GRcade

Furniture Village sounds like a fake store from a 90s American sitcom.

They're very expensive. John Lewis prices without the John Lewis products. Staff were nice enough though, if a little over eager. This one woman just would not leave me alone. In hindsight I should have grabbed her arse hard to show her I wasn't going to be taken advantage of & treated like a mark.

KK wrote:They're very expensive. John Lewis prices without the John Lewis products. Staff were nice enough though, if a little over eager. This one woman just would not leave me alone. In hindsight I should have grabbed her arse hard to show her I wasn't going to be taken advantage of & treated like a mark.

Years ago when buying Majora's Mask, Mario Tennis and Mario Party 2 all at once from Game before I purchased them I asked "If I buy all 3 will you knock some money off" (they were all quite new out so £40 a pop) straight away the manager said no problem and gave me the student discount which I think was 5%. (I wasn't a student at the time)

Now obviously it wasn't a lot, and I'd have bought them anyway, but it was good customer service.

Can't believe the suggestion to contact the area manager wasn't successful

Yeah, as someone who worked at GAME, the margins are so tight that 'throwing in' something to secure a sale is not possible. As daft as it seems, discounting a game would probably make the profit on the sale more or less non-existent, so in a way it would actually make better business sense to let you walk.
That obviously disregards the possibility of future sales, but if you were holding the sale to ransom over a mediocre £15 game, the chances are not great that you'd be returning to pay high street prices for games.
Years ago deals were possible. I remember going in to buy a PlayStation and I had a list of titles I wanted, none of which were in a bundle. So the manager made me a custom package with copies of Final Fantasy VII, Ridge Racer Type 4, RR Revolution, Gran Turismo, Tekken 2... That was a good day.

Mafro wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:This is a beauty.

So, after becoming completely frustrated with the clusterfuck that is Windows Store I went into town this morning with the intent of buying a 500gb X1S.

After shopping around and discovering everywhere had sold out of that model I bit the bullet and went into Game who themselves only had the 1tb model with FH3 for £269.

I said I also wanted FM7 and an additional control pad and would bite if they threw in a £15 copy of Recore.

They refused to budge saying they couldn't authorise it. The manager stepped in and said the same, so I said why not call the area manager and get him to authorise the sale. "We can't do that" was the response.

"So your going just let over £300 walk out of the store over fifteen quid?" I asked, utterly bewildered.

"We can't authorise the discount" was the repeated response.

Chuckling in absolute amazement I left the store empty handed, and them a lost £300+ sale.

A quick phone call to Smyths Toys (a 20 minute walk) they had the 500gb FH3 bundle with Hotwheels DLC and put it to one side. On arriving at the store I discovered that the actual deal was the following:

500gb X1S with FH3
FIFA 18
An extra, official White S controller

£229!

I also bought FM7 for £41, taking the total sale to £272.

Traded in FIFA at CEX for £41 and picked up The Master Chief Collection, Recore and AC Syndicate.

Game are strawberry floating mugs.

You tried to haggle in a high street store and think they’re the mugs?

For letting a £300+ sale walk out of the door and wind up in the pocket of a major competitor? Absolutely.

In this story, nobody won.

Preezy wrote:In this story, nobody won.

Not entirely true. I went elsewhere and saved a small fortune. Game did me a favour.

And yet you've carried this negative story with you all these years (many, many years), retelling it to every stranger you meet on the internet, you can't seem to let go of your hatred. I feel your pain, I really do, but you need to let it go.

All in the GAME yo

Gemini73 wrote:

Mafro wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:This is a beauty.

So, after becoming completely frustrated with the clusterfuck that is Windows Store I went into town this morning with the intent of buying a 500gb X1S.

After shopping around and discovering everywhere had sold out of that model I bit the bullet and went into Game who themselves only had the 1tb model with FH3 for £269.

I said I also wanted FM7 and an additional control pad and would bite if they threw in a £15 copy of Recore.

They refused to budge saying they couldn't authorise it. The manager stepped in and said the same, so I said why not call the area manager and get him to authorise the sale. "We can't do that" was the response.

"So your going just let over £300 walk out of the store over fifteen quid?" I asked, utterly bewildered.

"We can't authorise the discount" was the repeated response.

Chuckling in absolute amazement I left the store empty handed, and them a lost £300+ sale.

A quick phone call to Smyths Toys (a 20 minute walk) they had the 500gb FH3 bundle with Hotwheels DLC and put it to one side. On arriving at the store I discovered that the actual deal was the following:

500gb X1S with FH3
FIFA 18
An extra, official White S controller

£229!

I also bought FM7 for £41, taking the total sale to £272.

Traded in FIFA at CEX for £41 and picked up The Master Chief Collection, Recore and AC Syndicate.

Game are strawberry floating mugs.

You tried to haggle in a high street store and think they’re the mugs?

For letting a £300+ sale walk out of the door and wind up in the pocket of a major competitor? Absolutely.

This isn't your sky or phone bill. They make very little profits on consoles. A £300 sale that would have probably made them no profit. Well done to GAME for missing out on that.

My dad used to haggle in retail shops. strawberry floating embarrassing.

Oh woop de do you got a free pack of blank cassettes, that was worth an extra hour in currys at the till.

Ad7 wrote:My dad used to haggle in retail shops. strawberry floating embarrassing.

Oh woop de do you got a free pack of blank cassettes, that was worth an extra hour in currys at the till.

My other halfs dad is like this.
Buying anything at all and he's like Mike Brewer on wheeler dealers.

Haggling in shops

Fork Handles.

Gemini73 wrote:

Mafro wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:This is a beauty.

So, after becoming completely frustrated with the clusterfuck that is Windows Store I went into town this morning with the intent of buying a 500gb X1S.

After shopping around and discovering everywhere had sold out of that model I bit the bullet and went into Game who themselves only had the 1tb model with FH3 for £269.

I said I also wanted FM7 and an additional control pad and would bite if they threw in a £15 copy of Recore.

They refused to budge saying they couldn't authorise it. The manager stepped in and said the same, so I said why not call the area manager and get him to authorise the sale. "We can't do that" was the response.

"So your going just let over £300 walk out of the store over fifteen quid?" I asked, utterly bewildered.

"We can't authorise the discount" was the repeated response.

Chuckling in absolute amazement I left the store empty handed, and them a lost £300+ sale.

A quick phone call to Smyths Toys (a 20 minute walk) they had the 500gb FH3 bundle with Hotwheels DLC and put it to one side. On arriving at the store I discovered that the actual deal was the following:

500gb X1S with FH3
FIFA 18
An extra, official White S controller

£229!

I also bought FM7 for £41, taking the total sale to £272.

Traded in FIFA at CEX for £41 and picked up The Master Chief Collection, Recore and AC Syndicate.

Game are strawberry floating mugs.

You tried to haggle in a high street store and think they’re the mugs?

For letting a £300+ sale walk out of the door and wind up in the pocket of a major competitor? Absolutely.

I doubt the store staff give a strawberry float about your £300, though.

I've worked in various retail outlets, some with flexible discretionary discount policies, and others without, but the one constant was the loathing I felt for every strawberry floater who felt they were entitled to a discount just because they wanted to engage in a transaction.

I worked at one retailer that sold cameras, from cheap point and shoots to high end DSLRs. No matter if someone was spending £100 or £1000, you'd always have someone wanting something chucked in for free. Free memory card, 50% off a tripod, whatever. Truth was, those were the bits we made margin on. Did it matter if someone walked because we wouldn't give them some free gooseberry fool? No, because the sale would ultimately have made no profit anyway if we had.

Then I worked for another company that supplied a lot of events/pubs/restaurants, but also sold to the general public. Given our margins, the threshold before we'd even consider giving a discount would be a minimum spend of £1k, but you'd always have some billy big bollocks waltz in off the street, thinking that spending £200 entitled him to 10% off because reasons.

Equally, I've worked in one place with minimum purchase quantities. Because prices of individual units varied, it was possible for one more expensive piece to cost more than six of the cheaper ones, so every now and again, you'd have someone come in and insist that the minimum order shouldn't apply, because what they're buying was worth more. Well no gooseberry fool it's worth more, it costs more for us, too. We still need you to buy several to make it worthwhile. No I don't care if you walk out, because someone else will come in, and buy it, along with the rest needed to make up a full order.

Martin Lewis, Mary Portas, et al. are all responsible for this ridiculous breed of over entitled consumer, who seem to operate on the assumption that if you can make life difficult for the shop staff, who more often than not see no direct benefit from you shopping there or not, then eventually they'll just give in and let you have what you want for being difficult.

In short, strawberry float people who haggle in high street chains.

What's amusing here, giving some of the replies, is that I worked some 15 years in high street retail, (including Game, Pink Planet and Eplay), and before the boom of online buying I co-owned an ran an independent videogame store in Cheltenham called 'Game On' - one that eventually closed due to the key owners health rather than poor business practice. I'm quite aware of the profit margins etc, (probably more than most of the folk here berating me for trying to secure a deal), however you do not, unless they are absolutely taking the piss, turn away customers and hand their business over to competitors.

Well excuse me for trying to secure a better deal and no sympathy will be found here for a company who's business model is stuck some 10-15 years ago. Your defense of an outdated, failing business practice is well noted people even if the absolute extent of your own experience of buying and selling in a retail enviroment is Amazon and Ebay - or you worked at HMV or TKmax once. Of course, damn me for wanting to secure a good deal for my buck.

When I was selling guitars at Andertons, one of my favourite lines from customers was:

"This guitar is £100 cheaper at GAK at the moment..."
And we used to think "What the strawberry float are you doing here then?!"

In the end they'd then turn around and say they wanted to pay on 0% finance, which unfortunately was not allowed to be discounted.

The other one that used to piss me off would be:
"What's the best price for cash?"

... mate, this isn't the strawberry floating Sunday market.
Your cash is worth the same as me running a debit card through the till. The best price for cash is the strawberry floating price on the ticket.

No doubt most people went to GAK then. Yay for sticking it to the man! Of course we're now closed and we're all either signing on or working the deli at Tesco on a zero hour contract, but hey, at least we told them where to stick their price matching nonsense...