News Game admits buying 3DS stock from Tesco

Tesco will have had more buying power, and probably bought larger quantities across the country than GAME did. As such probably paid less per unit for them than GAME, so can sell cheaper and still make profit.

At a place I used to work (a large national retail chain) we had a guy who used to come in and buy our PS2 packages to sell because we were cheaper than him getting bulk stock direct from Sony.

 

From a company who take second hand, traded-in nintendo cartridges and sell them as new (yes, it had save-game data on it) nothing is surprising.

 

But doesn't make sense to sell them as 2nd hand .

Really? wow thats freaking awful but so is the fact they unwrap new games & put the disc in the manual which could add scratches to the disc to try & curb shop lifting & charge as high of a price as possible, they should deduct at least £5 off the price imo, I never buy new games from GAME after working there unless it's the online shop.

 

TBH, mistakes can be made like this. Only takes one temp at christmas to file a bunch of stock in the wrong place, and the mistake might not be notices for weeks, even months.

 

I'll come out and say I have a problem with this. Side-stepping the whole "capitalism in action" thing, this is the case of a company buying up a load of stock of something from a consumer retail channel, so the consumers can't. Surely, as consumers, we should be condemning this. Imagine the uproar here if Scan put a GTX580 on special for £250, and 5 minutes later, Ebuyer bought the lot to sell on at regular retail price.

Is it possible to do it? Yes.
Is it moral to do it? No.
Is it to the benefit of the paying customer to do it? Not a chance.

 

lol, how clever of them.

 

Hell, I worked on a sinking ship known as Borders that used to do this very thing. Buy better than half price books from Tesco or Asda when low.

 

I'm not sure they can sell them as new because GAME bought them retail not wholesale. They might not be used but they are pre-owned.

 

Mind you, it was the US Border's that went bust, UK Borders was doing reasonably well but got dragged down. I remember buying lots of 3 for 2 or half price books from there. (Mostly sci-fi/fantasy which you don't get at supermarkets)

 

Knowing people that have worked for Game in the past, this happens more often than you think. If a game is traded in and it's in excellent condition then the majority of the time it's resealed in the back and sold as new. And it's not exclusive to Game either.

 

I don't see much of a story here...

If you're not fast etc...

 

A company buying through consumer channels, thereby taking low-price stock out of the market and keeping the price artificially high... They couldn't have shipped stock between the GAME branches and the Gamestation ones if they were in such a desperate struggle to get stock to necessary places?

 

same here, that's actually a good business strategy, they are not taking advantage of their customers since they are announcing the stuff as "used". quite a smart move actually,lol

 

I can't even see how this is in any way immoral, if i bought one from tesco, and sold it on ebay, thus making profit and 'removing a bargain from the consumer space' thats cool, but if company does same thing, then they 'bad to customers'?
infact, taking stock from tesco customers and putting it in hands of GAME customers, is surely good for GAME customers

 

The difference of you being a consumer and GAME being a company removing substantial stock (and no, I don't believe this was an isolated incident or 2) is huge. GAME are artificially inflating prices. It's akin to cartel-esque behaviour. Again, if a single comapny bought up their competitors' high-end products (in our case, all the Radeon HD 6990s and GTX590s), would you not feel annoyed for the consumer if they sold the lot on for 20% mark-up?

Leave your personal slant on the 3DS at the door. This is BAD for consumers.

 

Yeah. They sold the UK company. Luke Johnson, who went on to sell us on to the now legendery Philip Downer. A man who despite having publishing companies agree to waver debts temporarily to keep Borders operational until future times, where they could pay back and reclaim some credit insurance, sold us down the river to MCR, a company hell bent on liquidating the chain even with a American backer trying to save us. That's right, Borders in the UK was going to be bought out by someone from accross the pond, but MCR rejected his offer because they would make more money liquidating the company than selling it on. It was pretty sad when they started bringing in "new stock" for us to sell when we were clearly in no state to be making orders.

Of course the next chapter is that HMV have lost their credit insurance; owning Waterstones also, meaning, ****, what is going to happen to high street Booksellers?

 

No issue here for me either, A similar thing is someone buying them themselves and then flogging them at a hugely inflated price on ebay because stock is limited, in fact this is much better as Game have highlighted they are Pre-Owned and I assume are selling them at the same price or slighly cheaper as their own stock.

 

It's not akin to cartel-esque behavoiur as Tesco aren't part of this. The companies aren't working together to keep prices high.

It's not good for the consumer, but Game is perfectly within its rights to do this. It's a simple process:

Company A makes product
Company B buys product from Company A to sell on
... repeat until product reaches consumer.

There's no technical difference between a company planning on selling the product to another company and a consumer. If Tesco doesn't like this, it's up to Tesco to be more careful about who they sell to.

 

Stelph - you havent read the article. GAME werent selling the stock at the same price or lower than Tesco - it was higher than Tescos price. Now all you people who say 'thats fine, whats the problem?' are obviously rich enough that paying more for the same thing is not a problem, but given the option, I'd quite like to pay LESS for something rather than MORE.. So in that instance, a tactic such as what GAME employs is not good for customers in general.

 

Well what I had said was selling at the same price (or less) than their own stock, i.e. games, so I was right with my comments.

I still don't see an issue as it is legal for Game to do this, if the consumer misses out on the Tesco offer because of it then they dont have to pay the higher prices offered by Game and should wait for Tesco to get them back in stock. No-one is forcing you to pay the price that Game offer.

A bigger issue IMO is the way that Tesco does sell massively hyped items like this well under the wholesale price to get people in the door, and also (im sure) to squeese out competition in their market, as a lot of the gaming store have pointed out recently with the releases of FIFA and COD

I have to say, its nice seeing the mature response that the bit-tech readership are posting here, as opposed to some other forums where people are literally crying blue murder over this!