Comments (9)

By Brenda, December 7, 2009 15:13

As the holidays approach, I once again find myself looking around for the best bargains on potential gifts. In previous years, albeit remarkably few years of my life, this would mean actually getting up and going to the mall to shop around. For years now, however, this means loading up Amazon and Google and browsing around for the most unique and most fun gifts that exist anywhere around the world. And then paying exorbitant amounts of shipping, or finding that they don’t ship to Canada at all and having to first ship to a friend in the US… but that is a topic for another day.

This year in my usual meanderings I stumbled upon something that struck me as rather bizarre. While this is, for sure, not out of the ordinary on the Internet, indeed it happens more times per day than I load up a browser, in this particular instance the activity struck me as particularly mindboggling. I was browsing the Red Flag Deals forums and several times I came across terms that I had no idea what they meant. Again, not an entirely uncommon occurance on the Internet, but that coupled together with me being in the Computers and Video Gaming forum, the situation became almost unnerving.

What I soon discovered was that there exists an entire subculture around the trading of merchandise, price-matching, and scouting bargains. They even have their own slang, acronyms, and methods, and, I dare say, rituals of employee manipulation. (Granted, when fighting big business and the MAN this sounds far less abhorrent than how I’ve stated it). Naturally bargain hunters have been enabled by the Internet, but this is taking it to a new level. There are now sites like TIVs.ca, a site featuring current information about the value you would receive should you trade in your video games to specific stores. I completely understand wanting to get the most value for your game once you are done with it, and by all means make the most educated choice. The impression I got from reading the forums was that it was not uncommon for people to actually buy video games for the sake of trading them in for higher credit elsewhere.

I’m probably just cynical about this whole deal, but the relative gain that you could receive from this seems to be far outweighed by the effort put in. There were many reports of purchases of a certain game, where people go to the extent to get the flyer and price-match at a different store halfway across the city for the sake of gaining 10% off, which, in many cases since the item was on sale to begin with, amounts to a dollar or two. It’s like an entirely new stock market, fueled by the ease of sharing of social knowledge and hindered by the annoying reality that in order to partake you actually have to get up out of your chair and spend more money in gas, more time in travel, and more social graces with irritated, minimum-wage employees just so that you can get your sweet, sweet bargain. Sign me up.