At the same time, if I'm a customer I don't have to follow any "suggestions" put in the box by the manufacturer. The retailer sold me a piece of crap, and the retailer can take it back. Maybe the retailer will get enough returns and will tell the manufacturer to fix things or go blow. And the manager who told the guy to call the manufacturer should have backed down RIGHT away and just processed the return, business as usual. When did we all turn into good little Germans and do what we're "told" to do by the retail and crap manufacturing communities?

Good for the employees for seemingly keeping they're cool. I know that I would have trouble in that situation not giving him a piece of my mind (or possibly my knuckles if he said he was going to "fuck me up" haha)

If the story is the whole story, then good for the Gamestop staff for acting professionally in the face of an aggressive jackass.

I can understand his frustration (wasted trip, blah blah blah) but seriously, try to treat employees like people, not like they are servants waiting to fulfill your every whim.

Good post, and good point.

This is just disgusting.

While I agree that some of the kids are buying games with worse language, at least parents have control over what games their children end up buying - they don't have control over the people around them.

Good Job to the Game Stop employees!

@CyrusOpeth: actually, stores don't have to process any returns. They generally have policies and procedures to do so in the interest of customer service, but lots of places don't take any opened games, movies or music back for any reason at all.

The retailer has no way of knowing that a factory-sealed piece of merch may be faulty. They should stand behind what they sell, sure, but if the manufacturer has already set in place methods to take care of problems, consumers should follow those procedures in order to get satisfaction.

@CyrusOpeth: It's not uncommon at all for companies that produce items with multiple parts to ask this of the consumer-every piece of pressboard furniture I've bought has this notice in it. Stores don't stock individual pieces-it's easier for the company that built the thing to send out a replacement. Nothing made this guy any more special than anybody else. Things go smoother for everybody (even the consumer-gasp!) when the proper lines of communication are followed.

Of course, if the company blows you off, then I see no problem going full bore on the retailer.

Issuing physical threats because you can't play Guitar Hero right that moment? This dude needs to take a nap.

@CyrusOpeth:Exactly my thought. If I buy something and I want to exchange it, then I'm going to first take it to a store if it's still within the allowable period of time. It doesn't matter what the little piece of paper inside the box says. If GameStop doesn't have a display in store indicating that GH bundles are to be exchanged by the manufacture, then they need to honer the exchange or return.

That almost happened to me when the PSP first came out. I had it on pre-order and got up early that day to buy it, mine stopped working in less than 24 hours. So I called GameStop to ask about a return and they told me they don't have any, so I'd have to wait till the next shipment, which could be about a week...

Then I called back with a different voice saying that I had a PSP on reserve and wanted to make sure they still had them. The same guy tells me they still have plenty if I get there in the next couple of days.

So I get the box together and go in to the store and ask for an exchange. The same guy I talked to on the phone told me they don't have any. I said, I just called and you told me you do have them (give's me a puzzled/pissed off face)and I was actually able to point to a box of them.

The manager came out and told me they couldn't give me one of the many PSPs in the box because they were reserved. I said the return rules don't say anything about that on the receipt. She tells me to think about the person that won't get one. I say I really don't care....

Long story shorter, I walked out with a new PSP.

However, I didn't spout profanities or threaten people even though I was brimming with anger.

The Mana

I have been so pleasantly surprised by all the kind staff and customers at various stores this holiday season. Everyone has been unusually well behaved. Some people will be assholes no matter what, obviously, but there has been a definite shift in spirits.

Did the story of the trampled Wal-Mart employee leave a lasting effect on the masses? Is the recession causing the consumer industry to slow down and take a breath? Is it something in the water?

@CyrusOpeth: you've totally missed the point. The guy could have expressed his dissatisfaction without cussing out the entire store. But you're probably the kind of guy who regularly pitches a fit for not getting his way, anyway.

@se7a7n7:
So basically you took someone else psp. An gave management the problem of dealing with a customer irate about them not having their reserved PSP.

@a5un: @CyrusOpeth:
Directly from the Game Stop website-
"We reserve the right to limit returns to unopened or defective products."

I will definitely be the person snickering in line behind you as your opened merchandise and your unjustly heightened sense of entitlement is denied and escorted off the premises.

Working in retail is tough for many reasons this being one of them. Stay away from retail.

@JoseRZ: YUP. They didn't have enough for everyone on the reservation list anyway.

And get this, I didn't feel bad about it at all!

@CyrusOpeth: Why would you go out of your way to make trouble for retailers?

Back in my senior year of high school, I worked as a temp cashier at Honeybaked Ham. 99% of the people are nice or tolerable, but there's always that 1% that gave me grief.

If you want to get that sense of entitlement out of a person, working retail during holiday season should do the trick.

@se7a7n7: Well arent you special. Didnt fell bad at all but i bet if you were the person who didnt get a PSP you would.

You should have just called Sony and you would have gotten a new PSP in a few days without the loss of Karma.

@CyrusOpeth:

There is no way the manager should have processed the return, "on the spot" or otherwise. There are clear instructions on what to do if there is a problem with the item, and I fail to see how following those self-same instructions (which will get results) would make one a "good little German", whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. The kind of behavior exhibited by that customer should be rewarded with 100% jobsworthiness and refusal to budge from the rules, followed by a swift banning from the store. Pandering to that sort of crap just reinforces the belief that acting like a complete arsehole will get you what you want.

And no, I don't work in retail.

@parad0x360: Sounds to me like what he did was pretty fair. If his was defective, that means that there were only so many working ones in the shipment.

He got there first, he should have first dibs on it. I'd have done the same thing.

@parad0x360: OK, next time the situation happens, I'll let the store slip out of their stated obligation on the receipt.

I'm sure that when most people get a broken item, their first concern is what they can do to make it as easy as possible for the store. I know I don't mind doing extra work to help out a store I just paid $200 to.

I worked in retail for many years, and developed a strategy for dealing with these people. Basically, I give them the "I'm barely listening to you" treatment and give them the same "I can't help you" line over and over again.

This is, of course, only if being reasonable fails. If they can't make the effort to be civil to me, then I'm not going to make any effort whatsoever for them.

Think about why these companies put notices with their products advising you to contact them instead of the retailer when something is broken: if you return the item to the store, the store has to send the product back to the vendor, showing that the vendor has a crappy product. The retail store will be hesitant to purchase future products from said vendor because of faulty previous products. If the consumer only talks to the vendor about the faulty product, the retail store sees the vendor as a reliable company, regardless of how many items are actually bad to begin with.

What caused the bad product? When I worked at Best Buy, a lot of items were broken from the factory, but some were broken from the shenanigans of the inventory crew unloading the truck (tossing packages to the different pallets for floor delivery). Consumers see a bad product, and the first thing they think of is that it's the store's fault. We just returned a Coleman inflatable bed to Target because it leaked, even though the paper inside said to send it back to Coleman. Target processed the return in no time (even on the day after Christmas), and I had a refund immediately. MUCH simpler than contacting Coleman and waiting for a replacement to arrive.

Maybe quality control could be improved in these companies if retailers knew a bad supplier by the number of products returned.

@TinkishDelight: You should re-read the thing you posted in bold. Please notice that it says "unopened OR defective." Meaning if its defective, they'll exchange it.

Reading Comprehension FTW!

@se7a7n7: I think your request was reasonable. You had one first and it was broken, therefore you should get one off the pile. That's a perfectly reasonable request, but you don't have to be an asshole about it.

Retailers should institute a rule saying that if you cuss out the cashier, manager, etc., you automatically go to the back of the line. It gives the customer a few minutes to cool down and when he or she returns to the counter, they can try again. Cuss again and right to the back you go, again. Repeat as necessary until the customer learns the definition of civil discussion.

Yeah f-bombs is not cool in public places. It makes you look un-educated.

the "catch more flys..." is like one of my favorite sayings.

@parad0x360: So, you're saying that se7a7n7 should have been self-sacrificing and chosen to be the one who ended up without a PSP? If it's me or some other random person who gets what they have PAID for, I'm going to probably choose me. If se7a7n7 hadn't come in to pick the unit up when they did, they would have had a different one and would have been fine. You think they deserve to wait for a week or more because of simple timing?

If the retailer had any sense, they would have withheld a percentage of the units to account for DOAs and other quick failures. I think the blame goes to GameStop.

@snoop-blog: is=are. I really can't speak/type today. Lo Siento.

I work in a call center, for those At&t rebate cards, If you yell or anything like that. The csr will help you, but they will not go out of their way just to help you when your mad. Be nice or else!

Speaking as a former retail slave, that isn't unusual behavior at all. I was threatened with physical violence several times. I worked in a bookstore, so we had constant problems with returns, as many people do not seem to know the difference between a bookstore and a lending library. Nevertheless, people would get so angry at being refused a return on their obviously-read book that they would threaten or attempt to attack employees.

My best returns story: I was working the back cash registers by myself when a very bulky, very angry dude marched in. He dropped a remarkably digusting, dog-eared book in front of me and demanded a return.

The book was a ten-year-old GED study guide.

I told him he couldn't return it. He went red in the face and insisted that he had bought it in our store. I told him that was impossible, since our store opened about 9 years after that book would have been pulled from the shelves for being out-of-date. He then tried another strategy: he wanted his money back because the answers in the GED study guide were WRONG, and had caused him to fail his GED test. Ummm...

He then asked if I was a high school graduate. I said no (I was a senior in high school at the time) and he said "AHA! Well how could you possibly know, you never graduated from high school!

At that point I just called my manager. When my manager stuck to his & my guns, the guy threatened to come back and shoot up the whole store, then ran out, leaving his disgusting book behind. We had to call the police and everything.

@MissTicklebritches: CyrusOpeth didn't say anything that justified cussing out the entire store. He only commented on the return situation and didn't deserve being described as a regular fit pitcher, IMHO.

@nicemarmot617: I work in a bookstore, too, and when our return policy changed to receipt-only this fall, we had to tell everyone that came through the line. 99% of people were aghast that there were other people in the world who returned books in the first place ("this isn't a library!") but 1% still makes up a whole lot of irritated and self-entitled people.

@SabreDC: Back of the line? That's too generous. They should have to come back on a different day. If they cannot express their frustration without profanity, they need to come back whey they are no longer frustrated.

@Sunny Yeung: Heh. Though sometimes it works the other way--I've had colleagues develop a clear "all customers are the enemy and we get to defeat them however we can" mentality.

I've found people pretty pleasant this holiday season myself, but I've been largely in small-town circumstances--and the bad weather has tended to bond people, too.

The situation is shitty, for sure, and I personally would want to process any return directly through the manufacturer if such option were presented. However, I have had some excruciatingly horrible times at several of my local Gamestops. The employees tend to be very smug, especially when someone like me walks in (21 year old female) and can be really condescending. I have found this at every other game store I've been to in Portland (exception being Video Game Wizards--they are super nice and super helpful), but I've noticed it at Gamestop far more than anywhere else.

I mean, really. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean that the ONLY reason I'd be buying Madden 07 was as a gift for my brother or boyfriend. I was buying it for myself, ass.

@nicemarmot617: LOLs. Thanks, that was the most hilarious thing I've read all day.

@snoop-blog: @snoop-blog: Actually since the "is" is referring to the phrase, and not the flies, you were right the first time :)

@West Coast Secessionist: Ah. And since you were talking about the first "is" in your post, not the second one, I'm a moron. Too bad I can't just delete my post. :(

@mmstk101: Sadly, GameStop gets a lot of that and they were likely used to it. -_-

Ultimately, being a complete jerk in a store isn't the best way to solve your problems. HOWEVER, I'm assuming all of you read consumerist almost daily. You see the constant ebbing away of our consumer rights by companies who see us simply as arms and legs attached to dollar bills.

No we shouldn't lose our cool in a store, but stores shouldn't treat us like crap after the sale is made. There has to be some sort of consumer-merchant agreement. Something where we agree to act like people, and they agree to treat us as such.

Personally, when I buy something, it's because I want it and I'm not looking to go out of my way later to return it. I'd postulate that 90% of my returns are on opened merchandise because what was in the package did not work or was defective in some way. I really don't care what the manufacturer says about returns or warentees or whatever. I'm not buying it directly from them (I would if I had the option) and I shouldn't have to jump through hoops if their product doesn't work. In the end, I'm still giving them and the store my money for a product and the expectation that it fills its promised use.

TL;DR This guy was and is a jerk. He shouldn't do this to poor schmucks working in the mall. However, the fault ultimately lies with the constantly poor treatment we receive from merchants who only care about our money and the end of the sale.

@ajlei: i used to have that problem with the gamestop around the corner from where i used to live.
one day after a frustrating conversation where i was trying to buy an arena style fighting game but couldn't decide which one i wanted and they were trying to point me toward some stupid fluffy game that i can't recall the name of, i challenged the assistant manager to a round on the demo version of soul caliber at the front of the store.
after thoroughly mopping the floor with him, we had a reasonable conversation and i got sound advice on different games.
the next time i went i bought a used copy of final fantasy x and when it repeatedly froze up at a certain spot a few hours into game play i took it back and not only did they exchange it for me, they took that copy and tested it for me on the demo unit before finalizing the transaction. they never questioned my ability again.

And another top tip from your friendly barista: When we're out of the muffin you want on the afternoon of a post-holiday rush, the best way to express your dissatisfaction is with words, not by throwing your steaming hot coffee at my co-worker*. Should you choose the latter, we will have you forcibly escorted out by the building's security staff. Thank you.

(*Yes, she really did, and she missed.)

This remonds me of a time a customer dropped the line on me "You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar" while I was a cashier. I wasn't speaking to her, but she was listening into a conversation I was having. Living on a farm, I really wanted to say, "You catch more flies with horse shit than you do honey!" I didn't. But I had a smile on my face all day.

@a5un: Fine and dandy and all, but first there's two things (and I completely agree, if you're inside the store's return period, it's ussually far easier to deal with the store).

One is that while it's not big deal for 99% of the year, it's pretty much common sense that you do not attempt a refund the day after christmas. Not only will the store be packed with people using their newly aquired cash and gift cards, if you're in countries that celebrate it, it's also Boxing day, which is basically our equivelent of the US Black Friday. Most retailers have signs, and a lot of cashiers remind people leading up to christmas that their store will not be accepting refunds until such and such a day.

Two, while I have heard that walmart will take just about anything back for any reason, a lot of other retailers have specifics that follow for a return. Ie, there are no returns on opened games, music, and such, only an exchange is possible.

Now, I don't know if there's a game included in this bundle pack of stuff, but assuming there is, and that it's probably opened, I would doubt this guy would have gotten his return processed in the best of time. Exchange for the same item, maybe, would depend on the store, but I can see why a store might turn away a customer if they start uttering threats of physical violence to the employees.

every time i feel irked with a retail employee i remember my first retail job, my first black friday ever, in a toy store.
i was on stock duty and hadn't been near the register all day. i was putting out a new pile of [empty] sega genesis video game boxes in the sale bin [at the time the cheap older games were behind the counter and you took the empty box to the counter where the employee got your game and popped it in the case]

the games in the bin were all 3 for $9 but the lady wanted to combine that deal with the more expensive games from the glass case. when i told her the deal applied only to the games in the bin she said 'you lying little bitch, i just spoke with you up at the register and you said i could pick any three games in the store' then she raised her hand like she was going to slap me.
fortunately my manager [teeny little lady, about 4 foot 9] grabbed her hand and said 'i think you must be thinking of a different store, the only person at the register today is DANIEL. why don't you leave now and go to that other store?'
the lady looked up and realized that no one could confuse a 5 foot tall redheaded female for a 6 foot tall guy with a beard and stomped out.
that was rude awakening and i made sure never to get in arms reach of another angry customer again

it helps keep in perspective that retail employees are almost always scarred by some kind of trauma. it doesn't make me like them more, but it does help me bite my tongue when my temper rises.

@JulesNoctambule: You're kidding right?

Obviously you all ate the muffins so she couldn't have any.

@ajlei: i've returned one book. It turned out to be a dumbed down heavily censored copy, and since there were no outside labels of this I didn't know till I opened the book from it's shrinkwrap cover. It wasn't damaged at all so they put it back on the shelf I think. Other than that..just wow. who returns books..o.O

@SMSDHubbard: Actually, Tinkish comprehended that perfectly. If you want to, it could be broken into two seperat statements such as:

"We reserve the right to limit returns to unopened products."
and
"We reserve the right to limit returns to defective products."

So while I agree, they do have a policy that allows the return of defective items, they are saying the don't have to accecpt them if they don't want to.

What would be more applicable in this case though is their policy on echanges for defective items. In WA state anything found to be defective within 15 days of purchase is the responsibility of the retailer to repair, echange, or refund.