Demitri_C Posted July 6, 2012 Share Posted July 6, 2012 i wa sjust gonna say it sound slike the system they use is utter shite not the fault of the employee. if he was rude thats a completely different thing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted July 6, 2012 Share Posted July 6, 2012 i wa sjust gonna say it sound slike the system they use is utter shite not the fault of the employee. if he was rude thats a completely different thing I think Chindie has nailed it to be honest. When I saw the voucher code, I just *knew* that it would cause a problem, which is why I made a point of asking him if I could do it all in one transaction, or if I should pay for the extra games separately. I'd have been quite happy to use my card twice if that's what was required, but having asked the specific question, and been told that it was OK, to then be told that "sorry, can't help" really wasn't acceptable. And while I accept that the tills might be the main reason, my point is that they really need to invest in some proper training for their staff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted July 6, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted July 6, 2012 My experience of training was pretty much the definition of 'haphazard on the job learning'. My first introduction to the tills was done by a guy who effectively was the same rank as me just had been there longer, and even admitted he was useless teaching anyone anything. All I learnt from his time was the the tills are shit, and if in doubt hit F11 a lot and see if one of the options vaguely relates to what you want. The rest of my 'formal' training was better, done by the assistant manager, who got me to a level of being able to use the thing by running through various potential purchases one quiet Sunday and hitting me over the head with the 'Oracle of Knowledge' or 'Necrotelicomnicon' (aka the books with console codes and other info in) whenever I got it wrong. Till the day I left I still was only able to use the till to the level where I could get through 99% of transactions. Even then we'd get new stuff sent down and nobody would ever tell you about it, so you had to learn on the fly and hope the manager was nearby when something new was sprung on you. For example that 20% off offer I mentioned - the only way I knew about that was becasue someone had scrawled 'GAMESTATIONGEAR CODE - 12345!' on the side of the till and I happened to notice. That kinda crap happened all the time. You're lucky you didn't go to the Gears of War 3 launch night. Head office has genius idea - we can give away MS points to people printed off the tills! That way, we can advertise this new service, people always love a freebie, so they'll come to us! Genius!. Except they hadn't realised that springing this on the stores would be a nightmare - you had a whole new procedure, that we were using for 1 weekend, to basically allow us to sell something for free. We rocked up to the store at 11.25pm for the midnight launch, and theres still pile of paper explaining how to do it and under what circumstances it would work, along with all these other offers that had special things you needed to do to make discounts and offers work. Genius. And then they hadn't cottoned on to the fact that this was the biggest release of the year at that point, and every store in the group was going to have a queue, and the print out MS Points require central authorisation and so on... Guess what happened? Have a stab in the dark what happened when every store in the country immediately starts requesting 800 MS Points at exactly the same time, again and again and again? Yep, the tills across the country crashed. With stores filled with customers who kinda want to go home because it's midnight and they've been stood outside in the cold for an hour. And some of them are intending to spend a lot of money, have cars waiting... It got tense. And there was nothing we could do about it. Even one of the gusy I was on with who was never fazed by anything, never get annoyed by even the worst customers, lost it a little when the till just died halfway through a huuuuuuuge transaction with numerous trades and offers and add ons. The company could certainly improve, put it like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ginko Posted July 6, 2012 Share Posted July 6, 2012 I worked at game going on 8 years ago and it was the same for me as Chindie described. People on the tills were always getting messed around with all the different bundles and offers that clashed with each other. I was also never properly till trained and only came onto the tills during really busy periods on weekends. It was a baptism of fire and customers were constantly getting pissed off at the lot of us, especially when we always had to push the special offers we had going that week. They were really on our backs about our performance numbers. It put me off going back into retail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted September 14, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted September 14, 2012 The Gamestation brand was unceremoniously killed off this morning. Some might argue it just had a slow lingering death since the takeover in 2007... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omariqy Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 Yep worked in Leamington GAME and Pallasades GAME (for a week) back in 2001/2. The tills were annoying then too. Great job though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 i missed chindies original post i worked in GAME kidderminster when Jenny was the store manager, deputy regional manager and training store, i taught the guy who the was to become the bullring store manager how to use the GAME till (cant remember his name, he'd stpped down from our price regional manager to take the bullring job and was sound as a pound) GAME for whatever reason (Jamie the midland regional manager) had this idea that it was easier to teach manager and deputy managers the ways of GAME rather than teach kids the ways of management and IMO it became a huge problem, the number of muppets who were amnagers of mcdonalds then spent a month in kidderminster before taking over merry hill store was scary, **** me we used to get some dregs, you used to have good memebers of staff like myself teaching people who somehow got "management" on their CV how to do the job that they were overlooked for and then quit to the amazement of he seniors and IMO as a member of staff GAME stopped being amazing when trade ins went throught the till, in the good old days we paid trade in value + 10% iirc on preowned games, when someone brought in a stack you used to give him more on every game then trade in the game you wanted for £1, you used to be able to buy £40 games for £1.10, good times Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HolteEndRob Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 I'm thinking about trading 5 or 6 games in the next week or so. Does anyone know if GAME still give reasonable trade in prices? I've traded games in with them in the past but it was a while before the store closures etc. (I had always shopped at GAME in the Pallasades since the Electronic Boutique days!) Gutted that they closed that branch as I don't like the one in the Bullring. Has all this shit affected trade ins at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 They are doing a deal where if you buy anything digital (online vouchers etc) the value gets bumped up The cheapest thing I could see was a £10 PSN voucher or I recommend the £12 psn+ 90 day thing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HolteEndRob Posted September 16, 2012 Share Posted September 16, 2012 Ok, cheers. Had a look on Computer Exchange and for the games that I would want to trade in I could get 37 quid off them. I'm guessing GAME would at least match it? From what I remember GAME try to better HMV. I'd probably do the trade ins plus abit of cash on top to pre order Fifa 13. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted September 16, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted September 16, 2012 Gamestation used to pricematch CEX (and other competitors) within a certain distance of the store. I can't say for sure whether a) this extended to Game too (I believe it didn't), and whether they still do it, I wouldn't be surprised if they no longer bothered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Designer1 Posted September 16, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted September 16, 2012 ***EDIT - Sorry wrong thread*** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PieFacE Posted September 20, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted September 20, 2012 Chindie, just a quick question... From your time working at Game... how early do they get new games in to stock before they go on sale? I assume it's about 2 days? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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