Game Knight — Attraction in Columbia

This was one of the most disturbing experiences I've ever had with a card/gaming establishment, heck, any place of business actually. It started off just fine. I brought in some Pokemon cards to trade in and had some more shopping to do with my family around town so I just dropped them off with my name and number. The guy said that would be fine and they would call me when they had them priced. Cool, no probs so far. My mom, my fiance, and my 11-month-old are with me and we shop a few places. I check my phone, a voicemail saying they had my cards priced and I could come by. We finished up at DollarMart, and headed back to GameKnight. I go in and it was a different guy behind the counter but when I mentioned I brought the pkmn cards he said "Oh yeah the $70", which wasn't mentioned in the voicemail but was a fair deal to me. Still, no problem so far. A five-star review so far. But then my family and I leave to go to Kroger. And this is when the B.S. begins... I'm waiting in the car with my toddler, asleep at this point in the shopping trip. My phone rings, but a different number than the one that had called about my cards being ready. I answered and said hello several times, even heard a guy on the other end say my name, but then it hung up. Strange, I thought. A few seconds later the first number called but it was as though they couldn't hear me either. The next call came through and I swear to God I will never forget this converversation: "Pj? Yes. This is so-an-so from Game Knight. We were going through your cards and some of them are counterfeit so I hope you haven't gotten too far because I'm going to need you to bring that money back or we will have to call the cops." o.O Really? Never in my lifesmdh So of course I tell them I'll bring the money back, I'm not getting arrested over $70 worth of Pokemon cards that I know for a fact are real(I mean,unless GameStop and the Pokemon company are sending out fake cards. All the cards I had brought in were pulled with my own two hands from packs I had bought with my own hard earned money). So I bring the money back up there, but I ask the guy why they had changed their minds. he said their main two concerns were the rainbow rare not having any texture(it totally did) and the crimping at the top of one of the ex's. I tried to show him that the rainbow did have texture but it was obvious he had had nothing to do with the trade or it's cancellation so I just grabbed my cards and walked out. We began to leave the parking lot when suddenly I just had an instinctual feeling to check and make sure all my cards were back in the box. Not only were most of them out of their protective sleeves and thrown haphazardly into the tin, but my most valuable card was missing! I go back in and the guy who took my cards in for trade was in their playing and noticed me come back in.i told him I didn't get all my cards back and he goes behind the counter,picks up my missing card, shows his supervisor/store owner and they guy says "No that one's ours". So the guy keeps looking around for like 15 mins, he starts to remember me having that card, and the boss comes out of his card game just long enough to remember that that is my card and they had a different one. -.-

tl;dr: They went back on a trade deal, called my real cards counterfeits, threatened to call the cops on me, and then tried to keep my most expensive card....

Edit: owner previously responded to this review and then later deleted his ridiculously unprofessional and childish response banning me and others from the store for daring to speak out. Beware of this place and this owner.

I initially did not plan to say anything regarding my experience today, but after seeing the owner’s ridiculously disproportionate response to another customer, I felt like I needed to. I think part of what makes a good store is good communication and a respect for its general customer base and that is something that is lacking here.

I arrived at the store today with a few other Warhammer players after many of us had made an agreement to play on this date. It turns out that there was a Magic tournament taking place and Warhammer was prohibited. One of the players (the one who left the review that the owner responded disrespectfully to) was apparently told that it was okay to set up for a table of Warhammer. I also want to make it clear that many of us drove almost a hour to this location to play. When the player that was told it was okay to set up started to set up, he was later told by another employee that there was no WH on this day due to the tournament. He had already pulled out half of his army and was apparently not aware that the tournament would prohibit WH and was further told by someone at the front counter that it was totally fine.

Once again, I would have simply chalked this up to me, being a newer customer to the store, not knowing better. However, after seeing the owners response to the other player who left a review telling them to never come back and further telling them that it was well known info that WH was prohibited in the store during tournaments and that they were toxic and needed to grow up, I felt like I needed to leave a review. I have personally not seen an owner respond so unprofessionally to a disgruntled employee, so this response was a bit jarring to me. I later went to look on the website afterwords to see if there was any easy to find info on WH being prohibited during Magic tournaments and I was not able to find anything. That could honestly just be me overlooking this but other players who were present stated that they were not aware of this either. My question is if this was such well known information, why did no one seem to be aware of this? Also, why are players being allowed to come in and set up and then later being told that they can’t play? I need to clarify that the issue isn’t that we couldn’t play or than anyone felt entitled to doing so, it’s the blatant miscommunication and lack of information by the store on the situation entirely.

So, with all that out of the way, like I said previously, I was willing to just forget the situation and move on, but after seeing the disrespectful response by the owner, it seems more than apparent to me that they don’t want my business. The customer that was told not to come back was a very helpful and involved member of the WH community at the store and went out of his way to suggest the store to other players. It’s a real shame because this is a nice store and it’s one of the closer game stores to my area, but if this is how the owners of this store think about their WH customer base, then I’d rather not do my...

EDIT: PLEASE CHECK MY UPLOADS FOR CONTEXT. Owner removed all his responses I took screenshots and reposted. Generally a decent place to play various games. Went in for a 40K game during a magic event was told I could use a back table by employee finished setting up and was booted from using the table after I was seen spending the time setting the table same as the other two players that came in behind me. I live in a rural area even for the area and I wasted the entire 40 minute drive for bad info. EDIT: we’ve also had issues with my dnd group with a certain employee booting us out of our table despite us having played for months and our dm having used their own system on discord to reserve said table 2 of our 5 players are elderly or disabled and unable to walk properly or without pain being forced to the back of the store so said employee can watch the register and play absolutely sucks. In response to the owner I 100% didn’t know that this is the first time I’ve been in when something like that has happened and I was working off what the tall guy with dark hair at the front desk told me was ok I checked the discord beforehand and I didn’t see anything that would’ve told me no other events or I would’ve just stayed home neither did the 6 other warhammer players know either. EDIT: had another friend check their discord and the info wasn’t posted in the correct channels I honestly have no idea how I was supposed to know.EDIT: Hopefully final edit here the response from the store changed asking me to call which I plan to do once I have a little time to do so. I’ve been actively involved in the community teaching multiple people 40K and even launched with the help of the players a player led crusade for 40K loaning out my personal armies to make sure everyone has a chance to learn and play this feels incredibly targeted and feels like a knee jerk response to not just me some of the other players that happened to be there at the same time. Jan 18th 2025 reached out to call was told owner wasn’t in will leave update if they call back. I had a short call with the owner of the store after seeing his response to my review and his position during the call I feel the review is justified. The other customer with me at the time puts it far more succinctly in their review then I ever did I encourage anyone who reads this to also read his review. In response to the owner that’s entirely your prerogative I’ve no idea what set you off but I suppose I’ll pass the info along to the other people in my group. I’m just baffled here genuinely so I never raised my voice or made any sort of angry demand told him I’d think about changing the review after he called...