Around February we bought a 3DS for my son from the local GameStop. This week it malfunctioned. I don’t remember whether or not we got the extended coverage but even if we did it’s still covered by Nintendo so I could have just sent it in.
I went in to reserve my copies of Black Ops II and Forza Horizon today and I got to discussing what was wrong with the 3DS hoping it was something simple, when the manager said it was symptomatic of total hardware failure. He asked where I bought it and I told him that I bought it there (which I did, I buy all my games there).
He told me that they would take it back, value it at $169, and give me a brand-new 3DS XL tomorrow for $30. He didn’t have to do that, but he told me that he appreciated my business. I didn’t ask, he simply offered. Pretty cool, huh?
Make sure they let you do a System Transfer, though… that way your son won’t lose any games he’s downloaded, and he won’t have to start from scratch on his StreetPass data and puzzle pieces again.
You can do it there in the store if the manager okays it.
GameSpot is one of the few massive national chains that I’ve never heard anything really bad about. (There’s the occasional flap about how their used games business is costing the video game companies money, but lots of places did this, and from what I’ve heard it’s a very small violin.) The employees, in my experience, are some of the nicest people I’ve met, and they’re always glad to help.
The thing about simple electronics is that while they’re sometimes prone to problems, fixing them isn’t any big deal. It’s a lot easier to replace a bad console than, say, a batch of contaminated meat or a broken transmission. So there’s really no excuse for not making a commitment to honesty and customer service; in fact, this is the best way to gain a competitive advantage. It seems so obvious, and yet how long has it taken for this lesson to sink in. How many bankruptcies, boycotts, and furious letters to the editor have there been.
Glad you had such a good experience. I hope that also improves your impression of the videogaming community. It’s not all flame wars and confusing jargon.
I do almost all my game shopping at Gamestop because they’re the only places nearby that have anything more than the newish releases and re-releases. I’m not a huge fan of them though. The employees aren’t very knowledgeable about games and they seem to be horribly trained, it once took 15 minutes for them to ring up a single game and a single DLC code. In general it seems the employees aren’t there to actually do anything other than hawk pre-releases. I used to like the store a lot more, now it’s a chore to go in there and find what I want and get it.
