May I check the condition of the disc before I buy it? - A GameStop Tragedy

This weekend I recently went to my local GameStop(s) to take advantage of their periodic 'buy 2 used games get one free' deal. Throughout that weekend, I managed to buy six very solid games, but for some reason I felt that I was being cheated somehow; I didn't particularly feel GOOD coming out of the store. Why wouldn't I be happy with 6 "new" games? I began to think to myself about it...

It felt similar to the numerous times I've gone out to a Chinese restaurant. Before the economic recession, most Asian restaurants (Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Indian, etc) would most often times not charge me for extra rice. It's kind of an assumed norm that the respective restaurant owners have a policy for not charging for extra rice. However, just from my experience at the numerous Chinese restaurants I have eaten at, they will indeed charge me for the extra for rice I wanted (often times not telling me until I notice the extra charge on my check). In similar fashion, several dim sum places have charged me for extra plates (dishes) that I definitely did not order. I'm not saying that all Chinese restaurants are underhanded and cheap, but I felt the same way after walking out of GameStop that day; there would always be some kind of problem that would arise--and never be remedied later.

(Disclaimer: Despite being 3/4 Chinese, my generalizations toward Chinese people or any other Asian ethnicity are not legitimate in anyway nor should they be used directly. Stereotypes suck, but I'd be lying if they weren't funny.)

There have been numerous times where I have been inconvenienced by GameStop's policies and practices. Here's a short list of the times I have been taken advantage of by 'RapeStop'.

1. I ended up buying a used copy of Twisted Metal Black for $6.99. I asked the employee if he would allow me to check the condition of the disc before I bought it. It was fine. However, I never bothered to check the top of the disc because they had given me a demo disc version of TMB. Stupidly enough, I noticed it only until I got home. Frustratingly, I went back the next day explaining my situation, had an argument for five minutes with an employee, and was finally able to get a decent copy.

Afterthought: Who was the 'smart guy' working the counter when they bought back a demo disc version of TMB? In the end, I was the one who got shafted. Who cares if GameStop lost $1-$2 on their buyback.

2. I bought a used copy of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones for $11.99. I happened to have a 25% off used PS2 games that week so it was a very good deal; checked the back of the game for scratches and it was clean. I made another big mistake of not checking the front of the disc and ended up with a copy of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Unfortunately, I didn't notice their mistake until after their 7 day grace period for returns on used games. I returned a little later (still within their 30 day policy for exchanges) asking if I could have the game swapped, but was denied. They gave me the option of trading Warrior Within for cash then to buy Two Thrones again. They gave me some other less than adequate options (store credit), but why was I supposed to be penalized for THEIR error? Essentially, they didn't believe my story and pushed me away. Dejected, I walked away with my Two Thrones box/manual with my Warrior Within game. Pssh.


Afterthought: To this day I still have not played that copy of Warrior Within, it's a constant reminder of the dreaded GameStop curse incessantly eating away my soul.

3. Mentioned above, I recently went to GameStop to take advantage of their buy 2 used games get 1 free deal. I was able to nab a very clean copy of Unreal Tournament and Viewtiful Joe for $4.99 each, in addition to a copy of NFL Blitz 20-03 which wasn't so clean. I saw it had a lot of dust on it, but couldn't see any scratches at the moment so I assumed I could just wipe it off once I got home. GameStop currently does not allow employees to wipe off or polish the used games that you buy. It's some tactic to keep them from getting into any other return/exchange mishaps. Before I left, they mentioned that if I wanted to exchange any of these games for any reason; I would have to do it before the end of their promo, which is Sunday...I bought these games on Saturday. Alright...ONE whole day to make sure these games are working fine.

Once I got home to test my games out, everything worked, 'cept for NFL Blitz. ARRGH! After I wiped off the thick layer of dust covering the game, there happened to be a very deep scratch in the game. Great...just great. What I had feared most had happened to me again.

I returned the next day preparing for the worse; I wasn't disappointed. That copy of NFL Blitz 20-03 was the only one they had in stock (understandable), so I couldn't get an exchange. They gave me two options: get store credit (no..just no), or pick out a game of equal or lesser value. Okay. So my defective copy of NFL Blitz was $3.99. Right...that really limits my choices. After about 20 minutes of searching through countless racks of used games, I found an extremely clean copy of Virtua Fighter 4. Hooray. Although I found a decent game to replace my copy of Blitz, I wanted it to work since it was the final decent Blitz game by Midway before they started 'leagues' or went 'all pro' on us.

Frustrated with not being able to keep my copy of Blitz, I went to another GameStop to check what they had (conveniently in the strip mall on the next block..). Before I walked in I said to myself,

"Okay I'm not going to buy anything unless there was something super-rare or awesome to buy. I don't feel like getting screwed over, especially twice in one weekend. If I do buy something, that's it. It's Sunday. Can't make any exchanges if I use that 2 for 1 deal."

What happened afterward? Oh, I happened to get 3 more games (Nightshade, Onimusha: Warlords, and SledStorm). Uggh. I really need someone to stop my impulse buying, even if it only cost me around $9 for all three.

Afterthought: I noticed that with my copy of Onimusha it was labeled with a 50% sticker, but I never got the 50% off on my receipt. Urrgh, Foiled again! At least the 50% discount would be off of $3.99, and I felt it would be too petty/frustrating for me to drive back and ask for $2 in return.

So basically what have I learned from my past experiences? Absolutely nothing. Well, maybe one thing...if you're going to shop at GameStop, expect some trouble. There are ways to avoid the issues that I mentioned above, but by no means would I recommend anyone to shop there. So why do millions of people including myself go there and put up with poor service on a periodic basis? Although it may be a cynical approach to it, but one must assume that there are A LOT of stupid people out there...and GameStop will always be there to make an ASS out of U and ME.

Finds! - PS3/2 S-Video Cables

Boy does this economy suck huh? Whatever, I'm going to stop talking about it right about...now. A new segment I'm going to attempt to add to the regular rant-ish blogs will be called 'Finds!'. Originally the economy 'talk' was supposed to segue (segway) into my history of being a bargain hunter. So yes, I am indeed a bargain hunter; not one of those extremist eBayers, so a mild one. It feels good to know that I bought something cheaper than anyone else. Taking into consideration the numerous online stores/bargain websites, there's no reason to buy something overpriced, especially on a tight budget.

This new segment will feature some items that I have bought myself or perhaps items I would have bought if I had enough money. Grr, being frugal sucks.

Anyhow the for this first entry of 'Finds!', I recently did some splurge/boredom shopping around town and happened to stop by my local Toys 'R Us. Haha, I'm still a kid at heart.

"I never wanna grow up, I'm a Toys 'R Us kid..." Whatever happened to Toys 'R Us commercials anyhow? Geoffrey the giraffe? Bad ass mofo.

I was browsing around looking at the lack of cool new toys that they had and then immediately darted for the video game rack. Ah, nothing. Defeated, I gave the clearance rack a glance and I saw some Sony-branded PS3 S-video cables. Yay! I guess I'm one of very few people that feels elated after seeing some cables. For those who don't know, S-video cables give you a slightly higher quality picture than normal 'analog' cables for your TV...eh if you don't know..just do a simple wikipedia search on it.

Normally these retail for $19.99. If you will check the picture below, you can see I got them for A LOT cheaper...

Yeah, that's right, $1.60/each + I bought three of them. They were listed for $2.00, but I conveniently went to Toys 'R Us during their 20% clearance items sale. Cha-ching! Haha, now why do I need three? Well, actually I don't even need one. I'm hoping to sell these back for a menial profit. If I don't, eh, I didn't lose out on it anyhow. I could possibly gift it or whatever.

Music Mixhap - Hybrid Theory

This is going to be a new segment that I'm adding to the blog called "Music Mixhap". (Yeah you like how I used incoherent alliteration). It's basically going to be a log of the numerous albums that I have listened to since my child birth, and perhaps maybe it'll be an outlet for other people to listen to some of the various genres of music that I listen to. It may not be as hilarious as the rants, but this is purely informational after all. Perhaps some 'good humor' (ha I made an ice cream pun) will make its way in every now and then.

For the first entry of the "Music Mixhap", it will be from one of my favorite bands and the first ever album I bought for myself. I'm not really sure when I bought it, but it was quite early in junior high or something like that. I guess by looking at the title of this post or seeing the cropped picture, you can tell what album I'm talking about--Linkin Park's debut album...Hybrid Theory.

Track Listing (singles are italicized):
1. Papercut
2. One Step Closer
3. With You
4. Points of Authority
5. Crawling
6. Runaway
7. By Myself
8. In The End
9. A Place for My Head
10. Forgotten
11. Cure for the Itch
12. Pushing Me Away

Mentionable Non-Singles:
Points of Authority, Pushing Me Away
The Scoop:
An interesting fusion of hip-hop/rock genres; a quality piece of work. Buy it!..or at least worth a playthrough.


Now I have to say my musical tastes before listening to Linkin Park were purely mainstream pop and whatever music my parents listened to (Chinese & Vietnamese music along with the occasional Madonna). I was not really a big fan of rap, and some rock music appealed to me. This was the beginning of the entire boy band craze of the late 90s, N'sync, Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, what have you.

I'm not sure where or when I heard LP's first single "One Step Closer", but I just immediately gravitated to it. It was lyrically great and evoked some kind of angry passion along with it. Interested in more of their songs, I logged into Napster (I really miss old Napster) to download some of their other tracks "In The End", "With You", and whatnot. I was blown away. It seemed like all of their songs were of the utmost quality. You had the feeling that this band really put a lot of work into their songs; it wasn't the consistently sappy boy band song talking about tearing up hearts, playing games with hearts, or mmmbopping (It's been more than 10 years since I heard that song and I still don't know what it's about.)

Being a simple-minded, carefree, and perhaps slightly frustrated adolescent, I went and purchased this album as soon as I got the opportunity to. Again, every track is definitely worth a listen, even the penultimate track "Cure for the Itch" which shows off the mixing/sampling abilities of Joe Hahn and Mike Shinoda. Considering this is the first album I bought for myself ever, I can keep praising it forever. If you're a fan of rock music, what are you doing? Go out and buy it! For those of you looking to get your feet wet into rock music, definitely give it a playthrough.

FedEx + Kinkos = Headache

First of all, happy belated 4th of July. I'm just so proud to be an American...riight. Rather than focusing on all of the problems with America (poverty, racism, corruption, poor education, pollution, etc.), I'll focus on why America kicks ass (the Internet, turning on a red light, barbeques, eating 60+ hotdogs in 12 minutes, Dr. Seuss, and most importantly, freedom..ish).

Eh, sorry about that. I totally forgot I'm probably the biggest cynic I know. My most recent run at my local FedEx Kinkos made me realize how crappy customer service can be.

Still unemployed after a few months, I finally received some remotely encouraging reply email from some companies that I applied for. For awhile, I was kind of getting aggravated at the "you-suck-on-paper, we-don't-want-you-template-denial" email. Yeah, you guys know about it right? For those that don't, here are some samples (oh yeah crtl 'c' crtl 'v' baby, or in my case apple 'c' apple 'v'):

Note: Company Names and positions changed for privacy/humiliation reasons. Enjoy.

Example 1:
I wanted to express our appreciation for your interest in 1234BR, Student Intern. However, after careful consideration of your qualifications, a decision has been made to extend an offer to another canidate whose background is more in line with the project requirements. In the event that an internship opening occurs that is applicable to your background, please feel free to apply again.

Pssh, they spelled 'candidate' wrong, I can't take a company seriously when they start misspelling in formal emails. I didn't want to work for you anyway. Keep 'extending' out to those other nobodies with spectacular 'backgrounds'. Apply again? I'd just get denied AGAIN. I see that your job is to break down people's confidence by incessantly denying them. I see what you did there...Well I'm not playin'

Example 2:
Thank you for your interest in Crap Inc. and for giving us the opportunity to review your credentials for the position of College Intern. After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that we have decided to pursue other candidates that more closely fit the requirements of this position.

I really hate these types of emails, especially that 'we regret to inform you' part. Yeah, damn straight you better regret it. I feel like those rejected American Idol contestants when I get this type of email. It's the "I'll show you! One day I'm gonna be famous and then you're gonna regret it. They don't know what talent is." feeling.

Example 3:
Hi there. I got your message. I apologize for not updating you sooner. WE did select our interns, We had so many resumes that we narrowed it down to candidates who had done previous internships. Thank you for your interest!

Oh yeah, had to capitalize 'we' huh? Was it you and your dog? I'll just say this was from some GM marketing company. Look where you ended up now huh? I could have turned things around for GM, but "nooo, we want people who had previous internships". What kind of logic do these HR people have? Seriously? That last 'thank you for your interest' that they usually put at the end of every rejection email is a nice big FUCK YOU, we don't NEED anymore people, especially...YOU!

Hypothetical scenario: So the people who may have had their rich moms and dads hook them up (yeah, too much sucker free sunday on MTV2) with an internship will more than likely be in the running for another internship the following year. What kind of bullshit is that. It's the entire dilemma with the workforce today; hey, we only want to hire people with 'x' amount of years of experience, but yeah, we're not going to offer any experience to anyone. No experience? GTFO. So the people who are lucky enough to get an internship, will always prosper; while people who are working their asses off, looking anywhere and everywhere for a job to gain experience is left collecting welfare money or whatever. Rich stay rich, poor, get poorer..blah blah.

I could go on and on about how the U.S is not a meritocratic country and whatnot, but then it'll just sound like a college paper. And I'm not necessarily in the mood for that.

Back on track to why I'm not too fond of FedEx Kinkos at the moment. Alright, so I got some email recently saying they were somewhat interested in me...but they need more information. Oh crap. It was a long lengthy email, but basically, they needed my transcript. Oh double crap. After ordering my transcripts and getting them in the mail, I needed to go to FedEx Kinkos to have it scanned to a PDF and have it emailed to them. Right. No problem. Wrong!

Some of this frustration could have been avoided if I went there prepared (forgot to bring a flash drive), but eh, most places that offer some kind of service should just assume most customers are forgetful/unprepared and offer some respectable accommodation, but to no avail. So I walked in, greeted in by some woman at the counter.

Me: "Hi, I wanted to scan my documents into a PDF file and email it to myself."
Kinko's Woman: "Oh no problem, just use one of those work stations over there in that corner where the scanner is and scan your documents. By the way, it's 30 cents per minute. Do you have a flash drive?"
Me: "Oh darn, I have one, but not on me."
Kinko's Woman: "If you bring a flash drive, we can scan it for you and put it on your flash drive for 99 cents. We can't scan it for you and email to you for various reasons."
Me: "Oh thanks, I guess I'll try scanning it myself then."

Yeah, I really didn't want to make another 8 mile round trip from my house back to Kinko's to get a flash drive. If only I wasn't driving a Chevy Blazer that happens to do keg stands and power hours of gasoline, I wouldn't have minded. Stubbornly, I went to scan my transcripts hoping that my tech savvy-ness would allow me to scan two documents within 3-4 minutes to keep the cost of scanning the same.

Total fail. I guess the two years I have spent with my macbook have made me fairly illiterate with the windows interface. Yeah, I can go around clicking stuff, but it'll get me nowhere in terms of scanning documents. It also didn't help that the computer was logging every second I was on it with its ominous counter adding up the total cost of my session. I happened to scanned them, but they were blurry as hell. Thanks Adobe Acrobat. It also didn't help that their scanner was such a piece of crap. It must have been at least 7-8 years old, but I guess that is purposely there. The slower the scanner scans your document, the more it'll cost you since you're paying $0.30 per minute. Pssh. Absolute crap. After 10 minutes($3.00) of frustrating scanning and feeling dejected, I pissingly (you like how I made that word up huh?) walked out with the intention to return with my flash drive.

I returned, pissed off, but calmly walked to the desk again. Greeted by a man this time.

Grotesquely Hairy Kinko's Man: "Hi, may I help you?"
Me: "Hi, I came here earlier and tried to scan my documents to PDF at the self-scan center, but had trouble with the quality of the scan. I came back with a flash drive and want it scanned to my flash drive instead."
Grotesquely Hairy Kinko's Man: "Oh that's no problem at all."

In a matter of two minutes he had it scanned. Oh see! They have the kick ass scanner for the employees only. Those Kinko's rip-off artists. Hmm, is it Kinko's or FedEx ripping me off? Let's just say both. I'm an equal opportunity hater anyway. After he handed my flash drive back, I wanted to double check whether the quality of the scan was clear enough to see my crappy transcript. He plugged the flash drive back in and showed me. Perfect.

Me: "Oh do I owe you anything?"
Grotesquely Hairy Kinko's Man: "Oh, no charge, since you had trouble scanning it over there."

Ha. damn straight. I better not pay extra since I had already spent probably $8-$10 on gas money traveling back and forth. When I came back home, I wanted to get that entire fiasco over and email my damned transcript, but when I plugged in my flash drive and looked for my PDF document...WHAT? NOT HERE?!

That file was nowhere to be found. Space wasn't even an issue since it was an empty flash drive with no data on it. Grr. WTF. Complete fail. Aggh. It was on there when the hairy Kinko's guy showed me! Dejected once again, I went and took a nap.

So what's the moral of the story? Screw online applications/emailing out official documents. Don't trust merged companies, they will always have some hiccups; in corporate and at local locations. I learned recently that Staples can do the same thing. They supposedly make things "easy". It'd be ironic if I post another similar blog later in the week about Staples. Don't fail me now Staples.