In case you didn’t realize that I’m being super sarcastic, I am. You know me, I like to rant. If a wrong is being done against anyone, I’ll jump on my soapbox and add my two cents. Well, today the person being wronged is my son, so you know damned well I’m going to get my trusty box out. My son’s birthday was a few days ago, he finally turned 8 years of age and as any good parent would do, I asked him what he wanted for his birthday present. He took a few minutes before he formed a smile on his face and blurted out loud that he wanted a Minecraft game. I thought to myself for a moment, paused and then asked him why. You already have Minecraft on my Android Phone, his tablet, on the Xbox 360, my PlayStation Vita and on the PlayStation 4. “But I don’t have it on the computer and I want to play Minecraft on the computer when you’re playing your games, daddy!”.
Bless his little #PCMASTERRACE soul! How could I deny him that and good for him for finally realizing that this was the best way to play Minecraft. So today I took him to the local Gamestop, to purchase a prepaid Mojang game card. In retrospect, I should have just purchased it on the Mojang / Minecraft website. However, I had a good amount of store credit after getting rid of just about every Disney Infinity title and toy in our home (Screw you Disney for that). I had him pick up the game card, to which he also came back with a Minecraft Torch toy. How am I to deny a little boy his guilty pleasures, so we got rung up and headed home. This is when it all started going to hell.
After creating his account (my account, he’s too young for his own account), I attempted to redeem the card. “There seems to be a problem with redeeming this card” was the error I received over and over. After getting frustrated, I busted out my Google-Fu skills and noticed that it was recommended to wait a bit before trying again. So I waited an hour while my son and I sat down and watched some of Team Four Star’s DragonBall Z Abridged shows. I love those episodes! A good two hours passed and I tried again.
“This card has already been redeemed. To download the game again, go to your account overview page.”
What the hell, I thought to myself. How could this already be redeemed? I just paid for this card about 4 hours ago, and now I can’t even use the dang thing. At this time I’m already getting more agitated, meanwhile, my son keeps coming back into the room every 5 minutes. “Is it working yet, Dad?”, “Can I play Minecraft now?” was all I heard for a while. Finally giving up, I navigated to the Mojang website and put in a support ticket, even though I knew that I wouldn’t get a response for a while. Then I decided to help back to Gamestop, hoping that they could at least just give me a different card. I mean it’s not like I stole the card, I paid for it, they should be able to help me out. Right?
Well, it turns out that when the Gamestop clerk was turning to give me a new card, something was flagged in the system and he told me that all he could do was give me the Gamestop customer support phone number. Ok, I can understand that. Defeated, I returned home attempted to call Gamestop’s customer support. I’ve heard horror stories about calling that number, I wasn’t really expecting much of any help either. But I was determined, for the boy I thought to myself. The first time I called, yes the first, my call disconnected. After calling again, I was told my wait would be about 30 minutes. Eventually after 45 minutes later, I got a customer call agent who could barely speak English and was very hard to understand. Once I explained my issue, she quickly turned to usher me off the line by telling me there wasn’t anything she could do and since it was past 9PM, that I had to call back tomorrow.
What? When I called it was well within 8PM EST and it sure the hell wasn’t my fault that it took you 40 plus minutes to answer my call. My frustration was clearly setting, though I tried to be as professional as possible and requested that I be connected to a supervisor. I was told to hold on while one was located, this resulted in about another 15 minutes of hold time. When the agent came back I was asked would it be ok if the supervisor would call me back in about 13 minutes. Since I waited this long I figured another 13 minutes would be ok.
Except it wasn’t 13 minutes and that was at 9:30PM. As I type this article it is now 10PM. Yep, that supervisor never called me back and I suspect that I won’t be getting a call at all tonight nor will I receive it tomorrow unless I press the issue.
Now, I fully understand that the fault lies with something on Mojang’s end, I get that. But what I am not appreciating is how Gamestop treats its customers. Is it too much to ask for a little compassion? Here I am, a repeat customer, despite thousands of people asking me why I still shop there. They’re closer than Bestbuy, I’ve met some really nice and decent people there and I really like the restaurant that’s right next door. Though I’m not sure if I’ll be shopping there again, or at the very least I won’t be purchasing my gaming needs there. I already pick up my major gaming purchases from either Bestbuy or Amazon as it is, so cutting Gamestop won’t be that hard for me to do. In fact, the more I think of it, once my credit is done with them I more than likely won’t be going back there for the foreseeable future if that at all.
For now, it seems that I’m just going to bite the bullet and purchase the game online, something that I should have done from the start.
Thanks for nothing Gamestop!
Update: After receiving no phone call from Gamestop’s customer service, I contacted them again this morning and sat on the phone for another 40 minutes. Afterward, I had to explain the entire issue again, apparently, it wasn’t even logged from last night. I was then placed on hold for another 10 minutes, are you seeing a trend here? Finally, I was told to take it back to the Gamestop store that I got the card from originally and tell them that it isn’t working. I nearly lost it as I exclaimed that is why I’m calling you. The store told me they couldn’t help me and that I had to call you.
I’m just going to chuck that $26 dollars as being a lost deal and avoid Gamestop altogether. Though if their management wants to contact me, they are more than free to do so.
Update 2: After heading over to the another Gamestop , I explained the entire ordeal. The person I spoke to looked at me for a second, took the receipt and game card and exchanged it for a new Gamestop gift card. Afterward, he exclaimed that this is all they had to do and didn’t know why they put me through the ringer like they did. To which I replied “That’s what I’d love to know” and after a shrug, I departed. Now I have to come to spend my gift card credit, that or give it to some other soul who’s willing to put up with Gamestop’s crap. Because I’ve had enough for a while.
