Marketing stunts are a dime a dozen; got to love them. In the pantheon of these efforts, many of them have come out bizarrely. GameStop is one of those companies that could certainly use a good gimmick right now. As they head into the holiday season with the physical game market slowly dying, they could use something to bump up traffic into stores, and by golly did they come up with a doozy.
GameStop’s big profit maker is used games. A person comes in, trades in a game, they get a few dollars and GameStop can resell that game at a much higher price margin than a new game direct from a publisher. Coming this December 6th though, they’re apparently going to allow people to trade in anything (with some understandable exceptions) for store credit.
There are some guidelines here that make a lot of sense, along with several questions that remain unanswered.
There’s a one-item per person rule, and that item has to fit in a box with dimensions of 20x20x20. The store also has the right to refuse any submission, even if it’s outside the criteria for banned items. For example, the guidelines don’t prohibit you bringing in clothing, but a hole-filled sock probably will get rejected, even if it’s clean.
- Exclusions include hazardous waste or material, chemicals, liquids. Lithium-ion batteries or items containing lithium-ion batteries. Weapons and ammo. Dead or alive animals (Taxidermy items are valid for trade). Alcohol, Tobacco, drugs or pharmaceuticals (legal or not). Computers (such as desktops, laptops, notebooks, all-in-ones, minis, workstations, e-readers, tablets, thin clients, smart displays, virtual reality headsets with built-in processor, interactive flat panel displays with built-in processor) excluding certain MacBooks GameStop normally accepts in trade.
- Computer peripherals intended for use with a computer and weighing less than 100 pounds (monitors, keyboards/keypads, mice/pointing devices, external hard drives (excluding those normally accepted in trade), facsimile machines, document scanners, printers, 3D printers, label printers, digital picture frames. Small electronic equipment (portable digital music players, VCRs, DVD players, DVRs, digital converter boxes, cable or satellite receivers, projectors including those with DVD player capability). Small scale servers. Televisions. Gift cards and other currency (foreign or domestic). Jewelry. Sexual and explicit items. Items resembling body parts.
They haven’t said anything though about what and how the value of things are going to be assessed for in-store credit. It’s one thing when you have a database of what games are worth, but how does a video game store ascribe value to things they don’t normally dabble in? And beyond that, what’s in store for the cashiers that have to deal with this mess?
You can read about the details here.
