Mikey

I was waiting in line at EBworld the other day. The cashier was on the phone with some customer, while he was trying to process my purchase. I wasn't offended by his lack of attention to me.. I was more annoyed by the other employee slowly coming to the register to eventually help. Anyways, I was listening to him speak and he was mentioning something to the customer that perplexed me. I clearly heard him say, "Well yeah you can buy it, copy it and then just bring it back in." Considering that he was talking about some game, I was kinda suprised that an employee would suggest this.

I'm sure that some people do just buy a game, copy it, and then sell it back. I'm not sure how this can be done for PS2, gamecube, or Xbox, but I'm sure that it can be done for certain PC titles. Ebworld is the only local company that will buy back PC games, while Gamestop won't buy back used PC games since they claim that you could copy the game and then sell it back (which is a stupid argument on their part since they don't lose any money on this anyways). Anyway, what do you think about an EB world employee suggesting this!? Has anyone had similar experiences?

tonyc3742

Well, if I were his manager and heard that, I'd fire him on the spot. Not only was he not helping an in-store customer [did he even greet you or acknowledge you?] which is one of my personal pet peeves, but he was helping someone defraud the company/store which is basically stealing from the store. Not to mention, he, a representative of EB, was suggesting the person commit piracy. Companies have gotten sued for much less.
That said, I haven't been in that same situation, and I do know lots of people 'backup' their games. If a regular person wants to do that, that's his risk, but to have this employee apparently promote piracy, is not something I want associated with my store.

Static Cling

Clearly this falls into the categories of fraud and piracy, neither of which are acceptable discussions here on the forum. I'm hesitant to leave this open, but as long as we talk about salespeople and their practices, rather than the details on how to commit fraud and piracy, we can leave it open.

s}{ammer

you never know, the customer might have a damaged or lost game disc and the employee was just suggesting to buy it again and make a copy and return it. Thus, helping a customer to have a legal copy of his game. It's tough to know what he meant without hearing the whole conversation.

Groucho

It could have even been a manual or strategy guide that was missing a page.

DigIt

Yeah, I'm guessing someone obtained a game with no manual, and the emplyee was suggesting purchasing the game and making a photocopy of the manual.

Anyone with enough know-how to copy a game wouldn't call the store to ask if they can make illegal copies.

menaz

I think theres a few things he could have been referring to. Maybe he was explaining why their return policy is what it is.

Customer: "i have a game i bought and would like to return it but i opened it"

Employee: "im sorry, we cant take back opened games"

Customer: " why not?"

Employee: "Because you could buy it, burn it and bring it back"

I just dont like jumping to conclusions unless I have all the info.

Duran

He is much more likely to have been responding to a question as to why they no longer take returns rather than offering piracy as a solution to someone's problem.

jw2299

I hope this is along the lines of what he was saying.

I know EB is a national chain with tons of stores, so it's hard to keep consistent service among that many stores. I however, have been nothing but happy with the employees and managers at my local EB. They have all been great. Very helpful, and they've even thrown quite a few freebies my way, (t-shirts, stickers, demos, dvd's etc..) without me even mentioning it.