GAME Caught Telling Employees To Buy New Nintendo 3DS From Tesco To Sell Used

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UK readers may have noticed that just the day after the Nintendo 3DS came out there, some GAME shops were selling pre-owned Nintendo 3DS handhelds. How is that possible? Easy. According to internal GAME documents acquired by Eurogamer.net, GAME corporate management encouraged local retail employees to go to Tesco stores, where they were offering a cheap Nintendo 3DS bundle, buy a 3DS, open it, then return it to GAME and sell it as a pre-owned Nintendo 3DS the next day. Is this good business, or just slimy business?

Eurogamer.net is allegding that GAME’s corporate arm authorized retail employees to take £1049.50 ($1,679) out of the cash registers and head over to Tesco. They were selling a Nintendo 3DS for just £175 with purchase of a game for £34.90. With that cash, GAME employees were encouraged to purchase up to five Nintendo 3DS bundles from Tesco, then head back to their own shops.

This is where it gets questionable. The “pre-owned” Nintendo 3DS bundles from Tesco would then be sold at the “same price as mint” at GAME, in an effort to cash in on the expected low supply of Nintendo 3DS around the United Kingdom. If true, GAME would be making about £30 ($48) per used 3DS sold. The documents say that they were instructing employees to purchase the mint 3DS from Tesco for £175 while reports say that Game is currently selling “pre-owned” 3DS’ around an average price of £215.

To GAME’s credit, the memo encourages stores not to start pushing the “pre-owned” stock acquired from Tesco until their stores had sold through all new mint 3DS. According to the documents, this practice wasn’t required of local GAME shops, but the source told Eurogamer.net that his store was reprimanded for not going through with it.

What say you about this? Is GAME just getting all the supply they can for a high-demand product? Or are they ripping off the consumers? Give us your take in the comments section.