I can’t be sure. I mean it’s hard to tell from a distance.
But yeah… I think EB Games is having a sale.
I spotted this yesterday, at Parramatta Westfield, but it appears like this is a country-wide phenomenon.
Classic EB. pic.twitter.com/F1B22wnmVr
— Shreddles (@Serrels) June 4, 2017
This one has a giraffe (or is it an elephant) and some tasteful drapes.
“Taste”. pic.twitter.com/M9Q66VhwUc
— Lisy K ?? (@lisyk) June 3, 2017
New Zealand has been getting in on the act. I spotted this bad boy on Reddit yesterday under the tagline “Calm down EB Games“.
Of course, EB has long been known for its insanely obnoxious sales banners. I heard from a previous employee that instructions from management are usually “the messier the better”. They have to know that people are posting this, tweeting this. They have to be in on the joke.
Am I just part of the EB Sale Industrial Military Complex?
I think so.
Also: never forget.
“Yolo Swag Sale”. All-time.
Comments
60 responses to “I Think EB Games Is Having A Sale”
I honestly dont remember the last time EB didnt have a sale…
I went in a couple of weeks ago and there was no sale on. The place was disturbingly tidy to the point it worried me a little.
Back to regular chaos now though so all is good in the world.
Come in for preowned at new prices, preowned games that are returned with codes used and reshelved as new and $20 more expensive then our competitors but oh you get some sweet sweet carrots and hounded to preorded the next awesome bro shooter
“Do you want disc protection with that? You really should get it…”
To me, “disc protection” means the box. Have they started charging extra for that, now?
As @markserrels can probably tell you, parents actually need this feature.
Scratch protection man, when I worked there it cost $1, $3 or $5 depending on the price of the game and it’s valid for a year (from memory) if you scratch the disc, or damage it in anyway, EB will replace it for you. It was always the parents with young kids who bought it, even if the game wasn’t for the kid, I don’t think the parent wanted their $100 PS3 or 360 games rendered inoperable, because little Johnny or Sue decided it was a Frisbee for inside the house, so they always seemed happy to spend the few bucks on the guarantee. Most people probably forgot about it or never used it, so it was just free money for EB Games in the end i’m gonna say.
But pricematch.. carrots lose meaning around the 15k mark.
The number of times customers came in and asked “Are you having a sale?”, thinking they were the first genius to make the joke… Man…
If anything, you should be showing your sympathy to the staff forced to comply with such ridiculous expectations from upper-management. We literally once had to bring it all down just to put it back up to look “more red”. Setting up mid-year sale is torture.
I feel your pain, but damn this comment made me laugh.
“MORE RED”.
This is what I’m on about.
i do wonder when i get the customer surveys if i say the employees didn’t do anything other than sell me my game – does it cause problems for that employee
anyway last time i did it, i ask them not to contact me to do the survey anymore anyway – eb world is only really to keep a record of purchases anyway
i never plan on using the used games voucher or bonus trade in credit anyway
Well, they have your email address, so they can trace back to who sold you the product. If you didn’t swipe your card they wouldn’t be asking for feedback, and that card tracks every transaction and who you dealt with.
So its not beyond the realms of possibility that something they deem negative can be put back on the staff.
Yup. If you answer that they didn’t ask you to preorder something, offer scratch protection, or whatever, even if you include a comment that compliments them on that and says it made you more likely to shop there in future, it STILL gets them in trouble.
Awwww don’t say that.
I sent a very complimentary report on the girl who was unlucky enough to take my No Mans Sky refund
Now I feel bad that she might have gotten in trouble, especially after dealing with me.
It can. When I worked there many years ago (a year or two after EB World came around from memory) we had one customer try and cause trouble for one of the guys I worked with, all because he couldn’t get some new game that came out the previous week preowned. But of course selects he doesn’t want to be contacted, so the only option is for the area manager to grill our manager about said employee, which is fucking unfair. Of course the customer didn’t say what it was over, but the employee knew who it was and what it was about so yeah..
The few times I go to EB now I always get a survey afterwards, I always just give them top for everything, since they don’t bother me to preorder anything and they’re always pleasant and friendly, and I don’t even know anyone who works there anymore so it’s not like i’m just giving a friend a good score. Cause I don’t really see the point of getting someone who makes shit all money for not asking me to preorder the latest CoD or if I want to get a game guarantee on the $20 preowned PS4 game I am buying.
If you give a staff member anything under 9/10 it bombs their customer service score. Real talk. It’s dumb.
It sure is. Where I work now we have ‘voice of the customer’ and god it’s just as dumb. Some customers leave negative feedback for our store when it’s about our other store across town, or it’ll be about us being more expensive than the discount warehouse 2 minutes up the street. Only sometimes it’d real feedback, but the boss takes it all critically and at least tries to make me feel shit about it. I got news for him, my customers like me and breathe a sigh of relief when they see it’s me on & not one of the casuals no one likes.
You’ve got red on you…
I used to find taping the cardboard boxes together to reasonably resemble tables to be the most difficult part… Why couldn’t we just hire tables for a fortnight guys?
Came in handy when I was moving house and had infinite A-size cartons at my disposal.
Are you sure they were joking?
I often see the red sale signs, wander in and see prices far above the RRP and ask the same thing :p
I jest, it takes a special kind to work retail.
Still overpriced though.
They price at RRP, that is their business model.
They will price match anywhere, have the best range of games and give you a 7 day trade in policy no questions asked. I think they’ve done very well to stay a viable business.
They won’t price match “anywhere”. Yes, they will price match, but only if the competing store in question is actually a stone’s throw distance from them. If you want them to price match JB HiFi for example, there must be a JB HiFi within a specific range from their store AND they need to have copies of the game in stock (I’ve been to some EB stores where they actually physically call the competing store to check if they have stock). They also don’t price match online-only stores. So yes, they price match, but no, they don’t price match “anywhere”.
There’s a few reasons they have stayed in business:
– Exclusive content for games, or exclusive limited editions of games (usually only if you preorder).
– Absurd markups on used games.
– They target the non-gamer demographic – the mums and dads and grandparents that don’t know any better – little Johnny wants a video game oh we should go to EB Games to get it. Don’t shop around, just go to the specialist game store and pay an inflated price.
That last point in particular is pretty frustrating – despite the number of times I tell my mother not to, she still buys at EB Games, and if she’s trying to convince me to join her on a shopping trip, she’ll mention “there’s an EB Games at the mall”, as if that’s supposed to make excited or something.
Hate to say it, you basically just stated generic retail practices. Having spent a decade in retail, most larger chains operate in a similair fashion.
I mean, it makes perfect sense to only price match local stores with stock. I don’t see why there is a need to get so het up with what is a perfectly valid practice :/. Calling the competing store to check for stock is expected; I’m surprised on the times they *don’t* do it, tbh.
It’s not a valid practice though, there’s a reason why you can’t find a price matching policy for EB
The locale and stock of the competing store is irrelevant (within reason, the Ubisoft on-site gift shop in France would obviously not count)
I’ve had numerous EB employees/ managers try to decline a price match based on those and many other reasons, not one succeeded (and only one had consequences)
Even a midnight release doesn’t count, I got GTA priced matched to JB and heard them decline the guy behind me.
My store doesn’t even try to decline me now, I don’t even have to ask because most of the staff know that if I’ve come to them, it’s to get price match.
Yeah one of those people.
(Always polite though)
Yeah, I’m so used to EB ‘sales’ that I usually don’t bother checking them out at all. Easier just to use ozgameshop’s email notification system to tell me when a certain game falls below a certain price.
With the current exchange rate, they’ve been one of the cheapest places to buy Steam games i’ve found sadly 😐 I got Doom (the new one) for $18 back in January. It was $79 USD on Steam (still is actually).
I’d like to think that gets reused, but all I can see is a dumpster full of that crap. What a waste
It bears repeating, especially with school holidays bearing down, crack a joke at EB’s expense all you like but for god’s sake the staff are not deserving of any of the crap that so-called ‘savvy’ types like us put them through at times.
The rank-and-file clerks at the counter do a hell of a job and how they are expected to work in a mock ‘typical messy construction site’ setting or whatever the hell sort of aesthetic their coke-snorting managers were going for is beyond me.
Hehe, you think a EB Games store manager has coke money ?
I should have been more specific. I only meant in-store folk in the first paragraph, including in-store managers!
No I meant the bigwigs at the top.
I know store managers have to deal with enough issues themselves.
Surely they can afford the dollar something it is for a 375mL can?
Jeez where are you getting your coke from? It’s noon here and I just spent $3.50 on a can of DC, and I’m not even in Sydney!!
Jesus wept! In my mind it’s still a dollar a can from a drink machine!
It is when you buy a carton at a time!!! *taps head*
Less! Woolies had 30 can packs for like $18 a few weeks back. We bought two so I could take cans to work instead of paying $4 for a 600mL bottle.
Coke machine in our break room has all varieties of cans for $1.40 still. Yay us!! Bottle of water is the exception @ $2.
Hmm… Something not quite right there, just cant put my finger on it…
Goddamn Westfield Foodcourt … it just can’t compete with an office break room … 😛
Last time I made a joke it was more along the lines of “Where are the parents to all these kids?”
They seem to find that more amusing
Always good for a laugh Mark, needs more porridge.
Oh you betcha they’re in on the joke.
They sent out a promotional email two weeks ago entitled “Is EB Games having a sale? 7 signs that point to yes” parodying Buzzfeed lists. Complete with click-bait and GIFs.
Who can I email it too? Might be a good addition to this article.
“7 signs that point to yes. Number 6 will amaze you!”
Just frikin tell us what number 6 is then…
Worst games retailer by a mile. Expensive. Annoying mode of sale. Dishonest practices. Expensive. Expensive.
Honestly I can name far worse…
I like how their ‘massive sale’ puts games I bought 8+ months ago down to about the same price I bought them for at JB on launch. Good job, EB.
I know the store manager who made that elephant. And yes Mark, it’s an elephant. I don’t know what zoos you visit, but if they have a giraffe there with big ears and a trunk, there must be some shady Jurassic World style sh*t going on there!
The only cent this business will get out of me is the homophone at the beginning of my sententious proselytising over their disgusting business practices and treatment of staff.
Pretty sure they have rugs-a-millions’ sales policy and PR person
Rugs-a-million’s closing down sale, going on since 2004.
Yolo….swag….sale.
I want to punch someone just for that…
I’m saving my punching for when the “Preorder Fidget Spinners Inside!” sign to appear.
The best part about EB having a sale is how angry the self-righteous the Kotaku comments get..
Take a chill pill everyone
I don’t give a shit about all the signs. I used to work in retail, it’s part of the job.
But Yolo Swag… gah!
I got this email from them a couple of weeks ago:
http://imgur.com/a/kcv3M
So I’m gonna guess they’re in on it 😛
Probably been about six months or so since Kotaku did an article about EB Games’ sale practices.