I went to the mall today to return a belt (an Xmas present which turned out to be too small). I looked around for a medium, but they didn’t have the kind I wanted, so I just made a return. Very quick, very easy, I hand over belt + receipt, till lady credits $25 to my card. No problem.<\/p>\n
Since I was there, I took a look in the anime store. Asked about the new Black Mages<\/a> album (The Skies Above). It’s not in yet (and apparently the first one is out of stock too, but I have that one already).<\/p>\n Then I popped into EB and picked up a used copy of Front Mission 4. I haven’t shopped in that EB before and I won’t be shopping there again soon if I can help it. I waited in line for the 5 minutes it took for the guy in front of me to make his purchase, then I stepped forward. Of course I had to endure the same script that I had just heard played to the guy before me.<\/p>\n Did I have an EB marketing tool, sorry loyalty card (or whatever they call it this month)? No. Do I want one? No. The only things I buy in EB are the things I can’t get in my local indy store. And even if I bought regularly in EB, I don’t want them to know all about me, thanks.<\/p>\n Did I want a controller and\/or memory card today? No. This is a one-player game I’m buying. Almost no PS2 owner in the world<\/em> would need to buy a controller for it. And it’s a strategy RPG, so I hardly think it’s going to fill up my memory card. (This question has to be the worst, I mean it’s the equivalent of the 0.1% hit rate spam – how many people actually say, “Oh, I forgot, I don’t have a controller?”)<\/p>\n I circumvented the script. I added that I didn’t need to pre-order a PSP either. Yes, despite the fact that “it’s going to be hot” and “very hard to find”. No thanks. No PSP pre-order. There are 3 people behind me in line, you know. I just want to buy one game, for cash. I could have been out of here 30 seconds ago. (I didn’t say that, but I was thinking it). Thankfully he didn’t offer me the “for only 2 dollars, we’ll insure this for you – if it ever breaks, just bring it back” deal. Have these people never heard of a bathtub curve<\/a>? If the game doesn’t work, I’ll bring it back within the week and you will be obliged to replace it or refund my money. If it works, it’s not suddenly going to stop working 3 months from now. I look after my things.<\/p>\n Another store on the blacklist. It joins Gamestop and Best Buy. Although to be fair, it usually all depends on the manager\/employees for these places. There is another EB in town that I will continue to use for things I can’t find in my local games store. Mostly older games that I want to pick up used, or things like the Ignition Red Octane dance pad for DDR.<\/p>\n Rant over (well what are blogs for anyway?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I went to the mall today to return a belt (an Xmas present which turned out to be too small). I looked around for a medium, but they didn’t have the kind I wanted, so I just made a return. Very quick, very easy, I hand over belt + receipt,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}