Reasons to like and dislike EB Games.
Good — price matching. I walked into the Elizabeth Street store with a printout showing that Big W had Mario Kart $30 cheaper and the guy didn’t blink, and happily matched the price.
Good — unlike many of the staff in the department stores (especially the cheap ones), most of their sales people know what they’re talking about and seem genuinely interested. The same guy was frank when pondering the release of Rock Band 2 — probably another year away so EA can maximise their profits.
Mostly good — preowned games. They’re about the only place you can now buy classic out-of-print (old) XBox games, for instance, and generally quite cheaply. Mind you, for anything recent, the pricing makes it hardly worth it.
Good — that Nintendo area in the Swanston Street store where the kids got to play Wii tennis on Christmas Eve (before they got their own Wii), though apparently now it’s closed for renovation, only a few months after it opened.
Good — range, much better than most places.
Bad — what’s with charging $35 for 2000 Wii points? You’ll pay $30 at Dick Smith or using a credit card on the Wii itself. Yes I guess they’ll price match, but why not charge the standard amount in the first place? I guess as per usual, caveat emptor applies.
Bad — in fact, the odd special aside, the pricing is pretty much RRP, so be prepared to look elsewhere to buy cheaper or get them to price match.
6 replies on “EB Games”
Daniel,
Do they still double swipe your credit card? I.e. once for the EFTPOS and once for their point of sale system?
If so, that’s actually a huge merchant no-no, as in “no more credit cards” no no.
After the first couple of times they did it (I gasped the first time), I would always make it perfectly clear there would be no sale if they double swiped and the reasons why.
I also reported any double swiping to my card services folks (I was working at the NAB at the time) as it’s against the merchant contract terms to double swipe.
Hopefully, they’re not doing it any more.
Amdrew
I don’t recall them doing that when I’ve shopped there, but will certainly watch out for it.
“Closed for remodeling” and “closed for renovation” usually mean a business or restaurant has gone “belly up”.
My only experience with “price matching” at EB was when asked they rang up the local store that had the game on sale to confirm that they had stock (which they didn’t) and then responded – “They don’t have stock so our price stands”.
My response was that I would always check their price first, but would not return to “price match” – not unless they would do more than price match…
Yeah that’s in the smallprint of their T+Cs. Though the guy I encountered didn’t try that. Maybe he knew trying to get someone on the phone at Big W would take all day.
I got EB to price match a Wii points card with JB-HiFi once. As JB were out of stock they gave me a special discounted price to go and show at EB, I think it was $25 or something like that. The person at EB seemed reluctant to price match, but after talking to the manager gave it to me for that price anyway.