 So, I always preface stories like this, and you've seen the title, and trust me, it's worth being upset about. I always preface stories like this, by mentioning that my local GameStop has been nothing but fantastic since I can even remember, and my local one isn't even the one that I used to have growing up, there was one in a mall, in a city over, but even that one has always been great to me. So, my two local GameStats, my two closest GameStats to where I live, have been nothing but excellent. Every console launch I've been there has been excellent. I took you guys with me inside the store when I got my Xbox Series X live, just a couple days ago, and the experience was fantastic. The only kind of weird thing, but it's sort of a joke, and everyone who buys the Xbox Series X knows this is when he's like, hey, if you want to buy a game to go with your system today, we got NBA 2K, 21, we got Madden, 21, and then Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and you kind of like, I can really only suggest Assassin's Creed, that's about it, but we all know that, right, like we're educated as consumers, and obviously the GameStop knows all about GamePass, so they know that people can just buy the thing at GamePass and call it good. Xbox is not necessarily a brand that's super friendly to GameStop as a company right now, just because of how it delivers games over GamePass. However, they were very cordial, they were very nice, they had clear explanations, they had a number ticket system, they didn't do one person at a time, did allow there to be, I think, five people in the store at once, although they made sure we social distance when we were in the store, they had both cash registers open, which were six feet apart. So you know, kudos to my local GameStop, they've always been fantastic, and I have to note this because this is not something that's actually true of every GameStop, but this happened with the Nintendo Switch, and it happened again today with the PlayStation 5 at some GameStop locations. Let's get into the story. I found this over on Reset Era, I'm not shocked this has happened, but I'm tired of this happening, and I was hoping under the new CEO that this kind of practice would go away, but I was wrong. I didn't hear about this happening with Series X's, maybe it's just because stores knew that they can't really force bundles on people when GamePass is a thing, but here's what happened, this comes from Fabs over on Reset Era, it says, let me preface this by saying I'm in a place that's awful with COVID-19 right now, and I understand precautions need to be taken. So yesterday, I got an email saying that I could pick up my PlayStation 5 I pre-ordered at 10am. I got that same email for the Xbox Series X. Alright, so with COVID, GameStop isn't even open for walk-ins here, so you can't walk in the store. Only pick up or their delivery service, anywho, I arrived around 10am, and they take my phone number and say they'll give me in quickly, and I walk back to my car. There's about 15 cars in the parking lot. After about an hour, I noticed the line really hasn't moved, and everyone is still there. So I get out of my car, and I wait. As I watch, as one guy walks up, the associate comes out and talks to the customer, and they go back and forth for a few minutes, and the customer goes back to his car. The associate comes in and out a few times. The whole thing takes around 15 minutes. Finally, the associate walks the customer to his car with the PlayStation 5. The next guy comes up and takes even longer, and there seems to be a verbal altercation between the associate and the customer. At this point, I realize this is going to take forever, and I run back to my place to have lunch. I get back after a couple hours, and there's less people, but it still takes over an hour before it's my turn. When I get called, I'm like, look, man, I already paid for it. I've been here forever. Just give it to me so I can go back to work. Unfortunately, we can't do that. At this point, I'm frustrated. Still, I'm in an okay mood. So I politely reply, excuse me. Then he explains he is unable to sell me my console without bundling it. He gives me a sheet with numerous bundles, the cheapest of which is a $70, which includes the GameStop warranty and two $10 PlayStation Network cards. I tell him I refuse. I already paid off the system, and I didn't order a bundle. He says he can't sell it to me then, and if I don't buy it at the end of the day, they'll sell it to someone else tomorrow. I'm furious. I reluctantly pay for the $70 bundle and leave. What a piece of shit company, and I really wish I didn't give them more money. Literally exploiting demand to keep themselves afloat. Sorry for the rant. I just had to vent to anyone else to pick up their in-store deal with this ridiculous policy. Now, I want to note, this is not a corporate policy. Corporate is not telling stores to do this. This is not what GameStop as a company wants to be happening. They do not want these places forcing bundles onto customers, but this isn't new. If you scroll down here a bit, you'll see a link to a Kotaku article that says some GameStop stores refuse to sell switches without bundles. Okay? If you open up this article, but GameStop says that shouldn't happen. So this was happening back on the switch, and it wasn't supposed to be happening. They weren't supposed to be doing this. So what's happening? What the hell is going on? So while GameStop does not promote this and does not want it to happen and they know it's bad PR, so why the hell would they do this? And most GameStop locations, from what I can tell, don't do this, although there seems to be locations in cities more likely to. Typically stores that are performing extremely poorly in the district or a district manager that's a little shady and trying to bump numbers will tell store managers and store employees that this is how we're doing it, even if it's not corporate policy. Obviously, on the spot, you should be calling corporate. Problem is, with weights, it could take a little bit to get through to the corporate line on GameStop, but you can get through eventually. They'll issue a refund. They could also call the store directly and look into this because they don't want this happening. The reason this happens is because GameStop is closing stores. They've been closing stores for years and they're trying to prevent their store from being closed and they're not doing good enough numbers. My local GameStop is very courteous. Very courteous. They're kind to every customer that watches that door. They don't care if you're there for 3DS games or DS games. They don't care if you're there for PlayStation 5 or Switch or Xbox Series X or the S. They don't even make funny if you want an S. They are all good. They're so friendly to everyone that it leads to most people in my area going to these local GameSops over Best Buy, over Walmart because they choose the friendly, courteous, knowledgeable people that actually care about you as a customer. That's huge. This is all done because the managers and the district manager for our area is also a really cool guy. I have met him. He's super friendly. He believes in pleasing customers. Believes in pleasing customers. He doesn't believe in pushing things and there have been things at a time that corporate wanted him to push that he decided we aren't going to do that because we know our customers will not like it and it's going to ruin our numbers. Numbers being the number of people that walk into our stores and want to buy stuff. These stores actually end up performing extremely well because customers like me choose to go there over other options that you could say might be a little less shady towards gamers and won't force bundles. But here's the thing. Stores that are performing poorly are performing poorly for a reason. Sometimes it is just a bad location and there's nothing you can do about it but many times it's because at some point someone got in charge whether it was a district manager or just a store manager that caved under the pressure of prior policies at GameStop and these are prior policies where you would get bonuses if you could sell a certain percentage of warranties. If you could sell a certain percentage of X, Y or Z and then these stores would become extremely pushy to try to get these things out the door. So it's really difficult, really hard to imagine this happening in 2020 when GameStop is carrying less and less about it. So I look at this as a situation where back when GameStop used to give these corporate bonuses to store managers and district managers for these numbers they pushed it so hard in certain areas that it led to customer degradation. It led to customers deciding they're going to take their business elsewhere and then those GameStop started performing poorly and now many of these stores are on the brink. They know they're on the brink. They know they're literally could be a week if not a month away from being shut down because they're on the brink because they caved too much to prior corporate bonuses and all that crap and now are going to lose their jobs. And so because of it they are doing the illegal. This is illegal by the way to tell a customer who already preordered the system already paid it off that sorry your order is invalid if you don't bundle now. It's against the law. It breaks the law. Yes, call corporate, get a refund, if you want to get a lawyer go ahead. The store is going out of business either way eventually. I'm sorry that anyone that's dealing with this dealt with it with the X and I just haven't heard yet dealt with it with the switch back in the day. This is not, I think we need to start backing up a little bit and not always blaming GameStop the corporation for some of the shitty practices that some local managers do because again the best stores that perform the best don't have this bullshit happening and that's exactly why they're performing the best because they treat their customers with respect. GameStop corporate has done some bad things in the past. GameStop corporate today is not that GameStop corporate anymore. So when you see practices like this, this is because the stores about to close and you know what they want to bump their numbers hoping to argue their store should stay their district store should be around. They should get a bonus. It's bullshit and those managers should be reported the store and the manager should be reported to GameStop corporate because in the past when this happened with switch when people reported the store and the manager they got fired because GameStop corporate was very much against this practice. So please if this happened to you call GameStop corporate call them. Don't let this stand. All right folks. I'm Nintendo RoboJance from Nintendo Prime. Sorry a little frustrated here. I didn't even have this happen to me. It never happens to me but I feel it for those that it is. We all have had a stressed out enough time trying to pre-order these systems trying to trying to buy them trying to get enough money for them. They're really expensive. We're all dealing with COVID and a pandemic. We don't need this this bullshit on top where managers are trying to bump their numbers and keep their stores open and and get bonuses of a policy that doesn't actually exist. All right folks I'll catch you guys in the next video.