Nikki

We don't actually have a magical database of cover art, as many people think. I sure wish we did, it would be really awesome to have actual pictures to display our used games in instead of the ugly ugly generic boxes we use with the horrible drawing on it.

My biggest wish is that people would stop treating us employees like we're the bad guys, and stop bringing up the whole minimum wage thing too. A lot of jobs, not just this one, start out at minimum wage, and I worked my way up from minimum wage to more than twice that in about two years. But I digress. We don't have any say about what the policies are, and we aren't in it to screw you out of your money. The company is. I'm not trying to make your life hard by not letting you return a game. If I see the sticker still on the front, I'll let you return it, and generally, most returns are for defective games anyway. That means that nine times out of ten, I personally am not reselling a used game as new, I am sending out a new game that doesn't work. Used games should be returnable no matter what because our policy says so. Also, not allowing a customer to pick up a system without purchasing a game is completely, utterly wrong. End of story. If that happened to you, then you should definitely complain because it is absolutely against company policy to do that.

And the pre-order and sub spiels? We hate them, it's a waste of time and I know I feel silly every time, but I need to do it. There is more pressure from above than many of you realize, and it shows with employees who have less than stellar customer service skills. But pre-ordering isn't really all that bad because it's not like you're losing any money. Whatever you put down goes toward the game and if you don't want it, get your money back. Again, if they don't let you get your money back, this is wrong too and you should complain.

But anyways, please stop taking it out on us. We only work there, we need money just like the rest of you. I can't leave because I have a car and a laptop that need to be paid for.

Even though I am an assistant manager at an EB, there are times when I don't agree with this practice either. But in our defense, I have had many customers comment that our guarantees are considerable better than any guarantees Best Buy offers. If you buy a new game and it doesn't work, gutted or not, we'll replace it, no problem. We are very careful when we gut the new games so as not to damage them.

As for why we don't use cardboard displays, I don't actually know, but I would guess it would be too expensive to manufacture that many display boxes, and also, it wouldn be difficult to keep tracj of which games are in stock and which aren't that way. At least with the gutted games, when the last copy is sold, we no longer have a box on display to tease the customer with.