What was the consensus on Ninja Blade? Worth $30?
My Target still didn’t have PoP on clearance. It also doesn’t have 50 Cent Blood on the Sand on the clearance endcap. How much is that going for?
Holy shit, Dave. You have the best Target ever.
Mine hide their clearance rack on the back endcap of the freaking automotive section at the other end of the store, in the very back - and it’s just a shelf with scattered, bruised copies of 1993’s Cake Mania and Pretty Pony Adventurez.
Imagine harder - mine aren’t. All the Targets near me have few if any console games on clearance; and the few they do have all suck. :-( You’re lucky(?) your Target is doing worse than mine.
If it is, then it’s a real bargain at $20!
Cubit
5305
Jeez Dave, I am jealous of your Target too. Mine never has that good of a selection of bargain games and is always picked through.
If your Target has these games in stock, try getting them to scan one and see if the price comes up differently from the tag on the shelf. It could be that the employees at your Target simply aren’t on the ball. These games must be manually tagged by an employee.
This was the thing that I think ultimately helped kill Circuit City. Most of their stock was listed for different (and lower) prices in their registers than it was on the shelves.
Target isn’t that bad, but I can easily see where the ones near me are simply on the ball and those you guys are visiting… aren’t. Also, this is a very good area for videogame sales. A couple of the EB Games (now Gamestop) stores here used to be among the top ten in the country. So I don’t think it’s because of lack of customers that they have a lot of these and they are on clearance that low already. Target just really overbought Prince of Persia in particular.
I’ll get a snap sometime of the rack at the other Target that opened last fall. I have two to pick from. The one in this shot has typically been quicker to get their stock marked or marked down than the new one, though.
Heh. Any time I’d checked out our local Circuit City their prices were the absolute highest you could find for a given game anywhere - even old, old stuff. When they’d have ‘aggressive’ sales, it would bring them in line with regular prices elsewhere.
Always wondered who would bother. Which, clearly, nobody did. Pretty dumb.
Also, Dave, are you going to start taking orders?
CC employees were awful at price changes. They just didn’t do them. You’d walk in during the day and they’d be standing around shooting the shit with each other and I’d always be bringing them a game to ring up that was like $20 less than marked.
I remember one time it was a PC game that was like $4.99 but was still marked $49.99. The guy was like, “Whoa! That’s a nice deal!” I’m like, “Yeah, and you probably would’ve sold it months ago for $29.99 if you had ever changed the price one of the three times it dropped.”
That company was destined to fail. They had no clue how to train their employees. I think they figured the electronics and software would simply sell itself, and if it didn’t, they’d somehow make that up by pressuring everyone into extended warranties. I’m reminded of one B. Bunny. “What a maroon!”
Sounds like GamersGate and Direct2Drive about 6 months ago in this thread. GG has certainly stepped it up, and D2D seemed to try for a while but I haven’t noticed them much lately.
Well, CC was making the changes in the register, they just didn’t change the tags on the shelves. So customers were looking at games marked $49.99 that were actually selling for $29.99.
Their buyers were taking the markdowns, but the employees in the stores weren’t following through at the racks.
Hell, even when they were having their last gasp ‘Everything Must Go Liquidation Sale’, they’d marked things down like ten percent … And when I checked online from the store with my smartphone, the prices were so close to Amazon’s normal price that it wasn’t worth a spontaneous sale.
Dean
5313
You may remember they had the great idea to lay off all their experienced salespeople and hire new people for less money and fewer (no) benefits. So yeah, that worked.
Yeah, last time I was at my Target (i.e., last Thursday when I bought inFamous and Red Faction) the only things they had on clearance were $30 Wheelman (for PS3 - if it were the 360 version and I hadn’t been going for the aforementioned games, maaaaybe), and $42 FEAR 2. I think I’ll like FEAR 2, but I don’t think I’ll like it $42 worth, and there were like 2 copies so I doubt it’ll make it to a reasonable price.
That’s the largest and best organized Target clearance rack I’ve seen in countless Targets across the country.
I can only assume that the gamers in Reading are all cheapskates and that a field trip may be in order!
I’m sure there were many times that I’d pass on a game because the price seemed too high. On the other hand some of their blowout PC game clearances were pretty great-- you could get some stuff for as little as $3.50 sometimes. I think one time I walked out with 4 games for 11 bucks or so.
And yeah, a lot of the times the employees would be standing around shooting the shit. I especially hated it when I’d try to call my local CC to verify that they had a sale-priced game in stock only to have the phone NEVER ANSWERED, despite letting it ring maybe 20-25 times. So I’d make the drive (relatively short, but still) only to be frustrated when it wasn’t on the shelf, and sure enough, they’d be standing around goofing off and the store would be near empty.
Of course, morale must have been crap after the bean-counters decided to fire the best employees because they were making too much.
Has anyone suggested a thread wherein people list games they’d like to swap with others on the board? I searched, but didn’t find one. Maybe it would be considered a faux pas. Or maybe it would be considered totally awesome.
Edit: never mind – I searched again, and found some commentary on this idea.
It’s possible, but Target deals always vary by store. And since most console games are kept locked up, it isn’t worth my time to ask them to price-check them every time I read about a clearance deal someone else found. Especially since I have occasionally scanned PC games that folks found cheap, hoping to get lucky - no natural 20s so far. :-(
Whereas Circuit City’s clearance deals were usually at every store - and online, if you got lucky - but like you said, they did a shitty job of marking them down in-store. A printout from CAG landed me many a deal back in the day…good times, good times.
I remember when that happened, because the CC auto guy who installed my last car radio told me he was just about to be laid off. Luckily for me, he wanted to screw over CC, not me: didn’t charge me for the parts he used to install it.
Legume
5319
Steam is now selling Oblivion + expansions for $16.79!
Dave clearly needs to give his PP account, get in there and start getting us some deals.
Prince of Persia’s available at my local Target for a cheap and easy $60.
