So I Got Banned from a Game Store

[MysticJoJo]

I decided to go to a local game store to see if there was anything interesting in stock. I've been to the place before, known not to sell anything there as he only gives about 10% of the value of something, and most of his sell prices are e-bay "buy it now" scalper prices with 10-20% added on, but it can be nice to support local businesses. While there, I had to refuse two offers from other customers trying to sell me items(A PSP-1001 and a SNES model 2, which was tempting), and a third guy mentioned looking for an odd system that his father used to own. I identified it as a magnavox CD-I, and he mentioned that his father had a large pile of games. I said that he should give me a call sometime, and that's when the owner kicked me and Ally out of the store, telling us never to come back. In his exact words, he said, "I don't pay 1000 dollars a month for someone else to come in here and steal my business!" While he's well within his rights to ban anyone he wants from his business, it doesn't make for being a good businessman, especially given all of the "customers" trying to sell me things that he wouldn't offer a fair price on.

Also, before this happened, I had asked if he would come down in price on the AES system he had. He was attempting to sell it with 7 common games(Nam 1975 was chief among them) fot 700 dollars and was threatened by me suggesting the price was too high, trying to actually bet me(he very aggressively tried to wager me 100 dollars and insisted I take his bet up) that he could sell the bundle to some idiot on e-bay. Looking at e-bay now, I can find boxed complete systems with games for under 350. Guess I should've taken him up on the offer.

 

[Tyranix95]

Hah! You got banned for exposing a dick.

 

[Lemony Vengeance]

Hah! You got banned for exposing a dick.

Oh, the same reason todd gets banned from chat.

 

[whisper2053]

I decided to go to a local game store to see if there was anything interesting in stock. I've been to the place before, known not to sell anything there as he only gives about 10% of the value of something, and most of his sell prices are e-bay "buy it now" scalper prices with 10-20% added on, but it can be nice to support local businesses. While there, I had to refuse two offers from other customers trying to sell me items(A PSP-1001 and a SNES model 2, which was tempting), and a third guy mentioned looking for an odd system that his father used to own. I identified it as a magnavox CD-I, and he mentioned that his father had a large pile of games. I said that he should give me a call sometime, and that's when the owner kicked me and Ally out of the store, telling us never to come back. In his exact words, he said, "I don't pay 1000 dollars a month for someone else to come in here and steal my business!" While he's well within his rights to ban anyone he wants from his business, it doesn't make for being a good businessman, especially given all of the "customers" trying to sell me things that he wouldn't offer a fair price on.

Also, before this happened, I had asked if he would come down in price on the AES system he had. He was attempting to sell it with 7 common games(Nam 1975 was chief among them) fot 700 dollars and was threatened by me suggesting the price was too high, trying to actually bet me(he very aggressively tried to wager me 100 dollars and insisted I take his bet up) that he could sell the bundle to some idiot on e-bay. Looking at e-bay now, I can find boxed complete systems with games for under 350. Guess I should've taken him up on the offer.

Sorry, this just doesn't add up. Customers at used/retro game stores don't just randomly offer their goods to presumed OTHER customers in said store. Doesn't happen. There would have had to have been some level of solicitation on your part to clue these complete strangers that you were in the market to buy and ready/willing/able to YES steal business from that store. Meaning, of course, that the proprietor of this establishment (regardless of your own portrayal of him) had every freaking right in the world to toss your thievin' butt out the door head first.

Your story stinks, your tears are fake, and...newsflash: a 'good businessman' doesn't let random idiots off the streetcorner mooch his livelihood.

Get bent.

 

[MysticJoJo]

I dunno, I guess when the old couple came in trying to sell their busted PSP and I was able to tell them that the problem was with the laser assembly and they shouldn't expect much out of it, the customers saw me as someone who might want to buy things? But I had simply asked another collector if they wanted my phone number, I didn't make an offers and I left the owner an opening to make an offer as well. Yes, he was well within his rights to boot me off, but that doesn't make him any less of a price-gouging dick.

 

[Teddy KGB]

Hah! You got banned for exposing a dick.

Yolo.

 

[WoodyXP]

Sorry, this just doesn't add up. Customers at used/retro game stores don't just randomly offer their goods to presumed OTHER customers in said store. Doesn't happen.

You're wrong, bud. Most customers who go to these stores know they're gonna get lowballed and are willing to ask around. There's been a few times where I've landed some fine deals off customers at EB and Gamestop and the like. Sometimes they'ed come to me, other times I'd intercept them before they got to the counter.

 

[whisper2053]

Still not wrong. Looking at it from the business owners perspective, regardless of how gougey his prices/offers are, you are poaching on his turf. Take it somewhere else, or expect to get the crap treatment. I'm just saying don't cry about something that should have been expected from the start.

 

[MysticJoJo]

Actually, you had posited that that sort of thing never happens, then completely changed your tune when someone else shut you out. I never said that he couldn't throw me out, but if he can't compete with a guy on the street and he's offering such crappy prices that his customers are offering their stuff to other customers, he should re-think how he does his business or expect to lose it all.

 

[whisper2053]

If he can't compete with a guy on the street?

But you're not ON the street. You are sitting on his lap IN HIS STORE lmao. Surely you cannot be this stupid. It also sounds like he *did* re-think how to handle his business. He got rid of you, didn't he? Geez man, if you're going to go with that kind of material as a rebuttal, then open a store of your own. Prove that your business model is superior. RE-THINK it, even. Lol, don't go shit in some other dude's space...what an ass!

 

[MysticJoJo]

Yeah, except for the part where I wasn't attempting to do business in his store, even with other customers actively trying to offer things they were currently holding, I was just trying to get another collector's number. Also, dude, insecure much?

 

[whisper2053]

Yes!

Horribly so. Keeps me in my grandmother's basement full-time. I've been too worried about what other people think of me to go outside in FIFTEEN YEARS!!!

Or...

You could, you know, keep your dime-store psychology degree and leave the 30 second psychoanalysis to Lucy on Peanuts, where it belongs. *heads back into his basement, laughing the whole way*

Lol insecure

 

[Tyranix95]

Yolo.

YES!!

 

[famicommander]

Doc's Video Games in Aurora, CO once refused to honor a coupon that the guy behind the counter handed me when I walked in the door.

He said the coupon was expired, despite there not being an expiration date on it. He said that he gave me the coupon because on the back there was information about an Xbox 360 they were going to raffle off.

I told him he could either honor the coupon or lose my business forever, and he decided to lose my business. And the funny thing was, I was trying to use the coupon on Atari Jaguar games. The coupon was "buy three used games, get three of equal or lesser value free" and I picked out six Jag games. Who the hell else was going to come in looking for Jaguar games? I haven't been in there since, but I'd bet any amount of money those six games are still sitting there. The coupon was the only thing that made his prices bearable (he is, by far, the most expensive game store within a 25 mile radius of Denver, CO).

 

[cdamm]

take the poaching outside to the inevitable mickey d's down the block and do it on neutral ground. not in front of the shop owner for christ sakes.

noob move.

 

[whisper2053]

Doc's Video Games in Aurora, CO once refused to honor a coupon that the guy behind the counter handed me when I walked in the door.

He said the coupon was expired, despite there not being an expiration date on it. He said that he gave me the coupon because on the back there was information about an Xbox 360 they were going to raffle off.

I told him he could either honor the coupon or lose my business forever, and he decided to lose my business. And the funny thing was, I was trying to use the coupon on Atari Jaguar games. The coupon was "buy three used games, get three of equal or lesser value free" and I picked out six Jag games. Who the hell else was going to come in looking for Jaguar games? I haven't been in there since, but I'd bet any amount of money those six games are still sitting there. The coupon was the only thing that made his prices bearable (he is, by far, the most expensive game store within a 25 mile radius of Denver, CO).

Definitely feel your pain there Fami. When I was at Carson I'd stopped a couple of times over at Doc's and just gotten a meh vibe from the place. Glad to see trusting my gut was right that time.

 

[famicommander]

Definitely feel your pain there Fami. When I was at Carson I'd stopped a couple of times over at Doc's and just gotten a meh vibe from the place. Glad to see trusting my gut was right that time.

Did you happen to catch the prices on any of his Neo stuff? He had 500 bucks on a loose high serial AES with one controller.

Also had 50 bucks on a loose Game Gear.

 

[whisper2053]

Yeah, definitely ridiculous, and was NOT worth the drive out there from COSPRINGS at all

 

[MysticJoJo]

My favorite part is where you all have to actively choose to ignore the part where I specifically said that I hadn't done any dealing inside the store.

And actually, what really bothers me is that this guy in particular claims he "can't make offers" on the things people bring in. I get the feeling that he's saying that because he's missing a lisence that he really should have to be buying and selling games.

 

[CrackerMessiah]

I've seen this happen at game stores. I've seen it quite a few times. Yes, the guy was within his rights to kick you out of his store. This was Tennessee, after all.

That being said, he was acting furious because you would spoiled his potential opportunity to benefit from contextual consumer pricing ignorance.

Take Neo Geo carts for example. For most people who don't follow any video game market, local or internet-based, most would probably dismiss them as older cartridges worth no more than 20 to 30 bucks a piece. So when a person brings a box full of US Metal Slug carts and says "I found these in a storage bin I was cleaning out, what'll you give me for em'?" and the game store owner replies "I'll give you 100 for the box," that person thinks he's getting a good deal.

This is where the owner exploits his customer's ignorance. He has an idea of what the market will support, so he can price those cartridges at whatever he pleases. And if people buy them, people blissfully unaware of communities like Neo-Geo.com where such things are valued (for whatever reason good or bad) higher than what he paid for them, to whatever degree, that's how he makes his money.

So - and this is the important part - when you offered to buy that guy's stock of CD-I stuff, you took away the store owner's ability to exploit that ignorance. And that's why he came down on you like the US government on Bradley Manning.

The moral of it all is: If you see a price you don't like, don't reward the seller by buying it for that price. And if you're in that situation again, be more discreet about it.

Good times, good times.

 

[MysticJoJo]

Yeah, that's the funny part. We weren't even sure that there was anything to be bought, whether the guy's dad would give his stock up, or whether he wanted to trade. Plus, thanks to his probable lack of a pawn lisence, when someone brings something in and another customer is there, they oftentimes have to ask someone else how much they think something is worth to make the owner an offer. The first time I came in, I witnessed him throwing someone out for just that reason, and now that I understand the context, I'm surprised anyone even sets foot in there. I really should have hung around in the parking lot and waited for that guy to come out to get a phone number, though, you're right.

 

[hyper]

^ fake account

 

[StevenK]

My favorite part is where you all have to actively choose to ignore the part where I specifically said that I hadn't done any dealing inside the store.

"he mentioned that his father had a large pile of games. I said that he should give me a call sometime, and that's when the owner kicked me and Ally out of the store"

Sounds like dealing to me, even if it's not a closed deal, the deal was being started.

Bottom line is if he's genuinely a bad businessman like you say he'll go out of business anyway and you can feel happy with yourself then. Until then you probably just have to accept that you don't pay $1000 dollars a month to stand in his shop so have fuck all say over what goes on in it.

 

[MysticJoJo]

Yeah, I see what you mean. I just wish we could for once get a local game store that isn't run by scam artists. Before this place we had a place called Packard's, which bankrupted when it turned up that the owner was buying stolen systems and scratching off the serial numbers, cheating in magic tournaments to win free boxes for the store which he turned around and sold, selling promo materials that were to be given away, not paying his taxes, and eventually stiffing his employees.

 

[90s]

I could kind of understand both perspectives. The shop owner is within his right to kick you out, it is his store after all. I might have done what you did, but only after it was obvious that the prospective seller and the store owner were not going to be able to make a deal, and if so, in a discreet manner, like approach the prospective seller after he leaves the store.

My question is why anyone would bring any sort of valuable game item to such a place to begin with? You could probably obtain more for it locally, or heck, even on ebay. I think if you go to these stores, it is because you have explored all other possibilities and have now accepted to settle for what the store will give you.