Gamestop has done something that frugal people who appreciate the value of a good coupon will consider to be downright vile. They opened brand new boxes of a video game, removed the coupon that was supposed to be inside it, and then sold the game for the full, “new” price! It seems that you cannot be certain that the coupon that is supposed to be inside a product will actually be there.
Gamestop sells new and used video games. They call the used ones “pre-owned”. Theoretically, you can bring in used copies of games that you, your spouse, or your children have gotten tired of, and receive “trade-in credit” from Gamestop. Or, if you want to save a little money, you can buy a “pre-owned” copy of an older video game from the store, instead of a brand new copy.
There are times, however, when nothing else but a brand new copy of a video game will do. The game of the moment is called “Deus Ex: Human Revolution”. Fans of the game are calling it DXHR, and the game is published by a company called Square Enix.
In order to generate more sales of this brand new game, Square Enix did something really nice for the people who bought it when the game first launched. They included a piece of paper inside the new copies of “Deux Ex: Human Revolution” that contained a coupon code. The coupon gave the buyer free access to the DXHR game online, through a service called OnLive. Normally, this would cost a person $49.99.
Gamestop required all of its employees to open up the brand new boxes of the DXHR game and remove the coupon code.
Employees of Gamestop were then instructed to close up the boxes, put them on the shelves, and sell them at the full, “new” price, (even though they had been opened). Gamestop never mentioned to customers that the coupon had been taken out of the box before they bought the game. As you can imagine, there are a lot of people who are feeling taken advantage of by Gamestop right now.
The reason that Gamestop removed the coupons that were supposed to be in the new boxes of this video game is because Gamestop doesn’t like the advantage that the coupon would provide Square Enix. It seems that Gamestop sells an online version of the DXHR game, and it didn’t like it when Square Enix offered a free version to people who purchased the game.
In short, if you were someone who was interested in using the coupon, (which had a value of almost fifty dollars), so that you, or your spouse, could play the DXHR game online, then don’t buy the game from Gamestop! You won’t get the coupon that the company that makes the game intended you to receive.
This sets a scary precedent for stores that sell products that could contain coupons. If what Gamestop did was legal, (and I have my doubts about this), then there isn’t anything stopping other stores from removing the coupons from products before they sell that product to you. Have you ever had something like this happen?
Image by Thomas Gardner on Flickr