ShopTo Pulls GAME Card Promotion

nofi 57 Comments

Yesterday online retailer ShopTo ran a banner promotion for new customers – if they sent in their GAME loyalty card they could get £3 off their first order over £20.

After much debate over Twitter last night the company has decided to pull the promotion, which the official Twitter account for the site said was to “attempt to secure the customer database from the administrators to re-instate all customer reward points”.

Today, though, the company’s Igor Cipolletta said he had “withdrawn this promotion immediately as some customers have suggested the promotion was in bad taste, which was never our intention.”

“The administrators of GAME Group announced yesterday that they had suspended the GAME Rewards card. As a specialist games retailer we wanted to offer those GAME customers some value for their card,” he told Eurogamer.

Yesterday administrators were called in to take control of GAME, resulting in the sudden loss of 277 stores and 2,000 jobs.

Apparently, according to reports from GAME’s Facebook page, some customers are now left with up to hundred of pounds of credit on cards they (currently) can’t use, with one individual trading in a Vita for £220 credit.

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57 Comments

  1. It was a bit mean but come on, that’s business. Obviously a lot of loyal GAME customers will be looking for somewhere else to buy games now so ShopTo was just offering an incentive to choose them over the other rivals.
    GAME isn’t a person, I don’t really think it can be called bad taste.

    • Would you send in a twenty pound credit on a reward card for a 3 pound instant reduction if you thought there may be a chance to get the full 20 quid back in a few months?

      • That’s the issue, it wasn’t in poor taste IMO, as they were offering people something for nothing (technically), but i just think they were a bit hasty.

        It might be that Game rises from the ashes & the new owners agree to uphold reward scheme & credit etc, meaning that £3 may not be such a good deal. Unlikely, but it could happen.

        Like i said, i don’t really see an issue with the offer, i just think it was a bit soon to be making it without knowing for certain exactly how this whole thing is going to play out.

      • @blarty – Obviously not but the key word there is IF. There is very little chance the credit will ever be honoured now. And in any case, no one is forcing you to redeem your card with ShopTo. If you want to hold on to it in blind hope, you can.

  2. They traded in a Vita for 220 credit?! Very bad timing…

  3. Poor form from Game to accept £220 credit, but he’s a numpty for trading his Vita in at Game with all this going on anyway. Surely he must’ve been aware

  4. Looks like he just completely donated his ps vita for free. I know if I was him, I would be screwing.

  5. I saw some very awkward conversations on twitter regarding this last night. ShopTo are ruthless. They emailed a lot of people once GAME announced that they wouldnt be selling Mass Effect 3 to tell people before the customers had had their confirmation from GAME and now this. Its cheap, but it comes at a price.

    • Is shows an attention to detail in the dying of a competitor that a hungry vulture would be proud of

      • Even Vultures wait till the animal in question is a carcass. ShopTo swooped when GAME was still limping along, wounded but still trading. Harsh.

    • Blockbuster are doing the same they have their usual advert in the window advertising Mass Effect, Resident Evil and Fifa street the with added arrows pointing to them saying how GAME and Gamestation were not selling them.

      • The Mass Effect 3 is fair enough. They had to jump to try and get the business is a very short time window. Even doing the card thing is ok, but not on the same day thousands are losing their job.

      • I get that companies will be scrambling to gobble up as much of GAMEs market share as soon as possible, but I am more likely to shop at a company that does rub it in the face of the 2000 employees that just lost their job. Timing was all wrong with he card promotion that ShopTo did.

  6. Personally, I don’t understand the fuss about the deal. Even if Shopto didn’t offer that discount deal, 2000 unlucky people would have still been made redundant.
    It’s just business, and actually, a good deal for the customers. They’re offering discounts for people sending their cards which are *currently* worthless, there’s no point in saying ‘what if Game come back’, that’s a very big if.

    • Nowhere does it state that the cards might be worth their full amount at some point. Might. What if you had £100 on it? Or £0?

      I’m trying to stay professional but this is just sticking the knife in and twisting it. Business might be business, but you don’t need to –

      – ah, nearly.

      • This is the point nofi, it’s not 3 quid or 50% of your the value of your points balance, whichever is higher, it a flat 3 quid regardless. Also on the flipside it just encourages people with no points balance to swap empty cards, which in turn affects ShopTo’s bottom line (irrespective of whether its a promotion or not)

      • Ah, I didn’t realise that, although if the cards are worthless, I’d still take a discount not matter how small it is.

      • @blarty – It’s not going to affect ShopTo! It’s a promotion, essentially a £3 discount for new customers, well worth it for the potential future business. That’s pretty common.

    • @Gazzagb – I’m with you there, it’s just simple business. Offering GAME customers a little bit of credit if they start shopping with Shopto seems like a logical/business-like approach.
      Yes, I understand that thousands of staff are losing their jobs and it’s never nice (I’ve been there with the added weight of a mortgage, wife and son to support). But really, shopto are not mocking those soon-to-be ex-employees, they’re just stepping in to gain some business and offer a little help to people who have lost credit.

      • Yeah, that’s exactly why I still don’t get why people are saying it’s disrespectful to the staff etc, it’s just business.

      • Just feels a bit ill timed, Picking over the corpse of a company that had gone into admin the same day. Profiting from the demise of a company that has had to let 2000+ people go is a little under handed. Obviously, business is business and everyone will be wanting a share of the sales that Games demise will leave, just could have waiting a few days to let things settle down.

  7. To be fair the guy with the vita was just greedy if you ask me. He must have known game were going/about to go and decided an extra tenner trade-in from say CEX was worth it to him.

    I’m not saying he deserves it, just it was a bit silly.

    • If I’m honest more than greedy, he sounds stupid to the point of bordering on the imbecilic…. trading a Vita in so soon after launch, you would surely get a better deal on eBay or selling to your mates?

      • I think game were giving silly money for vitas at the time, i wouldn’t be surprised if that was just a wi-fi model.

    • Greedy? Imbecillic? NO!

      That bloke is just looking for the best price to get rid of his Vita which he didn’t like, how is that greedy? We would all do it, so don’t say his is greedy. Imbecillic? WTF? There is a lot of people out there that didn’t know the state of GAME as a business, lets face it, you only know because of gaming website and the like. Not everyone has a vested interest in gaming news or new in general – that doesn’t make him an stupid in any way. You two are the ones sounding stupid, not him.

      • Wow – loads of errors in my post there, shouldn’t of rushed it.

    • GAME had an offer where if you traded in the Vita up to 2 weeks after you bought it, you’d get your money back (in credit), minus €10.
      That could explain why he traded his to GAME, if he bought it within the last 2 weeks.

      Although it doesn’t explain why he’s trading in the Vita in the first place…

  8. ShopTo are going to be the next ones going down the pan the way they are going – they’re hardly any cheaper than the high street these days and everyone I know has moved onto other online retailers for better services and cheaper prices.

    ShopTo have gotten too big for their own good.

    • Shopto have become as expensive as the high street, really? I’ve just searched through several current PS3 titles (FF13-2, FIFA Street, FIFA12 and CODMW3) and Shopto comes out pretty high in the ‘cheapest’ charts.
      So, one of the cheapest on the web, free delivery and and same day despatch/next day delivery. What’s so wrong with that?

      • Mass Effect 3 at launch was only £1 cheaper than Game/HMV. If you’re looking at titles already released then ShopTo do tend to be slightly cheaper – but not for pre-orders.

        On two occasions – I’ve made pre-orders with ShopTo – and when the price has increased, my pre-orders have mysteriously vanished, only to be re-instated at the higher price. Raising a query has been met with a “meh…”

        Simplygames from now on.

    • PS. I used gamesearchuk.com for price comparisons.

    • I agree with Amphlett on this one. ShopTo are cheap. Really Cheap. You can pick up some absolute bargains on there. Not sure what other online retailers you could move to for price really.

    • ShopTo are still pretty cheap and have a good delivery service, if I’m honest, if their base line price goes up by a pound or two, the fact they get pre-orders usually a day or two before release to people will still be a big draw.

    • ShopTo actually have decent prices with brilliant delivery. Can’t see them going down the pan, not long ago they released impressive sales figures.

    • … although, let’s be fair, it’s not the first time ShopTo have pulled a stunt like this, that was just a little too close to being crass.

    • i disagree. just the other day i bought ME3 for £29.85 and i got the game the next day from shopto.

      link if if anyone’s interested. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150773118529

      zavvi/the hut are cheap but they take too long to deliver imo. when i ordered UC3 for £20 they didn’t dispatch the game for a week and i ended up cancelling after another week because it was out of stock. /csb

  9. Thankfully when I was in my local branch last week the guy behind the counter recommended I trade in my points asap, leading me to nab a 2nd hand copy of revelations online.

  10. I used my GAME credit to buy my Vita, so glad I did, great bit of kit and used up all the money I had owed to me.

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