Well, I was expecting this sort of review to go up eventually, so here's the first negative customer service experience I've had in quite a while.
So here's the deal. I've been playing World of Warcraft for nearly five years now. I raid two to three nights a week; my 25-man raid has now taken out Sartharion+1, Malygos, and Naxx. We're still working on Sarth+2, but suffice it to say, I am a pretty darn serious player whose main is covered in 25-man epics.
I recently decided to dual-box, because I want two more characters at 80, and oh, boy, I don't want to have to play through 60 the slow way. If you link a new account to an old account, you get triple XP for both characters when they're partied. Dual-boxing is not at all uncommon; some people have been known to go up to 20- or 25-boxing.
Blizzard offers an online upgrade option; it costs $10 more than buying the games at a store or online. I was actually all set to pay the $10 extra to not have to leave the house or have a box around to store, but the site failed me, and it was out to a store.
I suggested Target; Grant suggested EBX, because the Town Center is marginally closer. I squirmed a little bit -- a girl in a gaming store is always a target for male employees making rude comments -- but said okay, and while he went to a store on ground level to look at something, I went upstairs to EBX.
A quick look around the store, and I spotted the PC games. A heavyset man with a goatee was sitting directly in front of them, eating a pizza; I don't know whether he was an employee or not. However, I was able to squeeze behind him to pick up a copy of the WoW Battle Chest. I took it to the register, but suddenly realized that the box was open -- which means that the CD-key needed to activate the account was at risk, and so I went back to the rack to pick up a copy that wasn't open. I mentioned this to the guy eating pizza, and he said, "Oh, they're all open. It's a trick question."
"What... why are they all open?" I asked.
A middle-aged male employee with brown hair smirked at me and said, "So you won't just put it in your little paisley purse and walk out with it."
Wait, what? No, seriously--what? I come into the store to make a purchase, I know what I want, I pick it up, I have questions about whether the copy I've got is safe or not--and I'm told the reason it's open is so I won't shoplift it?
Also, little paisley purse? What? For the record, the purse in question is paisley, and it is a purse, but it isn't "little"; that was one heck of a demeaning, belittling comment that a man would not have gotten, not just because he wouldn't have been carrying a purse but because it would never have occurred to the employee to make such a demeaning comment to a male customer. It's possible he might have told my husband, "So you won't put it under your jacket and walk out with it," but I doubt it; he would probably have taken my husband's question seriously and said, "We've had trouble with shoplifters, so we keep the CD-keys in the back where no one can steal them." And if he'd said that to me, I wouldn't have had alarm bells go off in my head--but it's not in my nature to trust someone who's smirking at me and making demeaning comments. Go figure. I'm just that crazy.
I was obviously, visibly flabbergasted by the statement--both parts of the statement--and said, "That's a little bit offensive; why would I want to do that?" The brown-haired employee stammered that he didn't think I, personally, would shoplift, and I then asked, "So how do I know the CD-key hasn't been used already?"
"We keep them all in the back," said the brown-haired employee. I shrugged and got back in line, but I was definitely not happy about it.
For the next few minutes, the brown-haired employee looked around the store to find copies of the game, and failed. He asked if he could ring up the game for me while someone else looked for the CDs, and I said I'd prefer to make sure they actually had a copy before paying for it. He responded that he was sure they had copies, and had to ask another employee for help finding them. At this point, he went back over to the heavyset man in the corner, and both of them proceeded to quietly laugh at me for being "offended" by the notion that someone might shoplift. They were clearly misunderstanding two things: one, I wasn't offended by the notion that "someone" might shoplift, I was offended by the fact that he'd specifically said that I would shoplift if the CD-keys weren't protected. Two, I was offended by his rude, dismissive comment about me and my "little paisley purse" -- believe it or not, women play video games no matter what their purses look like, and making dismissive comments about me and the feminine things about me is rude, sexist, insulting behavior.
It occurred to me at this point that having the CD-keys in the open where any employee making $8 an hour could get at them might be just as unsafe as having them sitting out on a shelf where a 14-year-old who couldn't afford the game could shoplift them; employees at gaming stores in the Redmond area have been known to keep copies of customers' credit cards and use them for credit card fraud. Given the incredibly unprofessional treatment I'd been receiving at this store, there was no way I was going to trust them with my credit card information. I said, "Sorry, guys, never mind," and walked away.
The heavyset man with the pizza called after me, "Anywhere else you go, it's going to be the same, guys."
Actually, it turns out he was wrong. We went to Target, where I found an unopened copy of the WoW Battle Chest for the same MSRP as at EBX; I went to a register, handed over the game, my husband paid for it, and the employee asked if we wanted a bag--when we said no, she handed it to me, recognizing without having to be told that if I'd put it on the belt, it was probably for me, and not simply assuming that it was for my husband because gamers are traditionally assumed to be male.
If you ever wonder why storefront retail is doing less and less business, and why specialized shops are doing worse and worse, employees like the ones at EBX at Redmond Town Center are precisely why. One-on-one sales and employee knowledge may be valuable, but if the employees are rude and exhibit blatant sexist behavior, they're certainly not going to get my money, and I'm going to encourage my friends--half of my gaming friends, by the way, are female--to shop elsewhere. A big-box company like Target may not have the selection of EBX, but if their employees are less likely to make rude, sexist comments, I'm definitely going to look there first. And Amazon.com has a far better selection--and has never once asked me if I'm buying WoW to play with my husband, or accused me of wanting to put valuables in my "little paisley purse". (Amazon.com, if asked, will correctly identify my purse as Vera Bradley and offers me more Vera Bradley products, but it certainly won't bring up my handbag if I don't bring it up first.)
In summary: EBX at Redmond Town Center? Made of epic fail. Avoid.