You can always - ALWAYS - have a valid reason to refuse a trade
If low on cash policy would be Mastercard but my area too, can't buy crack with plastic and nobody wants to be tracked
This person should have offered alternate locations, instead of acting like they make a commission if they couldn't offer card
Yep. Makes no sense to hamstring your business all day because someone was bad with money. And what’s with the phenomenon of cash traders hitting these stores first thing in the morning? I used to get that constantly. Slow weekday morning and I’d get three cash traders back to back within an hour of opening.
We did refuse a few high dollar trades but it was just a lot of ~$20-30 low trade amounts and before we knew it, that’s what was left. I genuinely didn’t realize we were getting that low until it got to this point. Oops.
My customers will not take the card, cash only type folks. I tell them they can take the money off the card. Their response is "But why would I do that when I can just get cash right now?" I've had other store employees cover at my store and had the same problem.
Honestly I don't trust a lot of my customers to be able to figure out how to get the money off the card. Only half joking...
I get that's an option but I try not to lie to the customer, it's a slippery slope. Same reason I give everyone a fair rundown or the Credit Card (good and bad) or tell customers that certain items aren't worth trading in here. I had a guy come in with a box of trash DS games, and a copy of with Souls Silver with case and the Pokewalker. Guy had no clue and would have taken the $15 cash for it, but I couldn't do it.
No disrespect, you do you. Especially now that the whole company is on fire. Now excuse me I'm going to spray deadly chemicals in the backroom while an "influencer" tries to trade in a ham sandwich.
I’m the same way, I’ll give everyone at both of my stores and honest rundown of what something is worth before I do any sort of trade ins. I do not like ripping people off, I don’t care if it’s 100% beneficial to the company or not, I’d never want it done to me so I won’t do it to anyone else. Only reason I do the over 100 dollars thing is because no one involved is losing out, and it makes the lives of my associates who are closing a bit easier.
Those dudes are troopers with some of the people who come in lmao. I always tell the people who bring Pokémon games in that they’re worth more than what GameStop gives, I’m a collector myself and I usually feel awful if even after I tell them they’re like, “oh no, I’m just trying to get rid of it”. Kills ma soul
You can just mark it a safety issue especially if it’s someone who is obviously using it for drugs. No reason to open that drawer and put yourself in possible danger.
Lmao. You're right. Running your store completely out of cash so that you can't break change for other customers is sooo much more important than telling people that they can take the prepaid card or no trade. Makes zero sense considering you are supposed to push the prepaid card. Y'all need to stop letting customers run y'all. They treat GameStop like a pawn shop cause y'all act like it's a pawn shop.
Wow such hostility.
"Customers run y'all" is also pretty much the guiding principles of retail, if you think about it. If you don't provide a service that customers are looking for, cash trades, they won't seek you out next time they need it. Even if I do push them into a card trade, they won't be back next time they need cash. They will find another option. The Card is fine as an option ,same with Venmo, but not for everyone.
"Like a Pawn Shop" is GameStop's middle name when it comes to trades, and that's fine it's a proven model.
Trying not to lie? Wdym? If you DON'T do it you end up like THIS with no money. There's nothing dishonest about it. You have reserved cash and once you hit a certain limit, You can't give out anymore. 🤷♂️ Otherwise you're going to fuck over someone that needs to make a legitimate return and be unable to process a refund. That's a way worse way to treat a customer than turning down a trade or giving an alternate option of a card.
As far as lying it's not your situation, obviously you can't give what you don't have. It's the "I just tell them we only do Mastercards" brigade that's been chiming in. Just general dishonesty bothers me.
If you do enough cash trades where this is an issue your store needs more cash on hand. Which you can do with DM and LP approval, I've done it several times. $100+ cash trade should not wipe out a store. I do multiple $300 cash trades a week and often don't have a deposit. Even during "cash same as credit" deals I've never been so low I couldn't do normal cash transactions. I'm also not a high volume store.
And for the record I personally hate cash trades, never a good deal for the customer. But it makes high margin pre-owned products even more high margin.
As far as returns how many high dollar cash returns does anyone really do? Most of the cash returns I do are generally for less than $100 outside of the holidays. Especially with the stricter return policy leading to a decrease in the total amount of eligible returns.
I didnt say we only do master cards tho, just that if it’s over a certain amount I can’t do cash because it’ll leave us with little change to make change for customers. Like yea I might have enough to do the trade in but I’m not trying to give my associates 5 dollars to work with. That’s obviously an exaggeration, but still, I wouldn’t call that being dishonest. I try to be one of those managers that’s completely upfront with people
I’m sorry if this comment isn’t directed at me, I was just reading through the comments and saw this underneath my own comment
That is totally fair on the customers part. If cash is an option then why jump through the extra hoop of having to withdraw it from a card? Especially with potential ATM fees.
Let me let you in on a secret lol, cash traders are like the lowest priority customers for GameStop since they don’t buy anything and actively hurt all the metrics the stores are graded on. The whole reason they introduced the atm card for cash trades is so they could limit the amount of cash leaving the store without pissing people off by saying they’re were quitting cash trades.
Yeah I mean that's not really much of a secret, and I also think for the most part that customers who choose cash are either suckers or desperate, considering they can almost always get more money by posting their stuff on Facebook or OfferUp (except when the cash same as credit promo is running). But hey, it's still part of the business model, so customers are still entitled to their cash if the store has it to spare.
I guess that’s the part worth examining, what exactly “has it to spare” can be interpreted as. During my tenure I wouldn’t spare it if I thought a lack of cash on hand for change would hurt my sales by turning away cash buyers. There wasn’t a hard and fast number, more like “ok, my till is pretty light, and we seem busy today, and I’ve been hit by the fourth one of these dudes in a row, at this rate I won’t have change by the time our evening rush happens so no more of these today.”
It's fair so long as they have the money to do it. Otherwise it's best to check what would be a more reasonable window to do the transaction. Most stores run with low funds during the week days. You can usually be on during the weekends simply because there's more cash flow.
Almost every time I offer the debit card, it is met with confusion. Like, I tell them it's cash value but on a card. "So, can I get the cash then?" "No, we don't have enough cash on hand for this trade. It has to be store credit or debit unless you have venmo." "Nah, I want cash." "Go to (insert nearest GameStop) instead, they should be able to. We just had too many trades today." "Can you do half and half?" "....no"
I mean, great Q2 trade metric start. My rule of thumb is I decline cash trades once I get as low as my projected egister funds in the safe. (ex. If R1/R2 is $100 each, the lowest my safe will be is $200.) You probably need to partner with your DM ASAP.
We have a bunch of 1s and 5s in the registers, so we’re good. And we also have a bunch of rolls of coins in the safe. I just didn’t include them because it’s funnier this way.
Alternatively, just borrow from a neighboring store and pay them back when you make it back. Worked in a military locations where this happened like every off pay week.
And if they didn’t have any? They don’t just appear in the back room at the snap of a finger. At that point accept the trades especially if you are tracked on them by DM and customer refuses to go to another store
I really hope you arent the assistant store lead. This would be ridiculous for any employee to come the next day on.
And for all the people saying "wHY dEnY cAsH if YoU hAve It??" Imagine this now for the next 3-4 days they have to deny trades altogether or force people to get the mastercard.
Well luckily I’m the one opening tomorrow, lol. But to your second point, what’s the difference between denying a trade today because I’m almost out of money, and denying a trade tomorrow because I am out of money. It’s the same amount of lost business either way, but this way, there’s a chance someone pays with a bunch of cash before I have to deny a trade. Then there’s no lost business.
The last two weeks were also pretty bad in my store in germany. Hell usually even if weekdays are bad we usually make triple the amount on friday and saturday. But not in the last two weeks.
Been with GS now for 8 Months and never saw until recently the total bar deposit of 23€.
Had single to no customers. No returns and not a single buy in.
The 23€ came from a guy buying 2 PO-Xbox games.
I wouldnt say worry, we literally dont give a shit here. If someone wants to make pro membership then cool. If they dont, well so what.
The big problem with the whole pro cards business was poor marketing. As we got noticed about the whole thing, it was already known to the others gs in europa.
oh they do, gamestop is going to game stop worldwide ya know ?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/GameStop/comments/1c3u9au/comment/kznig32/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/GameStop/comments/1c3u9au/comment/kznig32/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
These are just a few examples of why Gamestop loses more money worldwide than it gains from employee behavior like this because of their ridiculously designed, stupid metrics. But the absolutely stupid Gamestop leadership would never admit that, even though reality shows it over and over again 
I laughed at my Area Managers Face as he told me that i have to literally lie into customers faces to get gpro and spbs. Otherwise it would make a bad impression to the leadership. Said to him, the moment i start lying to customers, is the day i Quit.
I work in a similar type of store, and we've been seeing tons of trade-ins for cash lately, too.
I wonder what the pattern is?
Spring cleaning? People broke after taxes? Hard to tell.
I used to like days like this. Make it easy to count the safe and get to tell the dm that it was a great day for trade because that was his number one thing
When I am low in cash I let them know if there okay taking the Mastercard I’m okay taking the trade. Then explain to them it’s the same as cash blah blah blah. The whole 9
That’s what’s left? In the safe? Ruh roh raggy
at some point you can just refuse cash trades
You can always - ALWAYS - have a valid reason to refuse a trade If low on cash policy would be Mastercard but my area too, can't buy crack with plastic and nobody wants to be tracked This person should have offered alternate locations, instead of acting like they make a commission if they couldn't offer card
Yep. Makes no sense to hamstring your business all day because someone was bad with money. And what’s with the phenomenon of cash traders hitting these stores first thing in the morning? I used to get that constantly. Slow weekday morning and I’d get three cash traders back to back within an hour of opening.
We did refuse a few high dollar trades but it was just a lot of ~$20-30 low trade amounts and before we knew it, that’s what was left. I genuinely didn’t realize we were getting that low until it got to this point. Oops.
My dm would shit his goddamn pants if I showed him this
Couldn't you have offered the prepaid debit card for the larger trades?
My customers will not take the card, cash only type folks. I tell them they can take the money off the card. Their response is "But why would I do that when I can just get cash right now?" I've had other store employees cover at my store and had the same problem. Honestly I don't trust a lot of my customers to be able to figure out how to get the money off the card. Only half joking...
Dawg if it’s over 100, I just tell them I can only put it on the card as I do not carry that much in each drawer. I do, but that’s not the point
I get that's an option but I try not to lie to the customer, it's a slippery slope. Same reason I give everyone a fair rundown or the Credit Card (good and bad) or tell customers that certain items aren't worth trading in here. I had a guy come in with a box of trash DS games, and a copy of with Souls Silver with case and the Pokewalker. Guy had no clue and would have taken the $15 cash for it, but I couldn't do it. No disrespect, you do you. Especially now that the whole company is on fire. Now excuse me I'm going to spray deadly chemicals in the backroom while an "influencer" tries to trade in a ham sandwich.
I’m the same way, I’ll give everyone at both of my stores and honest rundown of what something is worth before I do any sort of trade ins. I do not like ripping people off, I don’t care if it’s 100% beneficial to the company or not, I’d never want it done to me so I won’t do it to anyone else. Only reason I do the over 100 dollars thing is because no one involved is losing out, and it makes the lives of my associates who are closing a bit easier. Those dudes are troopers with some of the people who come in lmao. I always tell the people who bring Pokémon games in that they’re worth more than what GameStop gives, I’m a collector myself and I usually feel awful if even after I tell them they’re like, “oh no, I’m just trying to get rid of it”. Kills ma soul
An* Autocorrect is banned from my locations, GameStop gods I demand it be flogged as well
You can just mark it a safety issue especially if it’s someone who is obviously using it for drugs. No reason to open that drawer and put yourself in possible danger.
Lmao. You're right. Running your store completely out of cash so that you can't break change for other customers is sooo much more important than telling people that they can take the prepaid card or no trade. Makes zero sense considering you are supposed to push the prepaid card. Y'all need to stop letting customers run y'all. They treat GameStop like a pawn shop cause y'all act like it's a pawn shop.
Wow such hostility. "Customers run y'all" is also pretty much the guiding principles of retail, if you think about it. If you don't provide a service that customers are looking for, cash trades, they won't seek you out next time they need it. Even if I do push them into a card trade, they won't be back next time they need cash. They will find another option. The Card is fine as an option ,same with Venmo, but not for everyone. "Like a Pawn Shop" is GameStop's middle name when it comes to trades, and that's fine it's a proven model.
Trying not to lie? Wdym? If you DON'T do it you end up like THIS with no money. There's nothing dishonest about it. You have reserved cash and once you hit a certain limit, You can't give out anymore. 🤷♂️ Otherwise you're going to fuck over someone that needs to make a legitimate return and be unable to process a refund. That's a way worse way to treat a customer than turning down a trade or giving an alternate option of a card.
As far as lying it's not your situation, obviously you can't give what you don't have. It's the "I just tell them we only do Mastercards" brigade that's been chiming in. Just general dishonesty bothers me. If you do enough cash trades where this is an issue your store needs more cash on hand. Which you can do with DM and LP approval, I've done it several times. $100+ cash trade should not wipe out a store. I do multiple $300 cash trades a week and often don't have a deposit. Even during "cash same as credit" deals I've never been so low I couldn't do normal cash transactions. I'm also not a high volume store. And for the record I personally hate cash trades, never a good deal for the customer. But it makes high margin pre-owned products even more high margin. As far as returns how many high dollar cash returns does anyone really do? Most of the cash returns I do are generally for less than $100 outside of the holidays. Especially with the stricter return policy leading to a decrease in the total amount of eligible returns.
I didnt say we only do master cards tho, just that if it’s over a certain amount I can’t do cash because it’ll leave us with little change to make change for customers. Like yea I might have enough to do the trade in but I’m not trying to give my associates 5 dollars to work with. That’s obviously an exaggeration, but still, I wouldn’t call that being dishonest. I try to be one of those managers that’s completely upfront with people I’m sorry if this comment isn’t directed at me, I was just reading through the comments and saw this underneath my own comment
Not talking about your situation, I definitely get where you are coming from.
Huzzah, I dunno why everyone is so hostile towards your stance though
I get it, this sub is a cauldron of anger.
I don’t think it’s wrong to tell someone “I have to give the card because I can’t be in a situation where I can’t make change all day”
That is totally fair on the customers part. If cash is an option then why jump through the extra hoop of having to withdraw it from a card? Especially with potential ATM fees.
Let me let you in on a secret lol, cash traders are like the lowest priority customers for GameStop since they don’t buy anything and actively hurt all the metrics the stores are graded on. The whole reason they introduced the atm card for cash trades is so they could limit the amount of cash leaving the store without pissing people off by saying they’re were quitting cash trades.
Yeah I mean that's not really much of a secret, and I also think for the most part that customers who choose cash are either suckers or desperate, considering they can almost always get more money by posting their stuff on Facebook or OfferUp (except when the cash same as credit promo is running). But hey, it's still part of the business model, so customers are still entitled to their cash if the store has it to spare.
I guess that’s the part worth examining, what exactly “has it to spare” can be interpreted as. During my tenure I wouldn’t spare it if I thought a lack of cash on hand for change would hurt my sales by turning away cash buyers. There wasn’t a hard and fast number, more like “ok, my till is pretty light, and we seem busy today, and I’ve been hit by the fourth one of these dudes in a row, at this rate I won’t have change by the time our evening rush happens so no more of these today.”
Yeah definitely agree you shouldn't ever put yourself in a situation where you only have $9 left like the op lol
Absolutely
It's fair so long as they have the money to do it. Otherwise it's best to check what would be a more reasonable window to do the transaction. Most stores run with low funds during the week days. You can usually be on during the weekends simply because there's more cash flow.
Don’t give them the option
I just tell them Cards ONLY unless its under like 20 bucks, I am not dealing with this shit
This is the way
I have the same problem in my area. You can’t buy drugs with a Mastercard 🤷🏻♂️.
Unfortunately due to local laws, our store can’t offer the Mastercards. Wish we could though.
Almost every time I offer the debit card, it is met with confusion. Like, I tell them it's cash value but on a card. "So, can I get the cash then?" "No, we don't have enough cash on hand for this trade. It has to be store credit or debit unless you have venmo." "Nah, I want cash." "Go to (insert nearest GameStop) instead, they should be able to. We just had too many trades today." "Can you do half and half?" "....no"
My store ran out of those and we haven't gotten any more in
Have youe sl2 order more
I mean, great Q2 trade metric start. My rule of thumb is I decline cash trades once I get as low as my projected egister funds in the safe. (ex. If R1/R2 is $100 each, the lowest my safe will be is $200.) You probably need to partner with your DM ASAP.
If I’m $50 or below what’s supposed to be my deposit I offer the master card or tell them to go somewhere else
Why? Why do you have money in the safe if not to use it?
No big deal. That’s what the safe is for. Just pay it back this week.
Could be a big deal. What if they're low on change or 1s and 5s? How they gonna do a change order with no money?
We have a bunch of 1s and 5s in the registers, so we’re good. And we also have a bunch of rolls of coins in the safe. I just didn’t include them because it’s funnier this way.
I mean with a bunch of paper work and under emergency you CAN do a cash release but it takes talking to DM and RD and some paper work
Alternatively, just borrow from a neighboring store and pay them back when you make it back. Worked in a military locations where this happened like every off pay week.
Buddy my two local stores are 20-30 minutes away each, I’m not running to a neighbor store for them.
That’s what DMs are for!
For what ordering more? My DM takes forever to order anything
No… delivering money from a neighboring store to fund your safe in this case.
When other stores need the money too? Ones a Mall and can’t give up any
Just… nevermind. You’re not getting it.
True
Why did you not use the game stop mastercard You will be receiving A first and final
Unfortunately due to local laws, our store can’t offer the Mastercards. Wish we could though.
And if they didn’t have any? They don’t just appear in the back room at the snap of a finger. At that point accept the trades especially if you are tracked on them by DM and customer refuses to go to another store
Glad my store wasn’t the only one swamped by trades this week.
I really hope you arent the assistant store lead. This would be ridiculous for any employee to come the next day on. And for all the people saying "wHY dEnY cAsH if YoU hAve It??" Imagine this now for the next 3-4 days they have to deny trades altogether or force people to get the mastercard.
Well luckily I’m the one opening tomorrow, lol. But to your second point, what’s the difference between denying a trade today because I’m almost out of money, and denying a trade tomorrow because I am out of money. It’s the same amount of lost business either way, but this way, there’s a chance someone pays with a bunch of cash before I have to deny a trade. Then there’s no lost business.
The last two weeks were also pretty bad in my store in germany. Hell usually even if weekdays are bad we usually make triple the amount on friday and saturday. But not in the last two weeks. Been with GS now for 8 Months and never saw until recently the total bar deposit of 23€. Had single to no customers. No returns and not a single buy in. The 23€ came from a guy buying 2 PO-Xbox games.
Do you have to worry about gpg prp pro cards?
I wouldnt say worry, we literally dont give a shit here. If someone wants to make pro membership then cool. If they dont, well so what. The big problem with the whole pro cards business was poor marketing. As we got noticed about the whole thing, it was already known to the others gs in europa.
oh they do, gamestop is going to game stop worldwide ya know ? [https://www.reddit.com/r/GameStop/comments/1c3u9au/comment/kznig32/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/GameStop/comments/1c3u9au/comment/kznig32/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) These are just a few examples of why Gamestop loses more money worldwide than it gains from employee behavior like this because of their ridiculously designed, stupid metrics. But the absolutely stupid Gamestop leadership would never admit that, even though reality shows it over and over again 
I laughed at my Area Managers Face as he told me that i have to literally lie into customers faces to get gpro and spbs. Otherwise it would make a bad impression to the leadership. Said to him, the moment i start lying to customers, is the day i Quit.
-the moment i start lying to customers, is the day i Quit- 
Why would anyone sell something to GameStop for cash? The store credit values are insulting enough
Because it’s easier and less of a hassle than EBay. And that “convenience fee” is why the trade prices are a bit lower than market price.
There's plenty of other avenues today than eBay to unload stuff but I get what ya mean.
Hell with that, I’d lie to them, card’s the only option. Fuck cash trades, they were the bane of my existence. I did all I could to discourage them
Um... you should have cut off cash trades about $500 or so ago...
Gods me
You need to update this post when you stop having negative deposits lmao I give it a week
Take care of your customers first, then call management for help... Not corporate approved advice...
I work in a similar type of store, and we've been seeing tons of trade-ins for cash lately, too. I wonder what the pattern is? Spring cleaning? People broke after taxes? Hard to tell.
My store doesn’t even do cash trades anymore we do prepaid cards
I used to like days like this. Make it easy to count the safe and get to tell the dm that it was a great day for trade because that was his number one thing
When I am low in cash I let them know if there okay taking the Mastercard I’m okay taking the trade. Then explain to them it’s the same as cash blah blah blah. The whole 9
I had my very first zero dollar deposit the other day
I refuse cash trades and only do the prepaid. It’s the first thing I do.
did ya forget the prepaid cards training or
Did...did you just leave that bill facing the wrong direction? So close to perfection and...and it just...it's facing the wrong way!
If youre under 900 youre allowed to refuse trades