Trading in: Avoid being a mug in a mug’s game (2011)
This is an updated version of a guide previously posted on SavyGamer in 2009.
Trading games in is damn convenient, but it is an easy way of haemorrhaging money without even realising exactly how much you are spending. There is a technique that you can use to massively improve the return you get on trade ins, that makes it almost good value.
Gamestation have a policy for trading in games, called “We won’t be beaten on trade-ins”, just check the back of any receipt. They are pretty good at plastering this policy over their shops and printed materials, but not so good at explaining what it means.
I spoke to my local Gamestation’s manager to find out exactly how it works. He said that if any store within 40 miles from the Gamestation in question will offer a better or equal price for a trade in, they will match it, and then beat it by one pound.
Examples:
GAME offers me £5 for “Manshooter 7: The bulleting”, but Gamestation only offer me £4, I can tell them that GAME offered £5, and then Gamestation will offer me £6.
HMV offer me £8 for “Car wot goes fast 2: Off-Road”, and Gamestation offer me the same £8. I can then tell them that HMV offered me £8, and then Gamestation will offer me £9.
However (and this is just for my local store mind) there are a few conditions:
- You must bring some form of written/printed out evidence of what the other shop offered.
- The condition must be acceptable.
- And importantly, it is entirely at the managers discretion. If they decide they don’t want to honour this policy, they don’t have to.
Seems mostly fair. He said that generally they would only refuse to honour the policy if it was a game that they sold for less than the price they would have to beat, which seems like a good compromise. I imagine in those situations you could negotiate a compromise if you wanted to.
This policy would be a lot easier to use if Gamestation published their trade in prices online, or even told you them over the phone, but they make you take games in to find out how much you would get for them.
And here is how to exploit the system.
CEX are transparent with their prices. They publish them all online. They also have a bit of a different pricing structure to Gamestation, they give measurably better prices for trade ins, but in turn generally charge more for games.
HMV also share their trade in prices, but bizarrely only via a free android and ios app. I can’t find any way of checking trade in prices on their web site.
Using Gamestation’s policy on beating trade in prices, you can check whether CEX or HMV offer the best trade in price, and get them to beat the highest by another pound. More often than not CEX prices are better than Gamestation’s.
For evidence of CEX prices, head to the selling section of CEX’s site, add all of the games you want to trade in to your basket, and then print out the basket (and make sure to include the date). Then take the printout and games to Gamestation, and you should be able to get the prices CEX quoted + £1 each.
For evidence of HMV prices, I suggest taking your mobile device with you.
Tips:
- Be friendly to the Gamestation staff, since this policy is at the managers discretion, the more they like you, the more likely you are to pull it off. Chat about games with them, and be patient (trading in lots of games can take a while).
- Don’t go in with a big stack of games near closing time. Ideally if you are doing a lot of trade ins, go when they are least busy
- Typically the best games to do this on are the games that don’t have a huge amount of resell value (on eBay or wherever), but are still worth around £5 on CEX. I traded in 7 games that Gamestation wanted to give me £28 for, but I got £65 by doing this.
- Remember you don’t have to spend it there and then. It might be nice to go crazy and just buy a full price game just because you have credit, but if there is nothing you really want there and then, don’t fell like you have to spend it straight away. They can just put the credit on a gift card for you.
Let me know if you have any problems with this policy.
Been there done it. Good advice and thanks for the heads up on HMV Replay ios app! Love caining a game in a month and then getting £35 back on trade from HMV to spend only a fiver on a new game!!!
I can’t believe you sold “Car wot goes fast 2”, it’s amazing!
It pales in comparison to Car Wot Goes Fast 3: Car Faster, though.
I felt the open world “off-road” gimmick was a misstep myself. What is the point of single a vast drive anywhere map if you don’t put in the content to match it and half the races feel broken because the AI can’t cope with the landscape and will always just follow a set route and you just need to find one decent shortcut to win easily. It was fun for a few hours as a sandbox but didn’t hold any long term appeal for me. I’ve got to agree with Megadyptes, I was glad to see Car Wot Goes Fast 3 get the series back on track, so to speak.
You are my hero
The one problem I have is how do you get a printed receipt with the trade in price to show to gamestation? Are other shops just happy to do that when they are potentially customers?
Your mileage may vary, but I’ve always been able to use printouts from CEX.
I’ve found that Gamestation were reluctant to accept a mobile display in the past, because they wanted something to stick in the till.
One thing I found in the past is that I was looking at trade in for points, rather than cash, but unfortunately neglected to print off the superior trade-in price at CEX/HMV before heading into town. However CEX were offering substantially more than Gamestation. Couldn’t get a receipt from either but Gamestation offered me a better trade in price anyway, although it was still short of HMV/CEX prices, as I was looking at store credit, it still worked out better due to the fact Gamestation is substantially cheaper fro most games. So it doesn’t hurt to enquire.
As it turned out, I could have saved more money by taking cash from CEX, waiting two days, and buying the game I picked up a couple of days later online when it was substantially reduced by zavvi. Of course, I would then have needed to wait three weeks to actually recieve it…
I found that if you ask the staff, and they are not rushed off their feet, they will go and use the store computer to check the CeX prices for you. It’s worth keeping in mind, that almost every Gamestation store can do this, it’s simply down to the staff as to whether they can be bothered!
Gringer Games trade ins for titles if you are after best price you should avoid, although they offer “top trade in prices” they will not price match if another store is better. Also avoid inner city CEX stores for getting cash for titles, due to the heavy amount of customers selling stuff, they usually run out of money before lunch.
I was once refused to have the prices matched with CeX. They said that the policy is that they won’t be beaten on trade-ins by any high street store. As CeX is not quite on a high street yet, they refused to match it… Weird… there is probably as many interpretations of this policy as number of managers in all gamestation stores…
People who trade-in and buy second-hand games are killing the games industry. I spit on you you dirty thieves.
New game sales would be massively reduced if people weren’t able to trade them in after playing them.
i agree, i would not have bought bulletstorm if i could not trade it in! and in turn if i could not have bought bulletstorm i would not of gotten dragon age 2 (£10 + bulletstorm) not bad considering the online pass ^^
I used to work at Gamestaion not too long ago, they should all be price matching within a 10 mile radius on any trade-in/cash/game price. Also they do not have to match special one day promotions, such as Fifa 12 for £20. They should all be happy with the price on a smart phone, just offer to refresh the page to show its not a saved page!
Thanks for the info!
I work at a Gamestation store and if a customer looks a little unhappy with their trade price we give them, we’ll encourage them to go and check local stores’ prices as we’ll offer more and If it’s not busy we’ll actually check CEX’s prices ourselves on the office computer for them and so I definitely encourage anyone to do this because it’s a normal part of our job when dealing with trade-ins so isn’t much of a hassle, just saves you money.
Although regarding “Car wot goes fast 2: Off-Road”; we’ll only beat it by £1 if they were offering more than us in the first place, so if HMV and we are both offering £8, £8 is what you’ll get for it. There can also be a situation where we can’t even match their trade price either and that’s if their trade price is less than £2 from our selling price of a game; so say that CEX are offering £14 for your “Explore and level up 4: Stats everywhere” and it’s being sold here for £14.99, we’ll only be able to give you £13, but we may be able to make up that £2 you were expecting from offering more on other traded games. So for this (uncommon) reason it’s generally better to have a few titles with you because overall you’ll get the most from us, that is, if you can show us that a local store would give you more otherwise.
Also another thing not everyone knows about (most customers are surprised when I tell them) is that if you trade in 2 or more games to get a newly released title (within a week of its release date) in the same transaction, you’ll get an extra £5 for your trade. So even if you have two games that you only get £1 for each, instead of getting £2 knocked off your new release, you’ll get £7. Although this can’t be combined with trade-beating other stores, it’s one or the other, plus the deal has come and gone and changed plenty of times (one time it was on chart titles). As of now it’s been stable for quite a few weeks consecutively but I can’t guarantee that it’ll be on when the game you’re waiting for comes out.
Just to let people know, some Gamestations will not accept the HMV iOS or Android app as proof of price. I’m personally a little confused about why not, but the store manager and assistant were really nice and I was more than happy with how they dealt with the situation.
I was in a branch where they did not accept the app, so I had to go to HMV and ask for the trade in prices. Apparently, HMV cannot print them, so the HMV assistant wrote them down on a blank receipt, which Gamestation didn’t accept either. I then asked them whether they could phone the other stores or check their sites, which worked. Not sure which they did, but I ended up trading in Dead Space 2, Guitar Hero: WOR and a few older games, and getting Bulletstorm Epic, Borderlands and Fallout NV for a fiver.
Yeah, it seems pretty crazy that they wouldn’t accept the app as evidence. My branch have been happy too, so I guess it’s managers discretion?
Glad you got it sorted in the end though.
Instead of having the hassle of printing out receipts and whatever just get Gamestation to call the shop in question to confirm the price. They have done this every time I have went and trade matched anyway without me having a shred of proof on my person. Unfortunately our GS does price match CEX either so I don’t get too much chance to use this myself but oh well.
It varies from store to store. Some won’t phone other shops.
My GS has a CEX just around the corner and in the past when I’ve gone in, they’ve actually checked the prices on the website if I didn’t have them with me and matched them, no quibbles – they’ve been happy to help. Considering it’s eating into their profit margin, I wish I saw that kind of customer service in other stores.