GameStop Shoppers Take Advantage of Crazy Xbox One X Loophole

While many within the gaming industry see an all-digital future as an inevitability, there are some unquestionable advantages that physical releases have over digital ones. One of the biggest, of course, is the ability to have some degree of control over purchased games. A digital title can't be loaned out to a friend, or traded in at the store. A number of gamers have taken issue with GameStop's trade practices through the years, but some have used those trade policies to their own advantage.

[Atom666]

The best part is that the employees had to know what was happening, but there's no incentive for them to try to prevent it. The person who took in the trade probably even benefited by hitting whatever stupid quota corporate has going this month.

It's a win for everyone except the mismanaged corporation. A real feel good story.

[Amplitude]

$280?

Man if you just resold them on kijiji or Facebook Marketplace or something you'd get way more, and it'd be cash lol

[knickstr]

So basically he spent a lot of money to get a return on investment gift cards. Doesn't seem worth it.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

If you're going to spend that money on gaming stuff anyway, it means he got a lot of free money in the process.

[GamerRN]

He got 800 in free gift cards, how is that not worth it?

[DarXyde]

He's limited to buying from Gamestop, which is a valid concern. That means he'll need to spend all of it before they go out of business entirely (which may well happen).

$800 is console money, plus games/ controllers, so I think he's all clear. Now, if PS5 plays all Playstation history and Gamestop starts stocking PS2 games again, this lad will have a bloody field day.

[knickstr]

It's not exactly free. He had to make the initial investment to actually buy the Xbox one's. Then he turned around and traded them in for more money in return. He's buying them at 199 dollars a piece though.

[InUrFoxHole]

@DarXyde
He'll need to spend all of it before they go out of business entirely.... yes yes we know.

[wwinterj]

Agreed but this is nothing new.

[CrimsonWing69]

Doesn’t feel so good, does it GameStop?

[wwinterj]

This isn't the first time this happens nor will it be the last so in other words I doubt they care.

[CrimsonWing69]

I’m pretty sure they do care.

[rainslacker]

Stuff like this happens a lot in big retail. Mistakes get made, or people find ways to buck the system. Return policies are often abused, and companies are more worried about upsetting a customer than they are about protecting their bottom line. Big companies can eat these costs, like Wal-Mart, Lowes, Amazon, Target, Best Buy, etc, but in more recent years they've all been cracking down on their return policies to some degree due to excessive fraud. Smaller companies can't really afford to eat these costs, and it can make or break their business if it's abused too much.

Nowadays, there are forums where people discuss how to rip off companies, and there is a pretty strong current of entitlement and over-expectations from running rampant when it comes to retail. Kind of like the people who act like GameStop rips them off all the time, even though those same people could just say no to being ripped off.

[feenix-5]

Well this whole thing is bulls**t. Gamestop doesn't work that way, they send the product to a different store or back to headquarters. This false story was debunked last week by numerous groups on facebook.

[OB1Biker]

Facebook is debunking fake news stories? Wow. Its scary

[Barneyco]

LOL

[steven83r]

Not seeing how he made $800 in gift cards. Maybe I missed something. If you buy 9 consoles at $199 + TAX that's about $220.Total $1,980. Then sell them for $275 x 9 is $2,475. Then $2,475 - initial investment of $1,980 brings in only $495.

[traumadisaster]

There is also the time involved to subtract maybe a couple hundred there. Wasted Sat afternoon

[Atomicjuicer]

And taking advantage makes bad problems (ripoff prices, lack of physical gaming stores) worse.

Its like when theres a cool discount and some asshole buys all the stock and sells it online with a markup.

Its just selfish.

[ActualWhiteMan]

That’s called capitalism.

[SoonDeadByOldAge]

I made a killer deal on the first Xbox. A big electronics store in Sweden matched prices + 100% extra. If they sold something for 100$ and you could find it for 50$ they covered the difference + 100% i.e 50$. In that example you got whatever you bought for free. And you had 30 days after the purchase to claim your reimbursement.
When ms released the Xbox in Sweden they priced it far to high and after about a month they realised their mistake and announced that the price would be lowered with roughly 150$. When I saw that I told everyone at work about it so 10 of us took a long lunch a went and bought ourselves an Xbox. Next week when the price was lowered we all went back to the store to claim our money and we all got our money back. In the end the Xbox cost us roughly 40$.
The best part was that MS wanted to give something to all that had payed the original price so it was just to mail them a copy of the receipt and we all got an extra controller and two games from MS.
BEST DEAL EVER

[ActualWhiteMan]

I imagine that store has gone out of business. So how good does it really feel?

[SoonDeadByOldAge]

They haven’t but they stopped with that marketing ploy after the Xbox incident. Feels pretty good, I used it for multiple items. Once I left the store with 32 movies on dvd without paying anything.

[ActualWhiteMan]

Do the math and this is impossible. $199 plus tax. Is roughly $220. Then he traded them in for $275. Tell me how $55 x 9 is $796 in giftcards and an xbox one x to keep.

[froy402]

I see someone is getting a free next gen console with games and accessories 800$ in all, I applaud him👏.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

He took advantage of Gamestop? He just spent $1,791 at Gamestop (9x $199)... sure he got a ton of gift card cash back and an xbox one x but he spent a ton to get it. Also unless I am missing something the article math doesn't seem to add up. At $275 credit per console and assuming he kept 1 of the original $199 consoles he would be trading in 8 consoles at $275 per which equates to a credit of $2200 in Gametop bucks. The article said he walked away with only $796 in credit? The article also glosses over the big initial investment $1791 at gamestop as though its OK but that user basically just locked away roughly $1600 in cash he could have spent anywhere into the gamestop ecosystem. I get the lure of getting one over on the system but frankly Gamestop is winning here... after all of that... this guy got 1 console and lots of credits to gamestop that he has to spend at gamestop. They got his money and they are going to let him only use that money back in their stores for merch and games ( new games at full price or lots of used games at marked up prices that they paid a fraction of a cost for). I actually think Gamestop kinda won in this scenario.

[Shadowsteal]

A lot of you are missing the fact that he could've just bought 2 or 3 with cash and then bought the rest from the first gift card he got from the initial trade in. He didn't blow 2 grand.

[KaiPow]

Very YMMV on stuff like this. He was at a store that was closing and clearancing their stock out (which is rare that they didn't just send everything out to another site). Plus, trading in so much in a short period of time certainly throws up a red flag. Even two of the same console traded at different times can be too much .

[Eyeballs20]

I think everyone is missing a key detail here. He did “make” $800 in gift cards. He’s out $1800 cash and received $2475 in Gamestop gift cards. I’d take the $1800 cash any day. Those gift cards are going to be useless when they go out of business.