick it up. Nowadays they take those physical items that are GIVEN TO THEM BY THE PUBLISHERS and then try to sell them or force you to "earn" them via their little rewards program with points. Digital preorder bonuses are bullshit too.
But heres a hot tip, if you want their "exclusive" preorder DLC, but dont want to shop with them. Go buy your game elsewhere then walk into gamestop and ask for a code. You dont have to tell them that you didnt buy it from there, but the replacement codes are automatically generated and are just $.00 skus on the receipt. It costs them NOTHING to print it. Dont fall for their crap.
