GameStop's been getting a lot of bad press lately, from Penny Arcade's skirmishes with incompetant Manager John, to the infamous 28 Confessions of a GameStop Manager article which explains, in roughly 20 pages, how to buy video games. As you can probably guess by this entry's title, I'm not exactly upset by this sudden turn of bad press.

So I guess I'll share my most recent skirmish with GameStop. It involves Call of Duty 4, a game that was pretty much hotly anticipated by all. Now I had not gone ahead with a pre-order for, because a) I don't like paying for something and then not actually having it until sometime later, b) I try not to encourage a system I think is stupid, and most importantly c) I work 60 hours a week, and don't always have time to get to the store.

I call the local GameStop, and the guy behind the counter assures me he has 6 copies left. I ask him if he can hold a copy I can pick up after work, and he takes down my name, assuring me it'll be waiting behind the counter. Six hours later I arrive, and, well...I'll give you the play-by-play:

Me: Hi, I called and had a copy of CoD4 put on hold for me.

Idiot 1: Did you pre-order it?

Me: Uh, no I just called and asked the guy to put it on hold for me.

Idiot 2: We're sold out.

Me: But he told me he'd put it on hold for me behind the counter. Took down my name and everything.

Idiot 2: Well, we're sold out. He never put anything back here. You should've preordered it.

Now at this point in the story, I probably could've explained to him why I couldn't preorder it, and why I think his mother's a whore. But I'm classier than that, and decided to give the benefit of the doubt. You see, there are several GameStops in the area, and I thought maybe I got the wrong store. So I looked up the number I dialed in my cell phone, and asked them if that was it.

There were three of them behind the counter, and none of them knew their phone number.

The next day I drove to the local Best Buy, picked out one of the 118 copies they had (yes that's the actual number, I called and asked), and 5 minutes later, walked out with my copy. So here's the deal GameStop: I don't care how cheap your pre-owned copies of last year's games are. Until you get your act together and stop treating new games and customers like some kind of hassle, Best Buy's getting my money from now on.

Oh, and Call of Duty 4 is awesome.