Gamestop Selling 'Not For Resale' Game Bundle, Overpriced Of Course
This Gamestop somehow ended up with extra bundles of the games that were supposed to be included in holiday Xbox 360 sets (the ones that shipped with Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda). So what do they do? Why, slap a $100 price tag on them and put them on the shelves, despite their "not for resale" labeling. You can buy both games brand new for less than $80 total, by the way.
Tim found the games in his local Gamestop and snapped a few photos, but his camera sucks (Sorry, Tim) so they're blurry as all hell. Still, you can make out the $99.99 price tag and the "This Unit Not Labeled For Individual Resale" notice.
The other day I was shopping at a Gamestop in my local area when I came across this little gem on the store shelf. Back during the holiday season, Microsoft began bundling copies of Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures with every Xbox 360. Well, now it seems Gamestop is selling those bundled copies as New on store shelves for $99.99.
There are two problems with this...
1. The box clearly says "Not Packaged for Individual Resale." So, essentially, Gamestop is breaking Microsoft's rules.
2. The price just isn't right. Gamestop is selling the bundle at $99.99. However, a quick search on Gamestop's site (as of 2:58pm PST 01/12/2009) shows Kung Fu Panda at $29.99 and Lego Indy at $49.99 (new, not used). That brings the two to a total of $79.98, so you're paying an extra $20 for the bundle. Worse off, on Amazon, you can get Kung Fu Panda for $27.99 and Lego Indy for $46.99, saving you an extra $5 or so if you go Super Saver Shipping.
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Hehe I buy cigs from a mom and pop gas station that are labeled "not for individual sale" onm those but one get one bundles. But, when you do that the price is supposed to come out cheaper for you (the consumer) and the margin should be higher for them (the retailer). They shouldn't be getting the entire better end of the deal. If GameStop was smart they would sell them for like $30 for both that way everyone wins and they dont get bad PR like this.
@TorrentFreak:
Edit, its bigs that are a buy one and get one free bundles that are not supposed to be broken up.
So what happens to retailers that sell "Not for Resale" merch? Anything? Or rather, what's supposed to happen?
Actually... not defending them on price, but it says "Unit not labeled for individual resale"... meaning they must be sold as a package.... So they are only half wrong (the price is wrong)
Funny, because they're selling these for $34.99 used.
They aren't breaking the law by reselling these (First Sale Doctrine/Restraint of Trade). At best they are breaking a licensing agreement with Microsoft. As to the pricing, if they're overcharging they simply won't sell... my guess is they cater to naive teenagers and will get their asking price.
Ok, "Not labeled for resale" DOES mean the games can be traded in.
Microsoft shipped some of the bundled games separately when they stared selling them with consoles so we could add them on to current consoles which didn't contain them, however earlier this week I took several of these and added them to our USED game inventory and they do sell for $34.99.
The label in the image is most likely incorrect or some Gamestop manager has some serious 'splaining to do.
What's more fun is that as recently as last week, Microsoft was still advertising them as coming together around here...
@kylenalepa: I've seen them selling lots of used copies of Phantasy Star Online back in the day, even though I couldn't give them my copy because it was registered to a specific dreamcast and won't work with a different one.
I just laughed.
I'm not surprised, considering they and a couple others also pulled the "GET THIS BUNDLE WITH TWO GAMES!" and then the two games were in the bundle already, and not extra copies for you either.
Just to chime in here. I am a store manager of a Gamestop and can explain a bit here.
That game is not for individual sale. Whoever put it out did so in error and hopefully the mistake will be fixed. Although if the game itself is traded in, it can be sold as a used copy (not the case with this incident).
The only reason there is a price is because we have extra copies of the game in inventory. We got a bunch of extras to fill any systems we had in stores before the pre-bundled packs showed up. Some stores had extra copies and were supposed to keep them secure in the safe until notified at a later time what to do with any copies. Last year we gave away the Forza/Ultimate Alliance games away with any new 360 purchase so I assume the same will happen with these.
The reason for the 100 price point? To prevent it from being purchased. We have certain things that get traded in that get sent straight to the warehouse to have the memory erased and the price sticker says $999.99. The sticker shock is to keep the item from reaching a customers hands before it can get through the proper channels.
Hopefully this will clear some things up. And hopefully someone was courteous enough to point out the error to the store management.
"Not labeled" just means there's no UPC code.
Not labeled != not permitted.
my local gamestop has a "used" copy for 39.99$
This store is making a mistake, because there were a few sent out that were supposed to be put into the console box. A few stores put them out, and if they had overage then they could be put out for sale.
This is a story about a store missing a daily price change, not selling a "not for resale" bundle.
@kylenalepa: Fortunately nobody in their right mind would by it for $100. Am I missing something, because I thought those were both bargain bin games?
Yea, this bundle is being sold on eBay Buy It Now for $33 - $38, that includes shipping.
In the auction format, it's going for about $20!!!
[cgi.ebay.com]
Yeah, I work at Gamestop. They did this with the last bundle which had Forza 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. It was $99 NEW, but has since gone down to $30-ish. Both that bundle and this one and much less used. $45-ish for this one, $10 for the old one.
Funny thing? The $10 bundle is cheaper than buy either game, used, by itself.
I don't understand their pricing sometimes.
But do they have Battletoads?
I see that kind of stuff all the time though at GameStop.
You can't sell the individual items back to regular stores, but think about it this way... If GameStop is willing to take discs that have no box or box art, then why would they nitpick over a "not for resale" thing on otherwise perfect box art?
You can buy several far more awesome games for that ridiculous price.
Shenanigans.
You can't read the SKU or anything else on the sticker. A new SKU doesn't exist for this game in the computer system GameStop uses, only a used one, so printing a sticker for it is impossible.
Someone put a sticker for something else on this case and thought it would be cute to say GameStop is doing something shady.
@TorrentFreak: Our local deli used to sell those special "two for the price of one" packs and we would have to explain that we DIDN'T want the twofer packs. The smoke was always harsher and the flavor "off".
But I quit anyway.
@xjeyne: "Someone put a sticker for something else on this case and thought it would be cute to say GameStop is doing something shady. "
Yeah right, everything's a conspiracy theory.
@xjeyne:
No. It's legit. Saw it this morning at work. I'd be willing to upload a clearer pic too after I go in tomorrow.
@coren: Probably just printed the wrong sku... new instead of used. Shit happens. Did the OP complain to the manager, ask for an explanation, make sure the price was correct, etc? Because seriously? Stores are in post-holiday recovery right now. Mistakes like this happen.
@xjeyne: No. If it's anything like the other bundles (NCAA/JSRF for instance), separate copies were sent out to stores to bundle. These had a price tag of $99.99 in our POS, so that customers couldn't just have a free one - if they wanted one that badly, it was $99.99.
At the end of the season, any that were left were supposed to be sold with a used sku. I'm sure that's the case here, and someone just forgot to hit the used toggle on the price tag software.
And, of course, this makes a fun story for the crazy "Gamestop is the devil!" folks on the intarwebs.
About two weeks ago I asked to see how much they'd give me for the games because I didn't want them. 12.50. They sold those Zelda promo disc for the gamecube for outrageous prices also.
Well, I guess that the unsold games are theirs to do whatever they want with after the promotion is done.
But when we ran into this situation at my work, we just extended the promotion for as long as we had extra copies to give away.
This is a mistake, the games are not supposed to be shelved, this is most likely due to someone not paying attention when making sure all games in stock are represented on the wall. The game is indeed in inventory and sku'd at $100 but this is just so it reflects negatively on a stores inventory should the game come up "missing." Gamestop is given loose copies of the game to put in 360s that are in stock before the holidays that don't already come prepackaged, it usually gets supervised by their Microsoft rep if he's doing his job right. When a 360 is sold the game gets scanned and the price is reduced to $0.
@dragonfire81: Oh boy, I can remember soooo many times scanning / printing the wrong SKU (someone didn't put the used one over the original one so it rang up wrong).
Its easier to do than you think.
@corinthos: those zelda promos are kind of hard to come by, they sell for almost the same or more on ebay, usually, theres two on there now for $10.
Rabble rabble rabble rabble!
Uhh... all it says is that it isn't labeled for individual sale. It doesn't say that it can't be individually sold, or that it can't be resold. It just said that it isn't labeled. Labeled for individual sale.
@Winterfall007: Yeah I was just going to mention this. I used to have pics of this with last year's bundle but unfortunately I deleted them.
@Oranges w/ Cheese: That could explain the wacky pricing, because the game isn't sold new, hence there'd be no logical price for a new sku.
@karmaghost: Well it looks like they are Microsoft partners from here: [www.xbox.com]
Usually when you break agreements like this, they would tell you to stop but then they could make you not a partner.
It wouldn't stop them from selling Microsoft products but the price to buy would go up from the distributor. But I doubt they buy a lot of new product.
what's really funny about this is that those extra bundles were supposed to be shrunk out of the inventory, at a cost of .01 to the store. the price tag prints out at 99.99 to PREVENT stores from selling them at all. Fools.
It does the same thing when people trade in 360 hard drives or psp memory cards. They're supposed to be sent out with defectives to be erased, so the tags print out and scan for 999.99 to prevent people from selling them before they're formatted.
And to think, those games are now 30 bucks a pop...I think Kung Fu Panda is actually cheaper because it sold horribly.
When I lived in Bellevue, I'd occassionally see 360 games at the local Gamestop that a Microsoft employee had bought at work. I geuss it's a big no-no for them to resell game bought at the Microsoft shop. Firable offensive bad. But Gamestop still sold them, with the Do not resell sticker still on them.
As sort of pointed out in another comment, First Sale Doctrine is not invalidated just because someone slaps a "not for resale" label on something. This has been repeatedly tested in the courts. There is nothing illegal about selling these games once they have been purchased (as part of the bundle, for example) the first time.
I really don't understand how they stay in business.
@dragonfire81: I wouldn't be surprised if this was intentional.
I was killing time in a gamestop Saturday waiting for my movie to start. I noticed that they had a stack of Tabula Rasa boxes in the new PC section and listed for full price. When I brought it up to the manager that the servers are going dark soon, all I got was a shrug.
Wish I had my blackberry on me at the time to show the picture of boxes of them in dumpsters already.
@kylenalepa: They do this all the time. I'm really not sure why the corps never pulled their contract. They were doing this before Gamestop even owned EB Games or Babbages. Gamestop was always the lowly shark of the industry. Which is why NONE OF YOU SHOULD EVER SHOP THERE!
This would upset me if it was the Fye I bought an xbox at. I bought a it during the holiday period with a rebate, and it was $170 including tax for a 20GB pro. That was a great deal but they told me that they did not have any of the discs left from MS to hand out for the holiday promo. Calling MS was pointless, I did, there was nothing they were willing to do. Oh well, I was just going to trade the disc in at gamestop anyway.
I used to work for GameStop, and while I don't remember selling any "Not for Resale" games new, we regularly sold used copies of pack-in games explicitly labeled as "Not for Resale". This seems like an extension of that policy, and certainly isn't particularly surprising.