Dabbers Gaming Cafe — Local services in Lilburn

I want to preface this review by saying I spent less than 3 minutes in the store (for reasons that'll become apparent in a minute). My brother and I went here searching solely for Pokemon card singles. After being told they were on a computer, we went over and waited for about 30 seconds after searching "Pokemon" to find about 10 results. However, searching "holo" and filtering by Pokemon brought up around 20 new results. Not only that, nothing on there was specifically priced; it was all "starting from $0.50/$2.00/$10/etc." No conditions listed either. Why would I want to ask to see a card with an extremely vague price, no condition, and not even pictures?

While I understand wanting more security for the cards (especially with recent events), if I wanted to look at cards on a computer, I'd just stay home. And it's not like they were lacking cameras either; I saw at least two. The search engine on their website wasn't very intuitive, and I would personally find it easier to look at the cards behind a glass display. Now this is not to trash the employees or this specific establishment, both of which seem fine based on other reviews and my own personal experience. If you're just looking to purchase some singles, though, I'd avoid this place entirely....

TLDR: Unfriendly employees and prices worse than scalpers.

I stopped by Dabbers on my way home from work hoping to buy a Chilling Reign ETB. When I walked in, no one spoke to me, and it seemed like the employees couldn’t be bothered to offer any help. Just to set the scene, there was one other person in the store besides me. After standing around awkwardly for 5 minutes as to not interrupt the ongoing conversation between 3 employees and the one customer, one of the employees finally asked if there was anything I needed. I inquired about the ETB I wanted to buy. Was quoted $25 over MSRP, which is honestly $15 more expensive than the price at which scalpers attempt to sell these products. That would have been understandable (but still shady) if it were 6 months ago when Pokémon was impossible to find, but this is a product that can literally be ordered off eBay, GameStop, Walmart, or Target’s websites. I wanted to support a local business to maybe form a relationship and make friends, but this place does not seem to want any new customers.

Edit: according to the reply to my review, they price off of TCGplayer. Funny how the price I was quoted is $20 higher than the attached screenshot from...

False Advertising and Poor Customer Experience

Dabbers posted on Facebook that they would be selling Destined Rivals at retail on release day, so I made the hour-long drive to be there before opening. When the store opened, the manager announced that booster boxes were priced at $280, well above market at the timeand that all ETBs had already been “pre-sold.”

When we showed the manager their own Facebook post, he returned 10 minutes later to say that “retail” means “market price.” This felt deliberately misleading, especially since the same post clearly stated another product would be sold at market. It raised concerns that staff may have set aside product before open or misled customers intentionally.

Whether it was poor communication or something more questionable, I won’t be returning and I don’t recommend this...