Preplayed Xchange — Local services in Madison

My husband and I love to shop there for movies and occasionally a game or two but we are from the Wisconsin Dells area so its a little bit of a drive. We have never had any problems there before. Good customer service and great prices, best you can find around! However we shopped there last week to buy a game for a ps3 and when we got home, we started to play our new game (pre-played). About an hour into it the game froze and we couldn't get it out of the ps3. We finallly got it out and re realized there was a huge crack in it! Luckily we still had our receipt and it had a 7 day return policy. We returned the game 4 days later. The cashier assured us that she did not have to do the refund for us (even though the reciept says 7 day return policy with a restocking fee) and she would let us do a store credit for the amount. Well we didn't see anything we wanted and we've drove and hour back to the store and we wanted our money back. When my husband asked her to go over the return policy with him she said "yes it is a 7 day return policy but you were careless with the disc and thats why it broke," but then she turned around and said "his ps3 broke the disc because my manager would have never sold you a disc in that kind of condition." ABSOLUTELY OUT OF LINE AND TOTALLY RUDE!!! I finally butt-into the conversation and said "how can you say that? this has never happened to us before, his ps3 has never broken a disc." She says "fine! i'll just return your cash and you can just be on your way" As she SLAMS the cash and the change on the counter and rudely turns her back to us and reads her book. My husbands calls back that night because we wanted to speak to the manager about how rude his employee was to us, turns out SHE WAS THE MANAGER!! WTF! Looks like they've lost another couple customers! We drive quiet a ways to shop there because there prices are the best around but its alot in gas for us, not the mention salting the wound with such a bitchy manager. Word to the wise, if you are going to shop there stay away from the tall skinny check-out girl with sandy blonde hair, unless you wanna get...

I went to both Preplayed stores in Madison (East and West), and I can say that they serve as very good video game stores. They do have a wide selection of movies, but since I'm not much of a movie collector, I'm going to be focusing more on their video game side. They boast a very wide selection of titles. Heck, I even found a Game & Watch system at the West store, at a respectable price no less. They have plenty of games for just about every major system, so they're both very good stores to seek out if you're looking for a particular title. Their prices were a mixed bag, especially with the quality some of the titles were in. Some titles were at eBay prices, some over (the usual 15% that modern game stores do), and some were lower. Some games I'd rather go to eBay for, but otherwise I was fine with spending the extra couple dollars to obtain different titles then and there. However, the quality of each game was questionable compared to its price, the Nintendo DS games especially. Many of the games that use plastic cases didn't have their original artwork. They simply had artwork printed from regular printer paper, and I can respect why they do it. However, I can't agree with selling a game for its full price when it's using low-quality replacement supplies. The staff at each store was very helpful, and you could see that they cared about video games. I got caught talking about EarthBound to one of the salesmen, and it was great to see they could understand the lingo. At the East store, one of the staff members helped carry all they DS games I planned on buying- and it wound up being a tall stack. Both Preplayed East and West have great service and boast a wide selection of games at mostly fair prices, but the quality of the game cases couldn't justify paying full price tags to me. That being said, I'm sure all of the games are legit, so there's no fear...

They have price stickers on everything, but they are the kind you can easily peel off. Bought ten DVDs (for less than or the same price as they were online) and once home I happily removed all the stickers with zero ripping, tearing, scouring, or swearing. Two of the movies were even in those old boxes with the glossy cardboard cover (not plastic). So many places don't keep this in mind but it made me a very happy customer.

Oh yeah, great selection and knowledgeable staff too. They might seem standoffish at first but based on repeated visits they take care of one customer at a time (which may take a while), then they will move on to the next. So if you think they are being rude just be patient and you will get the employee's full attention soon, and then they are as helpful as can be.

(I really shouldn't have to say this but don't be a dummy and try to switch the price tags around in the store when no one is looking. Each one clearly has the name of the game or movie printed on it, and all the discs are securely locked behind the counter anyways so you're not...