Game Craze

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. Here are the facts regarding this situation as we are aware of them: On October 30th this customer came to our store with a large amount of older and damaged items and expressed a desire to sell or trade them in. He was informed...

that he would receive a greater amount of value in trade than he would in cash. In addition to the greater trade value he was also given a 20% bonus due to a promotion (20% bonus on all trades, posted throughout the store), which he was made aware of. He made the decision to trade them in and purchase a game in the store and put the rest of his store credit towards the order of another game that had not been released yet. The sales associate advised him of the release date(11/10) and that the version he wanted (collector's edition) might take us an extra 3-5 days to obtain for him. In response he indicated repeatedly that, "he had to have it day one or it was a deal breaker", to which the sales associate acknowledged that the item might arrive on that day, but also repeatedly made clear to him the possibility of this short delay in obtaining it. The customer seemed to be in a clear state of mind without any obvious mental difficulties and was aware of these circumstances when he left the store.On November 10th around 12pm another sales associate received a phone call at the store from this gentleman inquiring if the game he ordered had arrived and was politely informed that it had not, but that we would know if it was going to be in later in the day and that we would notify him immediately if it did arrive. In reply he became agitated and proceeded to illuminate for us his presumption that our suppliers had already delivered our items for that day and that, "we knew if it was there or not". To which he was politely informed that we had not received all of our shipments for that day and again that if his item arrived we would notify him as soon as possible. He responded by becoming abusive to the sales associate and the call was ended. At approximately 3pm we received the item that he ordered, but unfortunately it was not the collector's edition he had insisted on. So after contacting our supplier and confirming that it would take 3-5 days to receive the collector's edition, we called the customer and informed him that we had the regular edition of the game he ordered but not the collector's edition. We apologized for the inconvenience and advised him of his options: -Use his credit for the regular edition of the game and have a substantial balance of store credit left over to keep or use for something else. -Wait the 3-5 days for the collector's edition to arrive, a possibility that he was made vividly aware of when he placed the order.  nd because of his stated intention to obtain the game "day one", we also extended the following options to him that are outside of our policies but were determined to be reasonable and we hoped would help to resolve the situation.-Use his credit for the regular edition and take a balance in cash for the remainder of his items as if he had decided to sell them on 10/30.-Take the entire amount ofhis transaction in cash, as if he had decided to sell his items on 10/30. He opted to take the slightly lesser amount in cash for his transaction and was at the store a short time later to do just that.Here is how we arrived at the amount he received- His original transaction:$73.70 (store credit)+ $14.74 (20% bonus)= $88.44 (total store credit) $16.30 (game bought in the store on 10/30 incl tax)+ $86.99 (collector's edition game that was ordered incl tax)- $88.44 (total store credit)= $14.85 (amount tendered by customer on 10/30)His amended transaction:$88.44 (total store credit)- $14.74 (no bonus for selling his items in cash)= $73.70 (original store credit amount) $73.70 (orig store credit amt)- $14.96 (difference between credit and cash for his items)= $58.74 (gross cash amount if he had sold his items on 1 0/30) $58.74 (gross cash amount)+ $14.85 (amount tendered by customer on 10/30) = $73.59 (cash due to customer subtotal) $73.59 (subtotal of cash owed to customer)- $16.30 (game bought on 10/30) = $57.29 (total cash due to customer)We have the documents which reflect these figures should they be required. So the customer received $57.29 in cash on 11/10 at about 4pm. The sales associate attempted to explain how we arrived at this amount, but the customer seemed to be quite obstinate that he was somehow owed much more than that and was not receptive to our explanation. It may be worth mentioning that this customer previously was involved in a situation with uswhere he insisted that he was assured that he would be exempted from our posted policies in order to obtain a refund when he was not entitled to one, and it turned out later to appear that no such assurance was given. We strive to ensure that all of our sales associates communicate our policies consistently and clearly to all of our customers and frankly, we have had very few (if any) problems with other customers in this regard over the 15 plus years that our location has been operating in Syracuse and New Hartford.It is also worth noting that the $14.96 difference between the value of his items in cash and the value of his items in store credit is much less of a difference than it would have been if he had sold the items on 10/30 due to the odd circumstances involved here and our sensitivity to his perspective. As was mentioned above, his items were older and mostly damaged and the difference between cash and store credit on items such as those is generally much greater than the roughly 20% difference that he received. If the store credit value was $73.70 then a rough estimate of the cash value would usually be $35-$40 on old, damaged goods, closer to 40%-50% of the store credit value than the 80% that he received ($58.74 cash vs $73.70 credit). The sales associate tried to convey this to the customer as well, but it is unlikely that he chose to acknowledge it. It is ironic that he was stating his presumption that "it should be 20% (difference between cash and credit)" repeatedly when he came in and received his cash when that's almost exactly what the percentage turned out to be. It is unfortunate that he was notwilling to listen to what we were trying to communicate to him. It is my personal suspicion that he has failed to account for the game that he purchased on 10/30 as well as the 20% bonus he received in store credit when he makes his demands. We feel that the solution chosen by this customer was fair and that the problem here is that this particular gentleman chose to ignore our honest admission that the item he wanted might take a littleextra time for him to receive and then chose to ignore our explanation of the value of the items that he sold. Further, it seems sensible to us from our experiences with this person to infer that he irrationally expects to be treated preferentially because he feels that he has some experience in our area of sales and that this entitles him to presume to know how our business operates and to act in a bullying manner to our sales associates. All the same, we feel that he was treated fairly and that we went out of our way to accommodate his requests. Again, thank you for bringing this to our attention and we appreciate you taking the time to consider our side of this dispute. Please let us know if there's anything else we can do or if you have any further questions. Sincerely,Jason C[redacted]Manager, Game Craze New Hartford###-###-####