Refreshing honesty from a GAME employee

Yesterday I was shopping in one of the two branches of GAME in my town and decided to purchase a discounted copy of Yakuza 4 on PS3. The cheapest I'd seen the game previously was £30 but GAME was selling it for £17 (new).

When I went to the counter, I asked about part exchanging a copy of Professor Layton and the Curious Village and was told I'd get £8 for it, which I accepted. I'd originally bought this copy from Oxfam for £4, an absolute bargain for what is an excellent game. One of the GAME staff members saw the Oxfam-stickered price still on the game's box and queried whether that was what I'd paid for it and I confirmed that it was. In response she said to her colleague (who was actually serving me) 'we really rip people off don't we - we're selling that for £20!'. The staff member actually serving me was a trifle embarrassed at this and pointed out that I'd doubled my money (true).

There are actually two rip-offs here - that GAME are selling a second-hand copy of a nearly two year old game for £20 and secondly that they are selling it for two and half times what they bought it off me for (a mark up of which Lord Sugar would be proud). I didn't mind the latter so much - I was getting twice what I'd paid for it after all and, although I could have got £12-13 in CeX, that store was only selling a used copy of Yakuza 4 for £28. So, I'm very happy with the deal and don't consider myself ripped off. I also don't think you can validly compare a charity store price, to a retail store price (GAME pays its employees, for a start) but I think £20 for this particular game is far too high (I would say a fair price, in a retail store, would be £12-15).

GAME does has a reputation among gamers of being a rip-off merchant though and I was amused that an employee of the store itself concurred with this opinion!