After the popular thread of "rudest/worst mtg opponent" (NOT my thread)I decided to start this one about MTG shops, because sometimes the employees and owners can be 10x worse than the players.
This can be about bad employees, bad owners, horrible deals, a toxic community that the store hosts, etc. Anything that is the fault of the employees/owners, or could easily be prevented by the employees/owners, post it here. Please, for the sake of keeping things civil, avoid names of people and especially names of stores. While I encourage people to share their bad experiences to others to warn them about specific stores, I do not think that calling out on a forum thread is the way to go.
I'll kick us off with my story.
There are three popular MTG shops where I live. The one hosts amazing prizes for every player, such as getting a free booster pack whenever you win a round, plus even more if you go undefeated, plus random door prizes, but due to that it attracts people who are only into that, and you get a lot of immature people. The other one that I exclusively go to has not-so-great prizes for the average player (if you go undefeated you get promos, boosters, etc. plus there are some promos for random players) but because of this, and because of how awesome the owner and employees are, it attracts an amazing community who is only there for the fun of the game.
However, that last shop, ooooh no. Where do I begin, the rude employees, the lazy owner, or the dishonest marketing? Well, let's start with the shop itself. They aren't afraid to find a way to rip you off, and they make you work for it too. First of all, you can't call ahead and ask them to pull aside cards for you. Instead, you have to go in, they hand you a binder that isn't organized, and you dig through it all. The prices are average for the cards, but pretty much everything else is overpriced. If you even once stop and think maybe you are getting a good deal, it's probably not. My friend once bought a bag of dice there, "wow, 100 random dice for $25? That's good." Well, guess what, a lot of them were misprints. Most dice would have repeats of numbers and so never actually be useable for anything.
So, then there are the employees. The first time me and my friends went in, we were looking through magic cards (this store is half the drive as the other one) and the one employee comes over and starts poking fun at us about how we are playing magic and not Yu-Gi-Oh. We thought he was joking until he started saying things like, quote, "magic is gay" and "that's a bad card because that's a bad game", all while he was looking through yu-gi-oh cards behind the counter. The second time we went in, the other employee was listening to music with both earbuds the entire time, and we kept having to get their attention so they could take off the headphones to hear us, but as soon as our question ended they put it right back on.
The owner as you can imagine isn't that great either. He seemed nice at first, offering to play with us while we waited for the draft to start, but later it became obvious he was just interested in the money. He would constantly try and promote things to buy, "Oh, you use that deckbox, the Satin Tower is a lot better" ok, fair enough I thought. "using an app isn't really that good for life counting. You should buy count-downs and a dice tower." ok...? "Why did you even bother with Ultra Pro sleeves when you can just buy Dragon Shields that are way better?" Alright, now I started getting annoyed, let me buy what I damn want! Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad if it weren't that he was constantly pushy and usually favored his long-term customers no matter how in-the-wrong they were.
I have a store near me that I don't particularly care for. Their first issue is a somewhat small play area packed with as many tables and chairs as possible, making it a misery to ever play in an event with more than 15 people. I can forgive that though, they're just doing the best with what they have. They also have fairly high prices on singles and sealed product, but I can forgive that too, since I understand that smaller stores can't afford to sell for too cheap. What I cannot forgive is the abysmal customer service. The store has three employees that sometimes work the register. The first is an older woman who is nice enough, but the other two are either rude or completely inattentive. They always act like doing their job is some kind of terrible inconvenience, and every interaction with them has resulted in a glare or a condescending remark.
The worst is the owner. Aside from seeming to have absolutely no interest in the game or his store, he engages in some really scummy business practices. In 2014, when the mono color commander decks had just been released, I went to the store to buy the red one, which at the time was worth more than all the others. He was selling them for 40 dollars, which was more than the others, but still less than some places were selling for, so I decided to sell some of the cards I didn't want for store credit. After I had sold the cards, he refused to let me use the credit towards the deck. When I asked why, he told me that he "didnt have to" let me use it. What's the point of store credit if I can't use it for what I want to buy?
At least I don't have to go there anymore. I found another store that's much closer and better in every regard. I do kind of feel for the owner though. He got robbed a little while back, and I had heard a rumor that he was having other money troubles. I get that he may have needed the money, but screwing over customers is not the way to do it.
I decided to sell some of the cards I didn't want for store credit. After I had sold the cards, he refused to let me use the credit towards the deck. When I asked why, he told me that he "didnt have to" let me use it. What's the point of store credit if I can't use it for what I want to buy?
Wait, so did you just want to sell some cards you already had for store credit and they refused, or did you want to open the commander deck and sell cards that you didn't want out of the deck for store credit? If the store wouldn't let you do the first one, that's bad, but if they wouldn't let you do the second that seems pretty reasonable to me.
After the popular thread of "rudest/worst mtg opponent" (NOT my thread)I decided to start this one about MTG shops, because sometimes the employees and owners can be 10x worse than the players.
This can be about bad employees, bad owners, horrible deals, a toxic community that the store hosts, etc. Anything that is the fault of the employees/owners, or could easily be prevented by the employees/owners, post it here. Please, for the sake of keeping things civil, avoid names of people and especially names of stores. While I encourage people to share their bad experiences to others to warn them about specific stores, I do not think that calling out on a forum thread is the way to go.
I'll kick us off with my story.
There are three popular MTG shops where I live. The one hosts amazing prizes for every player, such as getting a free booster pack whenever you win a round, plus even more if you go undefeated, plus random door prizes, but due to that it attracts people who are only into that, and you get a lot of immature people. The other one that I exclusively go to has not-so-great prizes for the average player (if you go undefeated you get promos, boosters, etc. plus there are some promos for random players) but because of this, and because of how awesome the owner and employees are, it attracts an amazing community who is only there for the fun of the game.
I think you're confusing "immaturity" with "competitiveness". It's just a fact of any game tournament ever held in the history of the world that the greater the incentive to do well, the better and more serious those players are going to be.
The worst I saw was a store that kicked you out if you brought Magic cards inside. Their main revenue was Yugioh though, due to other stores having a more established Magic playerbase.
After the popular thread of "rudest/worst mtg opponent" (NOT my thread)I decided to start this one about MTG shops, because sometimes the employees and owners can be 10x worse than the players.
This can be about bad employees, bad owners, horrible deals, a toxic community that the store hosts, etc. Anything that is the fault of the employees/owners, or could easily be prevented by the employees/owners, post it here. Please, for the sake of keeping things civil, avoid names of people and especially names of stores. While I encourage people to share their bad experiences to others to warn them about specific stores, I do not think that calling out on a forum thread is the way to go.
I'll kick us off with my story.
There are three popular MTG shops where I live. The one hosts amazing prizes for every player, such as getting a free booster pack whenever you win a round, plus even more if you go undefeated, plus random door prizes, but due to that it attracts people who are only into that, and you get a lot of immature people. The other one that I exclusively go to has not-so-great prizes for the average player (if you go undefeated you get promos, boosters, etc. plus there are some promos for random players) but because of this, and because of how awesome the owner and employees are, it attracts an amazing community who is only there for the fun of the game.
I think you're confusing "immaturity" with "competitiveness". It's just a fact of any game tournament ever held in the history of the world that the greater the incentive to do well, the better and more serious those players are going to be.
Let me clarify a bit more.
It does NOT have better prizes in comparison to other stores for doing well/undefeated. It DOES have better prizes for the average person who is only going to win 1-3 games. This attracts a lot of people who go there simply for the prizes and could care less about the fun of the game. People will get really, really whiny if they lose because it's one less free booster. However, to be fair, there are some cool people there. The other store, however, is amazing by comparison. I once played against an opponent who would not only let me mulligan up to 7 cards again, but allowed me to switch cards out mid-game when I realized I put in a card with a different colored ability that I didn't notice. When I asked why he allowed this (it resulted in his loss, but I gave the win to game by forfeit for his kindness) he said "I am here to have fun, not to win, and I'd rather go home knowing I had a good match rather than a good prize."
Before I played Magic, there was a comic shop by my university that I remember. If you weren't a Magic player, none of the staff would greet you, they'd answer any questions you had with concise sentences, and no one made eye contact. The staff unhelpfully sat around playing Magic and didn't give you the time of day if you weren't already friends with one of them.
When I started playing Magic, I tried a few different game stores in the area and ommitted them due to the bad taste they left in my mouth the few times I bothered to stop in. I regular two different shops now with the nicest communities anyone could ever hope for, players and comic lovers alike.
Good evening. Well, this happened just a few days ago.. it's not exactly about the shop, but about one person in the community there.
It afternoon. I passed by this MTG shop, and I decided to buy some cards for a casual Eldrazi Ingest deck, just going buy the cheap cards like Mist Intruder and Vile Aggregate since only for casual.. and also plan to buy 18 forest for my G Stompy. Oh, and before going to the store, I picked up a Maki Nishikino cosplay costume for one of my female cosplayer friends who models in our photoshoots, the costume + boots, along with another bag for my cards I was carrying a lot of things, was just barely able to flip the large Zendikar binder of the store with my free hand. Beside me at the store desk is a very obese guy buying packs of Idolmaster playing cards, he's holding the box with the packs.. well, I casually told the store owner to also give me one pack of idolmaster cards just for the fun of it, so I could show friends who is a fan of that show - and behold, the fat guy suddenly said in a condescending tone "WAIT FOR YOUR TURN!" - wah... it turns out that the store only had one box of those idolmaster cards and fat guy is holding it, I did not know that there is only one box of those left, there's no need for him to be rude like that. And i wasn't even talking to the fat guy, I was talking to the owner of the store. In the end fat guy bought the entire box of those cards (which amounted to almost buying a Tarmogoyf). Next time I would be careful to ask the shop first if there are other boxes of a certain cards first, before I ask to buy a pack. O___O
My roommate got banned from a store for 'stealing' when he never did and my roommate is well known in the magic community around here. Owner said empty your pockets, he did, nothing incriminating in his pockets or any magic cards to speak of. Owner then said not buying is stealing, which if that were true might as well line up everyone in the country for their day in court regarding 'stealing'. The owner is also one of the biggest douchebags I know regularly insulting anyone who comes into his store by calling them *** and such like a friend of mine spent over $100 there and does the owner care? No just call him a *** because that's how he runs his business. Pretty sure he had bootleg animes and other stolen merchandise in his store too according to another friend of mine. Luckily pretty much all the stores in the metro area of Minnesota are good stores though.
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Alrite, so in my town we have three card shops that manage to stay open. One of the three will cancel your order when you purchase singles if the price gets raised after the initial agreement. for example: i go in and order a card for 1.50, it takes about 1 week to get it in. However if the price changes to 5.00 during that time, the order is canceled and I have to re-purchase the card at that price if i want it. not sure if that is shady or not but it irks me.
another is a shop where I used to frequent a lot, but the owner is always playing some war hammer and I can be sitting there for 15 minutes waiting for him to notice i'm at the counter, and if i dare to ask for help he makes me feel like i'm bothering him to death. So I just don't go back anymore. They dont want my money I wont give it then :P.
So I have one shop I really enjoy out of the three. its a pity though.
I would say the worst thing is my favorite shop closed down. From my point of view it had the nicest community and most space. The only thing close to a bad experience I had at any of the places was a rather grumpy tournament organizer who was being a bit odd on the Vintage Masters 2 draft rules.
There's a place near me that does magic as a side, and while I used to go to it fairly frequently, they always treat everyone who walks in the door like they're thieves looking for a chance.
When you want to look at their bulk selection they take you to a separate, tiny cramped area with multiple cameras on you, and one of the employees stands literally a foot away from you watching your every move. It's pretty uncomfortable. Plus, when something does actually get stolen at one of their events, they don't care at all. So I stopped going there a long time ago.
I have lots of shops in my general area. The best of these is dedicated entirely to magic.
The worst of these stores is located in a filthy mall. The store is too small, when he runs events, they always take at least 2 hours too long, and we have to play on mall tables. His single selection involves looking at binders. You are not allowed to look at the binders, unless 2 people are in the store(one person is usually out). The worst part, however, is that he will look and up adjust prices on singles AT THE REGISTER.
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he will look and up adjust prices on singles AT THE REGISTER.
Everything else sounds annoying, but I never understood why people god mad at this. You think you should be able to pull one over on the store because prices spiked overnight and they haven't had time to change all of their stickers? Why do you want to basically take money from your LGS? What's wrong with them charging market price for cards?
My roommate got banned from a store for 'stealing' when he never did and my roommate is well known in the magic community around here. Owner said empty your pockets, he did, nothing incriminating in his pockets or any magic cards to speak of. Owner then said not buying is stealing,
Referring to the part of the post that I put in bold. If the store owner said that as a joke, then it's fine in my opinion.. but if he said that seriously, then it's quite rude..
he will look and up adjust prices on singles AT THE REGISTER.
Everything else sounds annoying, but I never understood why people god mad at this. You think you should be able to pull one over on the store because prices spiked overnight and they haven't had time to change all of their stickers? Why do you want to basically take money from your LGS? What's wrong with them charging market price for cards?
It comes very close to bait and switch.
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he will look and up adjust prices on singles AT THE REGISTER.
Everything else sounds annoying, but I never understood why people god mad at this. You think you should be able to pull one over on the store because prices spiked overnight and they haven't had time to change all of their stickers? Why do you want to basically take money from your LGS? What's wrong with them charging market price for cards?
It comes very close to bait and switch.
This might be the most absurd thing I've ever read on this site! Prices change every day. Every. Single. Day. Do you expect them to look up prices and put new stickers on every piece of inventory on a daily basis? If Fall of the Titans spiked to $40 tomorrow, do you feel like the store should sell it to you for $1 just because they didn't change their stickers?!
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Can you name all of the creature types with at least 20 cards? Try my Sporcle Quiz! Last Updated: 6/29/20 (Core Set 2021).
This can be about bad employees, bad owners, horrible deals, a toxic community that the store hosts, etc. Anything that is the fault of the employees/owners, or could easily be prevented by the employees/owners, post it here. Please, for the sake of keeping things civil, avoid names of people and especially names of stores. While I encourage people to share their bad experiences to others to warn them about specific stores, I do not think that calling out on a forum thread is the way to go.
I'll kick us off with my story.
There are three popular MTG shops where I live. The one hosts amazing prizes for every player, such as getting a free booster pack whenever you win a round, plus even more if you go undefeated, plus random door prizes, but due to that it attracts people who are only into that, and you get a lot of immature people. The other one that I exclusively go to has not-so-great prizes for the average player (if you go undefeated you get promos, boosters, etc. plus there are some promos for random players) but because of this, and because of how awesome the owner and employees are, it attracts an amazing community who is only there for the fun of the game.
However, that last shop, ooooh no. Where do I begin, the rude employees, the lazy owner, or the dishonest marketing? Well, let's start with the shop itself. They aren't afraid to find a way to rip you off, and they make you work for it too. First of all, you can't call ahead and ask them to pull aside cards for you. Instead, you have to go in, they hand you a binder that isn't organized, and you dig through it all. The prices are average for the cards, but pretty much everything else is overpriced. If you even once stop and think maybe you are getting a good deal, it's probably not. My friend once bought a bag of dice there, "wow, 100 random dice for $25? That's good." Well, guess what, a lot of them were misprints. Most dice would have repeats of numbers and so never actually be useable for anything.
So, then there are the employees. The first time me and my friends went in, we were looking through magic cards (this store is half the drive as the other one) and the one employee comes over and starts poking fun at us about how we are playing magic and not Yu-Gi-Oh. We thought he was joking until he started saying things like, quote, "magic is gay" and "that's a bad card because that's a bad game", all while he was looking through yu-gi-oh cards behind the counter. The second time we went in, the other employee was listening to music with both earbuds the entire time, and we kept having to get their attention so they could take off the headphones to hear us, but as soon as our question ended they put it right back on.
The owner as you can imagine isn't that great either. He seemed nice at first, offering to play with us while we waited for the draft to start, but later it became obvious he was just interested in the money. He would constantly try and promote things to buy, "Oh, you use that deckbox, the Satin Tower is a lot better" ok, fair enough I thought. "using an app isn't really that good for life counting. You should buy count-downs and a dice tower." ok...? "Why did you even bother with Ultra Pro sleeves when you can just buy Dragon Shields that are way better?" Alright, now I started getting annoyed, let me buy what I damn want! Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad if it weren't that he was constantly pushy and usually favored his long-term customers no matter how in-the-wrong they were.
Anyways, there's my rant, I wanna hear yours!
The worst is the owner. Aside from seeming to have absolutely no interest in the game or his store, he engages in some really scummy business practices. In 2014, when the mono color commander decks had just been released, I went to the store to buy the red one, which at the time was worth more than all the others. He was selling them for 40 dollars, which was more than the others, but still less than some places were selling for, so I decided to sell some of the cards I didn't want for store credit. After I had sold the cards, he refused to let me use the credit towards the deck. When I asked why, he told me that he "didnt have to" let me use it. What's the point of store credit if I can't use it for what I want to buy?
At least I don't have to go there anymore. I found another store that's much closer and better in every regard. I do kind of feel for the owner though. He got robbed a little while back, and I had heard a rumor that he was having other money troubles. I get that he may have needed the money, but screwing over customers is not the way to do it.
Wait, so did you just want to sell some cards you already had for store credit and they refused, or did you want to open the commander deck and sell cards that you didn't want out of the deck for store credit? If the store wouldn't let you do the first one, that's bad, but if they wouldn't let you do the second that seems pretty reasonable to me.
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I think you're confusing "immaturity" with "competitiveness". It's just a fact of any game tournament ever held in the history of the world that the greater the incentive to do well, the better and more serious those players are going to be.
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Ok, then yeah that's dumb on the store's part.
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Let me clarify a bit more.
It does NOT have better prizes in comparison to other stores for doing well/undefeated. It DOES have better prizes for the average person who is only going to win 1-3 games. This attracts a lot of people who go there simply for the prizes and could care less about the fun of the game. People will get really, really whiny if they lose because it's one less free booster. However, to be fair, there are some cool people there. The other store, however, is amazing by comparison. I once played against an opponent who would not only let me mulligan up to 7 cards again, but allowed me to switch cards out mid-game when I realized I put in a card with a different colored ability that I didn't notice. When I asked why he allowed this (it resulted in his loss, but I gave the win to game by forfeit for his kindness) he said "I am here to have fun, not to win, and I'd rather go home knowing I had a good match rather than a good prize."
See the other thread about worst MTG opponents. Names are also not allowed there.
When I started playing Magic, I tried a few different game stores in the area and ommitted them due to the bad taste they left in my mouth the few times I bothered to stop in. I regular two different shops now with the nicest communities anyone could ever hope for, players and comic lovers alike.
It afternoon. I passed by this MTG shop, and I decided to buy some cards for a casual Eldrazi Ingest deck, just going buy the cheap cards like Mist Intruder and Vile Aggregate since only for casual.. and also plan to buy 18 forest for my G Stompy. Oh, and before going to the store, I picked up a Maki Nishikino cosplay costume for one of my female cosplayer friends who models in our photoshoots, the costume + boots, along with another bag for my cards I was carrying a lot of things, was just barely able to flip the large Zendikar binder of the store with my free hand. Beside me at the store desk is a very obese guy buying packs of Idolmaster playing cards, he's holding the box with the packs.. well, I casually told the store owner to also give me one pack of idolmaster cards just for the fun of it, so I could show friends who is a fan of that show - and behold, the fat guy suddenly said in a condescending tone "WAIT FOR YOUR TURN!" - wah... it turns out that the store only had one box of those idolmaster cards and fat guy is holding it, I did not know that there is only one box of those left, there's no need for him to be rude like that. And i wasn't even talking to the fat guy, I was talking to the owner of the store. In the end fat guy bought the entire box of those cards (which amounted to almost buying a Tarmogoyf). Next time I would be careful to ask the shop first if there are other boxes of a certain cards first, before I ask to buy a pack. O___O
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another is a shop where I used to frequent a lot, but the owner is always playing some war hammer and I can be sitting there for 15 minutes waiting for him to notice i'm at the counter, and if i dare to ask for help he makes me feel like i'm bothering him to death. So I just don't go back anymore. They dont want my money I wont give it then :P.
So I have one shop I really enjoy out of the three. its a pity though.
When you want to look at their bulk selection they take you to a separate, tiny cramped area with multiple cameras on you, and one of the employees stands literally a foot away from you watching your every move. It's pretty uncomfortable. Plus, when something does actually get stolen at one of their events, they don't care at all. So I stopped going there a long time ago.
The worst of these stores is located in a filthy mall. The store is too small, when he runs events, they always take at least 2 hours too long, and we have to play on mall tables. His single selection involves looking at binders. You are not allowed to look at the binders, unless 2 people are in the store(one person is usually out). The worst part, however, is that he will look and up adjust prices on singles AT THE REGISTER.
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Everything else sounds annoying, but I never understood why people god mad at this. You think you should be able to pull one over on the store because prices spiked overnight and they haven't had time to change all of their stickers? Why do you want to basically take money from your LGS? What's wrong with them charging market price for cards?
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Referring to the part of the post that I put in bold. If the store owner said that as a joke, then it's fine in my opinion.. but if he said that seriously, then it's quite rude..
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It comes very close to bait and switch.
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Um, no it doesn't. That's not at all what bait and switch is.
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This might be the most absurd thing I've ever read on this site! Prices change every day. Every. Single. Day. Do you expect them to look up prices and put new stickers on every piece of inventory on a daily basis? If Fall of the Titans spiked to $40 tomorrow, do you feel like the store should sell it to you for $1 just because they didn't change their stickers?!
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