September 01, 2008

So much for "phone first"

Posted by Scott at 04:58 PM

I doubt anyone under twenty remembers that the phone companies used to have a marketing campaign with the tagline "Phone first". At the time they were probably just trying to stimulate more use of the phone network, but the campaign made sense. Before you spend time, gas, and money to be disappointed, call ahead to check before you head out. With the high cost of fuel these days and dirt cheap phone service, it makes even more sense.

Today we were shopping at the Manchester mall (aka The Mall of New Hampshire). One of the stops we wanted to make was at GameStop to buy a Nintendo "Classic Controller" for the Wii because we have a number of legacy games via their Virtual Console capability. While there I saw that they had a nice deal to upgrade older model Gameboy Advance SP models (from about six years ago) to their more recent Nintendo DS Lite models.

I asked the clerk there if there were any limitations I needed to know about in regard to the promotion. He stated something to the effect of "not really, it's just one new DS per used Gameboy." It sounded like one of those car dealers that says “just drive, tow, or push any old beater onto the lot and we'll take $500 of the purchase of a car.” I asked whether this promotion was company wide or limited to just this store. He said for the most part it was for all GameStop stores.

Our old Gameboys were all back home and we didn't want to drive all the way back up to Manchester. Luckily there's a new GameStop about 8 miles from us in neighboring Amherst. I called ahead to double check that they were also offering the promotion. I indicated that I had three old Gameboys to upgrade and they assured me that they had a sufficient supply of DS's for the trade-in.

Timothy and I hopped in the Jetta and I explained that we were going try to trade them in for new DS's. As soon as I walked in the door the salesman saw the three Gameboys I had in my hand and asked if I brought their chargers too? I said no, but I could go back and get them. I was feeling a bit exasperated, but thought okay, I guess it might be a reasonable expectation. Then the next thing he did was to flip them over right away and note that none of them had their serial numbers anymore. He explained that the state wouldn't allow them to be accepted without their serial numbers. Note: on a new Gameboy the serial numbers are simply a label on the back. It's the kind of label that little boys just love to peel off with their young fingernails. *sigh*

I expressed my disappointment that no one had mentioned these simple things to me before I dug out three Gameboys and drove in. These things might be obvious to a clerk behind the counter all day, but to a parent just digging out dusty Gameboys from storage, it's not quite so. Timothy took it pretty well as I explained the situation on our drive home.

I'm not the "there ought to be law" kind of guy. I'll have just that much less sympathy when a local "brick 'n mortar" cries to me about losing business to a service like Amazon.com. When I do deals with Amazon, the terms of the deal is usually pretty spelled out ahead of time to set proper expectations. Sometimes the terms and conditions wording can be overwhelming, but it's there.

Comments