Trading Places

Quote of the day: "What I told you was the truth - from a certain point of view..." - Sir Alec Guinness, Return of the Jedi

Song of the day: "Good Vibrations" - The Beach Boys

Website of the day: http://wwf.com/forums - A wrestling E-Fed of which I am a member

Pre-rant notes: I've added a 'website of the day,' as the more astute amongst you will have already spotted. This first one was mentioned in one of my early posts. Its a place where lots of strange people like me pretend to be wrestlers. Check it out.




Over the last few years, entertainment shops have developed a brilliant knack of getting us to pay for something twice - trading in.

I think it was something that started in videogame shops. If they didn't start it, then they definitely perfected it. When i worked in such a shop two years ago, there was a huge emphasis on pre-owned games. A brand new game, let's say, for instance, GTA San Andreas, as that's just come out, sells for £39.99 full price. If a customer wishes to trade it in, they'd get, at the extreme most, 20 quid for it. The shop will then put it back out, with a pre-owned sticker, for £34.99 Five pound off full price. And the thing with pre-owned games is that they don't have to give a cut to the manufacturers, as they already got their money in the original sale. And because most of them give value off other goods rather than cash, the customer then has to add money to what their trade-in is worth in order to buy something new.

So shops encourage trade-ins as it's a win/win situation for them.

Just recently, its a fad that seems to have spread from game shops to bigger entertainment shops selling DVDs and CDs. Again, this will improve their profits no end, but surely it will envoke anger from music and film manufacturers?

Since the boom in game trade-ins, the larger games companies such as Nintendo have been complaining that it is as bad as piracy, what with them not getting a cut. With all the uproar about file-sharing on the internet with regards to music and films, surely trade-ins will be attacked next?

To be honest, I actually think trade-ins can be a handy thing. Just the other day i was clearing out my shelves, and took a pile of DVDs i haven't watched for ages and turned them into a brand new Quantum Leap DVD box set. And i'm amazingly poor at the moment, so there was no other way i could have got it. So yeah, I personally think trade-ins make sense, but I just get the feeling that they ain't gonna be around forever.....