GameStop Digitals

[Steelmaker]

Originally Posted by Zivouhr

Thanks for those extra details on opened games. I see your point of view and can understand it. That's pretty good they had that 10 day return policy on new games. That's true, almost nobody allows that these days for a full refund. That would be like playing a game, completing it and then getting your money back if you said you didn't like the game. That was probably smart they stopped doing that.

When they were offering me the display case with lots of fingerprints all over it, I asked for a discount for an opened game case but they said it's a new game. I said it's going to be a gift, and had to walk next door to the other game store to buy it brand new and sealed. The guy didn't offer to shrink wrap it even. That could've made the difference, yes.

Sounds like your store definitely had better customer service than the Gamestop stores I visited.

But yeah, Electroniques Boutique I remember seeing for the first time in the mall way back in the 1980s as a tiny kid. Back then, it was just a walk up counter, with no interior to walk into the store. It was so unusual but kind of cool. You'd ask to see a game and they'd have to keep a careful eye on people so they didn't walk off I can imagine when it got busier. All the games were stacked on the shelves behind them, but stacked like book ends so you couldn't see the cover art. That's how many games they had so you sort of had to ask "What game is that? Can I see that one?"

I bought BC's Quest for Tires for the Colecovision. That was the only store that ever had that game and it was great. That was the first game I ever bought at an EB store, of many more games bought there after that.

Soon they became an interior, full games store which was better since you could go in and look at the games sealed in the boxes back then. Eventually they started the display copies and I remember thinking "That's weird, but I guess people were stealing them so that makes sense".

Oh that absolutely went on! We had customers that abused the policy for sure. But EB's philosophy at the time was the vast majority of customers were actually honest and respected the policy and didn't abuse it. It was more important to keep them happy and just tolerate the knuckleheads that wanted to treat us like a free rental store. It was looked at as a necessary "loss leader" to continue to gain more loyal repeat customers who DIDN'T abuse the policy. I happened to agree with that philosophy and honestly, it was way less stressful as you didn't have to deal with nearly as many tense situations where you had to tell a customer no. Once the company went public and new upper management took over, all that changed!

Wow that's really cool that you got to see EB at that early stage. I always knew they started out with kiosks in the middle of the mall but we didn't have EB at our mall until they had already converted to a full fledged walk in store. I started working part time for them in the early 90's when I was in college at the peak of the 16 bit, Genesis/SNES era. In the 80's during the Atari/Coleco/Commodore 64 era I usually had to get my games at places like Sears, K-Mart, or Hills Department Store. Man, that was a long time ago! LOL!