UPDATE: I take it back Well… some of it. Just been in GAME, Monks Cross, York discussing afformentioned ban (I even dressed up in my old new interview outfit, not that I need it anymore) and turns out I’m no longer banned. So a few hours of preparation, sales and CV printouts, some old receipts (incase it got to the “i spent £XXXs here last month! lemme in already! I’m calling head office to complain” stage, as if, i’m not that confident or angry…) and a planned presentation and pitch of iGPC was all for nowt. Well, I got a little bit in, not that chain stores are frankly interested in someone elses pricing system, head office maybe, or maybe just me…
And it turned out the guy who had me banned was mr shifty manager dude who’s been looking at me funny for a few weeks whenever I’ve been checking price charts. Also turns out I was apparently banned from both York stores since 17th March, not that anyone cared to tell me or refused service until yesterday, and having been in the town center store earlier in the day (Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3 anyone?) even they knew nothing of any ban. And it was most deffinately act 3 below that got me banned, he’d clearly mistaken Nero CD-DVD Speed for a CD copying program, unlike the professional disc quality and read testing suite it actually is, and I guess I’m still no good at explaining these things (PI/PO! cyclic redundancy man! error correction? parity…c1..?… ah forget it ).
Lucky for me he’s dissapeared somewhere and lovely miss new head sales lady managerette (and unless anyone has a band called The Managerettes, I bagsy it) was all too happy to listen to my explanation and let me know I was no longer banned, as far as she’s concenered anyway. Hell she even offered to put away a few games for me (Mr Spain your Guitar Hero Aerosmith awaits, if they ever get one, speaking of which apparently they *haven’t* stopped taking in PS2 games) and er, she’s even a PS1 fan. Jesus I thought they were all dead. Thankyou miss PS1, you’ve cured 24hrs of despair and a terribly sick feeling, and it wasn’t my cooking either I’m quite good I’ll have you know. GAME, I applaud your sales staff. One of them anyway. Get some more, eh? You have my CV

Oh and one more thing - they don’t actually test their pre-owned games. At all. Ever. I’m guessing they at least look at them but, still, enter expletives here. I can appreciate head boss mr GAME assumes the resources aren’t available and the affect on productivity would be huge, but still… I am so calling some hardware manufacturers to sort out some specialised optical media and video game file system compatible testers. Think, big multi CD loader thing, automated quick clean, automated read scans, automated printouts of successful 100% reads, automated disc buffering of failures, and repeat. Anyone got Venmill’s number? What are the chances of MS/Nintendo licensing their FS to them?

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If, like myself, you purchase a large amount of video games from GAME, presumably to resell, collect, hoard, export or, god forbid, play, then you may wish to heed this warning.

1) Do not haunt the stores for entire minutes on end with a large list of pricing data printed off in front of you, meticulously checking for profitable purchases.

2) Do not expect pre-owned games purchased to work, unfortunately GAME do not have the experience, time, or just will to test optical media optimally. This can involve everything from various optical media error checking software on a basic PC, to (preferably) software modified consoles to preform full reads of discs and report unreadable data.

3) If you do do all of the above, and find that one of your precious 99p profit making purchases were not to be 100% workable, and you’re the kinda nice business person who likes to only sell goods that are, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT go in to GAME, with said optical media loaded in to said error testing hardware (say, a small laptop) and running said error checking software (maybe, Nero CD-DVD Speed’s ScanDisc) as, chances are they won’t have a ruddy clue. Although they’ll probably still replace it no questions asked. Except…

Failure to follow the above, specifically step 3, can result in, as I have just found out, a ban from your local GAME store for “video game copying”. No shit, people. Your local games reseller is banned from the provider of Marvel Vs Capcom 2 copy 2 for the grand sum of £6.67. Oh well, it’s worth nowt now anyway.

Just remember, technically it’s legally down to them to prove it works, not you to prove it doesn’t. So erm, just record the damaged files, and let em know if they can prove they can be read off the disc then you’ll keep it, and enjoy the looks on their faces when they realise they haven’t got the faintest clue how to even attempt this.

And if they bring it up again I’ll be camped outside their store offering my own game purchasing service. Hey, it’s not like they buy PS2 games any more is it?