Random Act Of Kindness From A Game Store Slave

Mollywobbles here again, and for once I'm not here to bitch about my job! Not that I haven't had a shitty day or two, but the focus isn't even on McHell's this time. It's a random act of generosity that came from my local GamePots.

About two weeks ago, Hubby and I got our Christmas money early. Both being semi-avid gamers, we go to GamePots a few times a month, but usually we're either so broke or so cheap that we don't buy anything. Sure, there are games we'd like to play, but ever since our local BlockBlister closed down, the only place there is in town to rent games is our local Food Shitty, and they hardly ever get anything worth paying $8 for four nights. So, we put our money together and decided on Dishonored, a game we've been anticipating since it was shown at E3 and which we paid almost full price for - something we haven't done since Skyrim came out last year.

Hubby gets the honor (no pun intended) of playing it first, and he beats it in about 8-10 hours. The next day, Hubby has a doctor's appointment, so with the house to myself, I decide to give it a whirl. About 2-3 hours in, I take an optional side mission where you have to investigate some guy's house. Okay, great, this'll help with my no-kill run, I deduce as the mission has (Non-Lethal) written immediately to the left of the description. But first, I'd better make some room on my hard drive, as I've been manually saving every few minutes or so.

Now, for those of you not in the know, Dishonored was made by game company Bethesda, who also made Skyrim and the entire Elder Scrolls series before it as well as the Fallout series. Also for those of you not in the know, these games have had a reputation of being buggy as hell. People have encountered game-breaking glitches that freeze the game and make them have to restart their consoles, only to find that there is no way to progress through the rest of the story or even through world exploration. Well, take a guess what I happened to encounter in my first playthrough of Dishonored. I go into the house, choke out the guards, complete my objective and raid the house.

Me: Now I just have to go back to the mission-giver and then I can glean my reward: an easier way in to eliminate my next targets. *hits X on the exit door*

*loading screen comes up, loading screen freezes*

Me: .......Okay, what the fuck? *manually shuts Xbox off, turns it back on, loads game*

Me: Okay, let's try that again. *finds a different exit door, hits X on it*

*loading screen comes up, loading screen freezes*

Me: ...FFFFFFFFFUUUUU--

I had to start the game completely over. I looked it up online, and apparently tons of people had the same problem with the same mission. It wasn't really that big a deal because, as I said, I was only about 2-3 hours in, and I was by that time really well-practiced at getting through the area to eliminate my first target. Plus it was optional - I didn't have to take it to complete my main objective. So after a total of about 12-14 hours (I play games like this very stealthily, lots of sneaking around and collecting junk), I finally beat the game as well. By the way, a no-kill run is hard as BALLS and I decided pretty early on to abandon it. I still refrained from killing as much as I could (there are three different endings depending on how you play the game - I got the Happily Ever After ending, Hubby got the Medium Bad ending), but it was really satisfying to assassinate those main targets.

Since we've both beaten it, Hubby decides to take the game back to GamePots to trade it in for some cash. I elect not to go, so when Hubby comes home, he tells me this story.

The cashier handling the trade-in was making some small-talk with Hubby about the game. Hubby tells her it's good, but he mentions my glitch and having to start it over. The cashier then takes it upon herself to give Hubby a full refund on the game instead of the trade-in value.

We were going to get $15 for it - we ended up getting our full $58 back on a GamePots gift card. So, I'd like to thank you, GamePots Girl, for the extremely generous refund that you didn't have to do. We still haven't decided yet what we're going to buy, but even having the option to get pretty much whatever we want now it pretty sweet.

--Mollywobbles and Hubby

Comments

[Queer Geek]

Whoa! Gamestop gives refunds? Who woulda thunk?

[Pyro]

Actually it was merely published by Bethesda. Arkane Studios is the company that developed Dishonored.

[Mollywobbles]

@Pyro: Right, I knew that. Bethesda is just the bigger name that I thought more people would recognize, and is the company with the reputation of releasing buggy-ass games.

@Queer Geek: Yes, they do give refunds if a product is faulty or otherwise. We'd once bought a new game from them, got it home, and realized that we couldn't read the text on our small, outdated, standard-definition TV. We took it back within minutes of buying it, and were told that we'd have to take trade-in value since it was new and that by the simple act of opening it we'd made it a "pre-owned" game. We were told that had it been pre-owned when we bought it, we could have gotten a full refund. However, in the case of Dishonored (which I think was a pre-owned title - yes, they charge that much for pre-owned games), the reason given for the refund that is written on our receipt is literally "Didn't like it". Not sure if that's just a standard reason given when they do all their returns (kind of like when I ring up "Coke" as a drink for a front line, self-serve drink order, it's literally just the first option and doesn't affect the price) or if that was just the reason she went with to cover up that she'd done a return on a game that two people had played completely through, but the fact that that's even an option is funny to me.

[Anon]

I've been working as a part of the middle-management team at a Gamepots for over a year now (last day is soon, though!), and although the story seems nice, this is really basic procedure.

Like you said, if it's brand new, the only "returns" that can be accepted are equal or greater exchanges IF IT'S BEEN OPENED. Sealed, and you can get a full refund via the same initial payment. This way, if the game has a manufacturer's defect/some issue right out of the box, we can just swap it for another one of the same game (of course, depending on the manager and their balls, a lot of them opt for an equal or greater costing game if the customer is extremely irate and demands a "better solution").

Preowned, though? We're supposed to let people know that they have 7 days for a full refund for pretty much ANY reason, 30 days to swap it for the same game as defective.

To those who treat us well, we normally let them know that this literally means they could try it for 7 days and return it within that time if it's too hard, too easy, didn't like it, or finished it. Yes, like you said, "didn't like it" is one of the literal options we can check when making a return. There is also "gift", "defective", etc..

So...

If your local Blockbuster is down (it happened here, too, so I understand), that's an evil alternative... "renting" from Gamepots.

I will let you know that the system DOES eventually lock people out for too many returns, or too many trade-ins, however. It's to prevent people from abusing the system, or the possibility of theft, respectively. Plus, the employees will recognize you as a "regular renter" after a while if that's all you do, instead of also making a balanced amount of purchases... Not too smiled upon by even the most jolly workers.

[Mollywobbles]

Wow, cool, Anon, I didn't know any of that. It still warmed my heart a little, as I really wasn't expecting any more than $25-$20 for the game. It just really seemed like she stuck her neck out for a customer she recognized and seemed to like. =)