GameStop suckered me into getting a powerup rewards card

Like 2 or 3 weeks ago, they were running a trade-in promotion where they give you $150 for your old PS3. I had been thinking about upgrading to a new slim with a larger harddrive for some time, so this seemed like the right opportunity.

Well anyways, once there and at the end of the transaction, they inform me I need the $15 Powerup Rewards 1 year membership to take advantage of the deal. This didn't sound right to me, but I figured I had just missed some fine print on the offer details or something and agreed after asking if they were certain about this and they told me "yes". Long story short, after checking out their website and such I'm about 95% certain they conned me into getting the membership, when all I really needed was the FREE version of Powerup rewards.

As it's only $15, it's not exactly the end of the world, but I would like to reclaim it anyways out of principle alone. How should I go about doing this? Should I storm into one of their stores (that have a disturbing fat person smell might i add) and demand a refund, or use the "contact us" customer service route?

@Joeyoe31: No one I know shops at Gamestop (Best Buy gives way better prices on trade ins), and neither do I except to take advantage of this one promotion. This ordeal has just reaffirmed the reasons I don't go there. It is a horrible, horrible place. That's beside the point anyways, the point of my post is that they conned me into getting the 1-year membership.

You could have just used a friends power up card. That's what I do. Most clerks don't care. (unless you know you're an antisocial fatnerd with no friends :3c)

Sorry what is the powerup card? In the UK we just have reward cards, are they those?

@Hizang said:

Sorry what is the powerup card? In the UK we just have reward cards, are they those?

Basically.

My power up card is the free version and I got a pair of COG Tags for free with points from my 3DS purchase so I don't feel I was suckered at all. Plus I get exclusive DLC bonuses with it every so often. Most recently with Max Payne 3.

@Joeyoe31: Thats weird, there free in the UK.

You call the store clerk and you say...well, let the great Joe Pesci teach you.

Then you say, give me back my 15$.

I've been a member of this (and just the discount card before this) for years now. It's always been worth it for me just for the magazine every month and the discount on the very small chance I walk into my local Gamestop.

Well I went there today to ask them if maybe it was a mistake and I didn't actually need the $15 membership for the deal, and they insisted that I needed it after I had to explain for 5 minutes what deal I was talking about and produce a receipt.

I'm convinced otherwise. On their website under the promotion, it said nothing about needing it, and on the Powerup Rewards page there is clearly a checkmark under the "Free" program for "exclusive offers".

It's ok though, they can have my $15, I will just never go there again.

@mitsuko_souma said:

Well I went there today to ask them if maybe it was a mistake and I didn't actually need the $15 membership for the deal, and they insisted that I needed it after I had to explain for 5 minutes what deal I was talking about and produce a receipt.

I'm convinced otherwise. On their website under the promotion, it said nothing about needing it, and on the Powerup Rewards page there is clearly a checkmark under the "Free" program for "exclusive offers".

It's ok though, they can have my $15, I will just never go there again.

See, that's what you had to say while there. Say "Look, I understand you are under pressure to get subscriptions, and you don't want to admit that I'm right here, but before you answer again, ask yourself if $15 is worth the loss of my continued patronage, as well as the complain calls I'm going to make to your corporate office if we don't satisfactorily resolve this. We can call them now, if you'd like, that way you get a chance to try to defend your actions."

Staying calm and making people feel like they're about to make a huge mistake tends to work out well. I just got newegg to knock off return shipping and a restocking fee from a large purchase I made accidentally by saying, "...seriously? So you're not going to give me free shipping on that? You do realize I still to make an even bigger order right now. If I'm going to get burned on shipping, I can always take my business to best buy, but so far I've never had problems with you. Can we do something about that?" Got put on hold, got free shipping labels that saved us something like $100.

12 issues of Game Informer alone is worth the $15. They have great exclusive articles on upcoming games. So, the membership isn't a complete waste.

The way employment at gamestop works is that if you want hours, you need to sell subscriptions and preorders.

Homies gotta eat, man.

@Shookems said:

They way employment at gamestop works is that if you want hours, you need to sell subscriptions and preorders.

Homies gotta eat, man.

I'd rather just give the dude behind the counter $15 straight up then sign up for their stupid card. That's like a week's paycheck for those guys, right? ;)

Complaining that you paid 15 dollars to get an extra 50 -75 dollars in trade (you are still getting extra money that you wouldn't have normally gotten) is kind of a mute point. Yes, you didnt' get as much as you hoped but Gamestop in general rips off the trader. Also to get some of their in store promotions you must be a Pro Member and not a free member. On average the PS3's get less than 80 dollars on an average trade so getting the 150 is pretty good in comparison.

@mitsuko_souma said:

@Joeyoe31: No one I know shops at Gamestop (Best Buy gives way better prices on trade ins)

do what?! since when did Best Buy accept trade-ins?! the best buy near me is strictly new games, so their prices blow so hard...In fact, if you dont go to one of the 4 gamestops within 10 miles of my house, you just get jacked prices from some small time shop.

For example, I once looked at getting the Saboteur at the small shop…they were charging 40 dollars for it…gamestop? 15….not that the Saboteur is a good game, but still... May just be my city though...we are kinda lame

I went and traded in my Xbox and the lady thought I just needed the free version to get the 150 bucks, but then she rang it all up in the register and it was only going to be something like 97 bucks for the Xbox and the few other things I had. I obviously paid for the 15 dollar power-up card and ended up with just over 200, which is almost everything I paid for the Xbox+Kinect. I just lost the money I spent on Gears 3 and Halo Reach, but that's not big deal. I then proceeded to spend 200 dollars on Riot Points cards and Steam Wallet cards. I then got a pretty rad Zelda poster for free off the power-up rewards website, so that was cool.

So, it does seem like they try to not be specific about which power-up thing you need on the website... but the 15 bucks is well worth getting another ~80 bucks for your console. Also you get a year of Game Informer, which I find it pretty cool as I like reading them.

I used to get an average of five hours per week when I worked there over a summer break. Then again, I never really gave a shit about selling subscriptions or preorders.

So yeah, between gas and taxes, $15 sounds about right.

I would also offer people trading in games cash out of my pocket for games they were trading in instead of gamestop's credit. I used to get a lot of really cheap used games that way.

This thread is full of awful people.

I bought the PowerUp Card, but for these sole two reasons:

1. I work at a gaming center, and it is highly beneficial to us. Save money on games, get more trade-in on games, and we get stuff through PowerUp Rewards that we can use as giveaways for the kids. It's a win-win.

2. We keep the latest issues of Game Informer at the front counter for people to read.

Gamestop trains their employees to push product at any cost. Nothing surprising there.

@mitsuko_souma: If you feel you got conned call customer support, they can fix your problem. The people at the store can't do much, once that transaction has been ringed, you have the subscription and the clerks can't change that. If you are feeling extra angry report their store, what they are doing is wrong they were supposed to explain to you how the offer worked. I can see why they did it, but that doesn't make it right.

The powerup rewards card is what's making you swear them off? Seriously? It's not like having the membership means Gamestop owns your soul or anything. It's just $15, and you're on some mailing list and get Gameinformer.

@Ravenlight said:

@Shookems said:

They way employment at gamestop works is that if you want hours, you need to sell subscriptions and preorders.

Homies gotta eat, man.

I'd rather just give the dude behind the counter $15 straight up then sign up for their stupid card. That's like a week's paycheck for those guys, right? ;)

Pretty much. I used to work at FYE, which required us to sell similar stuff. I always felt bad about conning someone into spending $25 on a 10% discount card, so I basically made enough money to buy gas to go to work.

It's worth it to me just for the GI subscription. And for the random used games I may have missed, I get discounts. Got Nier and El Shaddai for crazy cheap that way.

@wmaustin55 said:

It's worth it to me just for the GI subscription. And for the random used games I may have missed, I get discounts. Got Nier and El Shaddai for crazy cheap that way.

Also you get to skip the part where they ask you if you want to renew your power up rewards every time you buy anything. It's why I finally caved on it.

@Hizang said:

Sorry what is the powerup card? In the UK we just have reward cards, are they those?

We have reward cards here in the U.S. as well, and I've never heard of a power card, then again, I rarely go to GameStop, and I'm not dumb enough to fall for their stuff. I'll just say no to everything anyways.

@wmaustin55 said:

It's worth it to me just for the GI subscription. And for the random used games I may have missed, I get discounts. Got Nier and El Shaddai for crazy cheap that way.

Also you get to skip the part where they ask you if you want to renew your power up rewards every time you buy anything. It's why I finally caved on it.

Seriously? Most of you are complete idiots... 15 bucks for 15% or whatever more on trade-ins and 15% or whatever less on all used items, access to exclusive offers, and a year subscription to GameInformer? How is that a bad deal? Do you ever buy or sell used games? You say more than 15 bucks in a year if you go there at least once a month, which if you really play videogames, you'd be going there more than once a month... Seriously?

@YouAreAMoron said:

Seriously? Most of you are complete idiots... 15 bucks for 15% or whatever more on trade-ins and 15% or whatever less on all used items, access to exclusive offers, and a year subscription to GameInformer? How is that a bad deal? Do you ever buy or sell used games? You say more than 15 bucks in a year if you go there at least once a month, which if you really play videogames, you'd be going there more than once a month... Seriously?

I see you registered just to post this...your choice of usernames was a mistake. Bye.

Now that we have that unpleasantness behind us, here's how I feel about the situation. In general, anything a retailer wants you to buy is probably not a good idea for you. There is a reason they push certain things like memberships and warranties so hard - they make money on it. If they're making money on something, then it's costing you. These types of memberships do benefit some people, and if that's you then great, but make no mistake that this is all about money. Gamestop is counting on most people not getting more out of the membership than they paid to get in, and if they'r still pushing them as hard as they always have, then this is still certainly the case.

I felt like I got my money out of it. I actually saved enough money in that one trip to cover it, plus I got the magazine (which I will admit I actually do like) for basically nothing since I was already going to spend that amount anyway.

I think its worth it and I say that even as someone who hardly ever goes to gamestop because when I do go it actually manages to benefit me pretty well. The points to trade in for real stuff is pretty good too. I got a Halo and Dragon Age T-shirts for free just for buying and trading shit in.

@MB: You have a good point, but in this case it's not necessarily bad for you. I don't work at GameStop anymore, and I have plenty of issues with them, but people getting ticked about the PowerUp card has always baffled me. I totally get that there are plenty of GameStop employees that are too pushy about it, but I also saw a good friend get fired over the phone after working at a store for 6 years because he came up empty on subscription sales for a week. They drill into you that you have to sell the card and pre-orders. The reason that I never had a problem trying to sell the card is because it really isn't a rip off in most cases. The magazine subscription is nice, and if you spend and trade more than $150 in used games over the course of a year it completely pays for itself, no joke. I've saved around $200 between coupons and trade bonuses this year. The reason they do this is because then they've locked in your business. Sure, they may not end up making any money on the card itself, but you're buying games at GameStop rather than Best Buy.

And to the OP, if it's really bothering you so much that you have to have vengeance, just go in and ask for the district manager's number and give him/her a call. You'll probably get your money back and he may even fire a couple of employees depending on the district.

I was in an astoundingly bad mood last week when I went into Gamestation to buy Microsoft points. The guy at the counter began signing me up for a rewards card without asking. I told him I wasn't interested in signing up for a rewards card to which he replied "Are you sure? It's essentially free money". That guy is lucky his arms are still attached to his body.

The card upgrade isn't that hideously expensive, at least now the game informer has a digital version making it much easier. If you buy used games from them you can save enough money to get your money back effectively & trading in games/gear there gives you more reward points. Since they have the retail cards for PSN, XBLA & Wii points it's easy to just save up enough points for that if nothing else is appealing (ie. promotional stuff they give away as rewards in that).

The real problem with Power-Up Rewards is the site is so broken. I can't even get to the rewards half the time.

@walkertr77: Was he signing you up for the free rewards card? It's not really free money, but even if you just buy MS points there every so often you do earn rewards points that eventually build up. It probably helps them keep track of your purchases in case the person loses a receipt, or so I would assume since that's what one of the guys behind the counter at mine was telling some customer.

Even though I don't buy used very much, I think the $15 is great for the magazine subscription alone. I occasionally do trade in as well when the promotions are right, so the extra 10% isn't bad either. But I mostly keep renewing for the magazine.

And to the OP, there are very few cases where the Best Buy trade-in values are better than the Gamestop ones. I have checked in to that because Gamestop is doing that extra 50% credit right now (and Best Buy is doing an extra 100%, I think, if they aren't they are generally running a 50% one all the time too) and the values that I would get at Best Buy were terrible. For that CoD game that came with my Vita bundle I would have gotten $10 for it at Best Buy with the 100% extra, while I got $25 for it a week ago at Gamestop with the 50% extra. Got $33 for Far Cry and $30 for Madden as well. Best Buy would have given me about $15 for each because they constantly tank their values when their promotions change. Gamestop usually does, but for some reason they haven't been lately. It's all about finding the right promotions if you're going to trade. Best Buy is the best place to buy big new games though, even with a scaled back price matching policy. If you're their $15 member you get a $20 Reward Zone certificate for pre-ordering certain titles, which has already paid for itself between the $20 certificates I got with MGRR, 2K13, far Cry 3, CoD"BO2, AC3, and upcoming ones for Last of Us, God of War, and GTA V.

Very rarely in the past year or two have I found Amazon to be the best place to buy games. They don't really run their own deals anymore, they mostly just match other places and adjust accordingly. Same with Steam, they are basically the Amazon of PC games. There was a time when they had easily the best deals, but now they get by on name recognition while other websites have the best deals (and usually come with Steam keys as well).

I just want to add my two cents. I currently work at GameStop part time (20hrs a week), my full time job is teaching English as a second language. I will say alot of people do get upset about the cards but when understanding the power up sales pitch, One has to understand both the company's point of view and the salesman's point of view. The company wants us to get cards but each associate has discretion on how to get them. I personally only push the $15 dollar card on people I know will benefit it with little to no cost to them. Some people come up with a stack of used games and after mentally calculating the card will either only cost them a few dollars or no money because of the immediate discount I strongly recommend it. The other instance is when large used purchases in three's are made. Not many people are aware of it but within 24 hours of activating your power up card you get a buy 2 get 1 pre owned item coupon in your current offers on the website. Read it it is very unspecific in what you can buy 2 of and get 1 of free, in short one could buy a used 360 and 1 game and get a second free. Often what I do to ensure Longterm business is I will in this case sell the card with the two games and used system and advise my customer to return immediately upon receiving this coupon, I will return the items and then resell them with their new coupon code and ensuring that one of their games is free that way they got their card basically paid for through this free game (assuming it's at least a 15 dollar value), and ensures all the discounts gotten with the card after this makes the card worth it for the customer. We're not all soulless bad guys. Each cashier there is different with their own strategies for what they feel works best to sell cards. My store is in the 40's nationwide for customer service out of 4400 stores (this is overall customer service, not specific to cards). Your local Gamestop is only as hopeless as you let it get.

Actually, I don't find it that bad a deal. I know this thread is a year old, but you get a year's worth of dependable bathroom reading material, some money knocked off of used games, and some money added to any games you might trade in. If you go there to buy used games occasionally like I do, or did at least, you wind up getting enough points to get a coupon or something. It's not much, no, but the discount and the Game Informer subscription justified it for me.

Oh, and I know that Gamestop is supposedly evil, but there aren't any other used game stores around here.

I always feel for the employees because I had a similar job, and I know that card attach rates are probably a thing you have to care about if you want to keep your job. I don't shop there that often, but I have gotten a free $20 used game or 2 over the years with points. Every time they email me though about trading my games back to them, I cringe.

yea, former employee here. It sucks having to force them on people, but it's a huge factor in getting more hours on the schedule.

I actually liked getting one of those yearly memberships, not so much for the card but for the Game Informer. I don't have any more magazines coming in every month and it's a decent read.

As a current gamestop employee things have improved a lot. Dunno about that special tho but yeah a lot of the info about gamestop has become history.

Trade in credit has gotten significantly better. $40 usually for trading in a game within a month of release. If you play it for about 4 weeks at release and sell it back it's like you rented it for $5 a week. Then with the card you get more so it's like $45 in credit.

Controllers get you almost $30 now. Most games get you about 1/2 of the used price. ( Considering that people can stack deals, they usually can knock off 1/3 of the price when they buy it. Simple math tells you that gamestop sometimes makes about a $6 profit on a used game the first month of release best case scenario.)

As for how they treat employees, that has gotten better but basically long time management hasn't gotten the memo and still are pretty brutal and archaic. Pay is still terrible. They have means to allow employees to change to a preferred name for trans employees and require all employees to use the preferred name. You know so if an employee is stealth trans and another employee refuses to use their preferred name it endangers their lives. As a result anyone who doesn't respect trans people can be terminated. Yet as I said some older management are pretty bad about stuff, and work against Gamestop policy resulting in real bad experiences for employees and customers. Like a month ago when a customer choked out an employee over the counter.

Edit: I am in no way representing gamestop with my comments fyi.