Dear Goozex members,

On Monday, March 31, in response to requests from many members coupled with an analysis of video game prices, Goozex raised the maximum point value for games to 1200 points. Since then, there has been an outcry on the forum and many of you have contacted us personally to express your displeasure with the sudden change.  Ensuring a positive member experience is our number one priority at Goozex, and we have decided to return to a maximum point value of 1000 points for all games.  In other words, things are going back to the way they were two days ago.

Here is a little background that led to our initial decision.  During the past few months we have been contacted by many of you about the need to increase the point cap for games. In making the change to 1200 points, we were also looking to incentivize sellers to trade new releases sooner. We believed changing the maximum point value was appropriate given the higher MSRP that games for Xbox 360 and PS3 are sold at ($60 compared to $50).  In the end, the more newer titles traded is a win for everybody.

The change only affected a total of 57 games (23 of which had an MSRP of $60 and the rest being either rare or big bundle games like Rock Band).  That is 57 games out of 27,000 in our database.  Most of these were re-priced between 1050 and 1100 points. This higher price was justified by an imbalance between demand and supply or by the very recent release date.

Why are we rolling back the decision?  We meant to disclose this new update in our newsletter, which was due to come out today.  Although we had expected a positive response, as a management team we should have announced this change to you, our users, before making it. We sincerely apologize for the confusion and the anxiety that this unannounced change caused.   In the end it was bad timing and poorly made decisions on our part.

We at Goozex pride ourselves on listening to our members and to placing great value on customer satisfaction. We also take great pride in running the best game trading site on the Internet.  We are working through the night to make the following changes, and we anticipate they will be completed tomorrow:

- Maximum price of 1000 points for a game is restored
- Goozex will reimburse the difference in point value to those users that bought a game for more than 1000 points

A silver lining to this story is that we have seen many new users active on the forum.  We also have started a great conversation about Goozex points and what they mean to you.  We want to continue this discussion in the upcoming weeks.  We hope you will continue to trade on Goozex and to participate to one of the best gaming communities anywhere!

Happy trading!

Valerio Zanini, CEO

It certainly has been an active couple of days on the forums.  A bit spicy in fact.  It's nice to see the passion this has stirred up, and the quick resolve by the G-team.  Many thanks!

Like I said in the other thread, you don't often see a business that listens to their members on a personal basis. Kudos to the G-Team for this! 

Yep thank you so much goozex for listening to us gamers it means alot..where will these changes take effect..because i still see games for over 1000....anyways guys i know you will fix this..and much thank yous for changing the way it was before..thanks!!!...oopps sorry about that guys..i did not read the part where you said you are going to be working to get this back to normal..once again..i dont know how many times i need to say it..thank you!!!

Well done with the rapid response to all of this.  I really hope and believe no one thought for an instant that goozex had anything but the best intentions with this change.  The discussion really was handled well by the community.  Cool heads prevailed and my goozex keeps on ticking.

Guys in the future, I would appreciate it if you would run all planned changes by me, that way we can avoid this type of thing in the first place

Keep on rockin in the free world G-Team!!!

Could've just posted 'April Fools' and left it at that :)

Thanks for the letter and sentiment Valerio (as well as the rest of the Goozex team). Sorry for the headaches the team must be going through at the moment. I am not opposed to change, and I understand that sites such as Goozex need to balance their best interests as well as the well-being of their community. With that said, Goozex has visibly responded to their community more times than I have seen with any other site I frequent. I just hope our expressing opinions about this points increase was actually constructive and not just a thread of whining babies.

I personally am thankful to have things 'back to normal' around here at Goozex. The point increase wasn't the end of the world for me, but those 1,000 point games are just a perfect fit in my opinion. I have no problem with limited editions or big box items moving into the 1,200 point range if it is even possible to segregate them (what happens when big box games are disc only?).

Either way the points go there is always going to be two schools of arguments, and I don't envy the team trying to balance them. The change was made because people complained about point caps, and then reversed because people complained about point caps - how do you handle a situation like that?

For what it's worth, thanks for listening and hopefully this whole ordeal hasn't caused too much trouble.

Your efforts are much appreciated

now, back to your regularly scheduled trading.

  -Tenga

 ps - is 'incentivize' really a word? 

 Good work on this. I think we might use it as a case example for our PR unit in Entrepreneurship :)

"Incentivize" is a perfectly cromulent word - at least according my dictionary

Thank you.

As I posted before and others have too... I really see ZERO problem in increasing the price of SE/LE games. With Rock Band and GH. Sure the price of shipping the guitar/drums etc.... should carry a premium. I think few people would have a problem with that. I'd be VERY happy to pay a reasonable premium for a full Rock Band set. That being said I'm never going to get it in the next millenum here because of the current price. So sure tack on extra points to entice the owners of said games to ship them. Regular games, no. Thanks for seeing the problem.  

So please don't let this backlash scare you away from a points increase for special games. BUT let it be for special games only.  

madfigs:

"Incentivize" is a perfectly cromulent word - at least according my dictionary

 

I stand corrected:

incentivize ( in·cen·tiv·ize )

 

could you maybe try something like charging a premium on newer releases? maybe charge an extra 100-200 pts for games that have been out for less then like sixty or ninety days? this could add an incentive for people to ship out new games faster without raising prices across the board.

Hey everyone,

I want to echo Valerio and say that we're sorry for fumbling the notification of the point cap increase.  I want to thank you all for the constructive feedback! It really helped speed up the decision.  

I also would like to keep the conversation going about points pricing.  It is the Goozex core and one of the things that keeps this crazy community going!

Somewhere out there Akdar is having a good laugh over this.  Probably made up the word incentivize too...

I echo shadow's claims that Goozex does listen to their members. Thank you for taking the time to respond and review the decision. 

Hey guys, just wanted to let you all know what the first draft for Zannabianca's post was:

zannabianca:

Dear Goozex members,

That whole point cap increase thing? That one you were all taking so seriously? Well...

 APRIL FOOLS!

Happy trading!

Valerio Zanini, CEO

Then he decided to go a more tactful route.

(Yes, the above post is a joke...) 

 

What was really driven home for me by this whole 'experiment' was how much I do value Goozex points as currency. I was well aware that before requesting or trading a game I did the conversion in my head, but today made it so much more evident.

Getting a new release for 1,000 points was sufficient for me both as a buyer and a seller. What options are there really out there? You can deal with the hassle of eBay - fending off requests to ship your game to Nigeria, dealing with non-paying bidders and shelling out for eBay and Paypal fees. Or, you can get robbed at Gamestop while they turn right around and sell your game for nearly full price.

Doing the math, Goozex and it's 1,000 points for new releases just makes the most sense to me. Even when I had gotten less for a recent release it didn't bother so much. I knew 1,000 was the most I would need to get anything off my request list which translated to what I feel is a very reasonable $50

While 200 points isn't a huge increase, it was just enough to give me the same feeling I get when I look at a used game at Gamestop selling for $55.95. In essence, I felt somewhat less incentivized to keep my gaming budget tied up in Goozex points since I was no longer getting that price break on the games.

Granted, there is much more going for Goozex than the perceived discount I'm attracted to that would've kept me an active trader, but it just felt like more of a negative than positive change.

I would like to hear more input from the traders who were in favor of this increase. I'm sure there are more considerations I am not... uh.. considering :)

Has any thought been put into increasing the dollar amount for purchasing points? perhaps such a change would incentivize (ha, used it twice now in one post) people to trade more for points as they have a slightly increased perceptive value?

It's late and I'm tired so that last paragraph might not have made any sense. I'll try and elaborate on it in the morning.

again, thanks for listening

 

zzZzzzzZzzzZZZZ......