HOT NEWS ITEM! GameStop’s Wish List lies

I use wish lists on various sites to track prices on games, and one of those sites is GameStop, everyone’s favorite store to hate™. While adding a few games, I noticed they had a warning next to them:

First of all, couldn’t they spend $20 to have someone match the background color on that icon? Anyway, scrolling through the list, I noticed that every item had that warning. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, Amazon even lists the actual number in stock when it’s low (e.g., “Only 3 left in stock–order soon (more on the way).“). But it was pretty clear that GameStop was lying to me, as I definitely have some games on my list that are not rare or in high demand. To be absolutely sure, I added a bunch of other games to see if they’d all have that warning:

Looking for a baseball game from a couple years ago? Hurry! An ice cream scooping sim? Don’t wait a minute longer! These next quantities are so low they’re not even in stock:

All of the previous games were pre-owned (a.k.a. used); here are some new copies of games all the kids are raging about:

If you’ve been holding out on Cats & Dogs for the DS, act now or you’ll have to settle for a used copy…of Cats & Dogs for the DS.

You may think I only added obscure games, but the ones below are some that got tons of press up until release, and then turned out to be…not great. I have a feeling there are enough copies out there for anyone who wants one:

So it’s not just misleading, but an outright lie. They could have at least said “quantities are limited,” even though everything is limited, including Halo, Call of Duty, drops of water, grains of sand, and space in the universe (don’t worry — more on the way!).

I think constructive criticism is fine, but it’s much more helpful to offer solutions at the same time. In my next post I’ll give my thoughts on How to Fix GameStop.com.