Jason went into GameStop to trade in his Xbox 360, and experienced something odd. He says they refused to take his trade-in unless he bought new non-HD cables so they could test the system with the non-HD TVs they had in the store.

Here’s the email Jason sent to us and to GameStop:

I am writing you regarding a concern that I have about the business practices of one of your stores.

I recently visited [redacted] on Saturday, April 24th; with the intent of trading in my Xbox 360 and several accompanying games and peripherals.

I was able to trade in my games and peripherals with no issue, although I hit a snag upon trying to trade in my Xbox 360. The cables that I traded in with the unit were HD composite cables, and I was informed that I would not be able to trade the system in unless I had the standard definition cables.

It seems that the only televisions that this GameStop has are standard definition 13” color CRTs, therefore there is no way they could plug in my HD cables and ensure that the system was in good working order.

The female employee suggested that I could buy a set of standard cables, and then trade them in with the system. I found that I had little choice but to do so. I purchased the cables.

The female employee then took my HD cables as a trade-in. This is the point that I really want to stress. She took my HD cables. Why? It was already made clear to me that they had no way of telling if the cables worked. Does GameStop make it policy to take in items without any knowledge of the item’s ability to work, and if so, why weren’t the cables accepted in the first place?

Does GameStop really need the extra $14 I had to pay in order to trade in my system? Did the employee feel that my trade-in value was too high and thought it best to try to shave a few dollars off by making me buy unnecessary cables? Did she need to fill some POP requirement that requires her to sell accessories with every purchase?

Why doesn’t the company keep an extra set of cables lying around for just this occasion? It’s obvious that GameStop will accept HD cables as a separate trade-in, so why not have a set of cables to test out systems that have HD components?

Also, why doesn’t GameStop have the ability to test out HD systems? Doesn’t GameStop sell HD systems? How do they test a PS3 when it gets traded in? The company does business in selling HD systems, you would think that GameStop would have the ability to capitalize off that fact and be equipped with the ability to test said systems.

I know there were other options for me in selling my Xbox 360. I know I could have used Craigslist or eBay and have made more from my sale, but I wanted to sell the system quickly, so I chose GameStop over Vintage Stock and GameCo. I now have credit with GameStop, and I will use that credit, but when that is used up and after what I experienced I do not know if I will continue to spend my money at GameStop.

There are several aspects of this story that seem weird to us, so we’re just going to throw it out there and see what you guys make of it.

Does this sound right to all of you? What should Jason have done differently? Is there a better way to unload an Xbox quickly? Why doesn’t GameStop have cables for testing things? Or do they?

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