GAME Employees Told to Buy 3DS Stock from Supermarket Tesco
British games retailer GAME instructed its employees to purchase Nintendo 3DS consoles from supermarket rival Tesco in order to build up pre-owned stock, according to an internal document seen by Eurogamer.
On launch night Tesco was selling Nintendo’s new handheld for just £175 when purchased with any 3DS title. This prompted GAME’s management to authorize their stores to buy 3DS bundles from Tesco at £209.90 and then sell them as pre-owned to their own customers at £219.99 – the same as GAME’s price for a brand new 3DS.
The document states that this “pre-owned” stock was only to be offered to customers after GAME’s own stocks had been depleted, and instructed staff not to “up-sell” the Tesco-sourced 3DS’s to customers.
GAME has responded to Eurogamer, saying the practice of mass-buying 3DS’s from Tesco was “not mandatory” and only occurred on a small scale in order to allow its stores to compete with local rivals.
Let us know what you think of this sort of release-night chicanery in the comments. Are customers being unfairly duped, or is this just a natural part of the competitive retail world?
This sounds like it could have some sort of legal ramifications that I am sure I won’t understand.
I don’t know if it’s illegal, but it is pretty dastardly.
The only thing which could be construed as misleading is selling them as pre-owned, which works in the customer’s favor anyway, as the “pre-owned” 3DS hasn’t been unboxed and molested before being re-sold.