Disappointing purchase stories, anyone?

Has anyone got a story of buying something and having it be nowhere near your expectations?

EDIT: I'm not asking for things you bought that were crap on their own (Duke Nukem Forever), but circumstances where you specifically got dicked over. (buying used tires, having them pop on the way home; or the lady who bought a used PS4 from Target, and there were instead 2 bibles in the box)

I'll start:
My neighbor usually has a yard sale on the weekends, as he makes his living through storage units, and I'll usually go through it and find some great deals, like a Canon Pixima MP495 with box for $5. Anyways, about a month ago, I went right for the table he had for video games, as always, and looked through the PS2 games, and found a box that immediatly caught my eye: PlayStation Underground Jampack Volume 15. I instantly wanted it, as I've always found a unique, nostalgic charm in console demo discs. Plus, if it weren't for those, I wouldn't have tried some fun games I'd not have tried otherise, such as Firefighter FD-18, or the import demo for Chain Dive (a great platformer that was never released state-side). Anxious, I asked my neighbor how much he wanted for it, and he just said a dollar. I got it, and later cracked it open. All the paperwork was there, manual, subscription papers, all that. I looked to the right half of the box only for my spirits to drop: a copy of Guitar Hero II was placed inside. I told my neighbor about it, and he offered to refund my money, but I kept it, as Guitar Hero II is one of the few Guitar Hero games I'm missing. Now the box sits on my shelf as a constant reminder of what could have been.

If I've learned anything from Goodwill, it's to check the damn case. I thought I had Led Zeppelin IV, got home, and found a very damaged copy of the Wayne's World soundtrack.

Bought Soldier of Fortune for the PS2 at some thrift store, got home and got the red screen of death, and their return policy wasn't exactly.... Appropriate. Nw for that one, I wasn't eve aware the PS2 had such a screen, but it's caused by games with damaged inner circles, which I didn't notice... Or rather, I didn't know it was going to be a bad thing.

Ooh...

Clonehunter said:

I wasn't eve aware the PS2 had such a screen, but it's caused by gmes with damaged inner circles

or if it's just a disc the PS2 can't boot (like a CD for a PC game). That screen always scared the hell out of me when I was little... Still gives me the chills to see today...

I bought Oblivion for PC new from Game Stop. I say new, because the display copy didn't have a game in it, yet it still had NEW on the case. I thought it was just a display copy and they'd get me a real copy. No they just brought the disc. Within 5 minutes I was home and it was telling me the license has already been used. They wouldn't take it back within about 15 minute. They even knew me, I had shopped there regularly. That was the last time I shopped with them.

Here's another Game Stop story. I was clearing out their used games with a buy 2 get 2 free. I had picked it clean time and time again. The only thing interesting was Ninja Gaiden Black or whatever for XBox. Bought it, came home, put it in. Didn't work 3 times. 4th time it worked for 10 minutes. Took it back got a refund. TWO years later I was back with the same deal, I picked up Ninja Gaiden Black. I had completely forgotten I already had it at some point. Drove it home. SAME DAMN COPY :-)

Alright, here's eBay stories for you. My girlfriend made me get a Wii 2 years after the Wii U was out. The first 3 worked fine for 30 minutes before they just died due to overheating since their fans are broken. Its the Red Ring of Death without the Ring.

Here's another eBay story from 10 or so years ago. Bought 2 boxed copies of Final Fantasy whatever and whatever. Two different games, same seller. They came, smelled heavily like ink. One was tough to fit into the Game Boy Advance slot and the other didn't have official Nintendo screws. Neither game had Nintendo's official seal of quality. It was hilarious that someone counter fitting these two games went through the effort to print every instruction manual, card and care manual, and still took off the seal. One of them didn't have a working battery backup. I haven't shopped on eBay since.

Amazon isn't much better. A staggering 15 years ago I bought used Game Boy Advance games from Amazon. They'd come and fit tight, not have official screws, not have the seal of quality on them and some would have the ROM hack / ripper's name on them before hand. People think counter fitting is a new thing...

Dealing with Steam is a pain. Takes 2 weeks to get a reply. Takes another 2 weeks to get a problem fixed.

I've got an extremely long story with Target and a return involving 3 people and a blizzard.

Tomb Raider 3 for the PS1. I loved the first two, and was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, the save game system for the Playstation version completely sucked. It made the game overly difficult and exploring the huge levels just became a chore. I eventually gave up out of frustration. If you plan on playing this game, make sure it's the PC version, which has unlimited saves.

On a more positive note, just this past Saturday I went to a car boot sale and picked up an original, unboxed Rubik's Magic from 1986 for £1. Nice.

Sonic and the Secret Rings is I think the only game I've ever actually returned because it was so terrible.

Never forget all those games from the thrift shops, missing CD #2 :C

I got about 4 PSPs from EB Games that all malfunctioned on me. 2 were preowned, 2 were completely unused.

Bought Volume 2 of Beavis And Butthead at Big Bob's Barters, disc won't play on VLC Media Player. Seen the back of the discs, doesn't look too bad.

When I bought what I thought was an original pressing of Sentenced - "Shadows from the Past" for $60 which was the going price back then (then paid $15 for shipping because I didn't want anyone to steal it), after waiting for 3 weeks it turned out to be a Russian bootleg. Now it's on sale for $450.

I finally managed to get my hands on a set of 1970 Fender Strat pickup's to finish a 1970 Strat I have been building for a while. Wired the pick ups and after about 15 min of playing the pickups died. I completely gutted them, replaced the wiring and still nothing. The guitar has been in the works for nearly a year and a half now. So I was pretty pissed when the pickups died.

Those 100 USD netbooks which run Windows CE 4.

I can think of a ton of shit that I mostly regret buying, but I think you were getting at something different with your story. I suppose the saving grace is you only paid a dollar.

In the sphere of gaming, Duke Nukem Forever: Balls of Steel edition is right up there. It has it all - underwhelming game, cheap-ass packaging, kinda cheap-ass "collector"'s items. What was I thinking? Mostly, how badly I wanted that game to be awesome, I think. I bought the Hardened edition of Modern Warefare 2, as well. Shouldn't have done that. And then I didn't buy the collector's of Skyrim, which I actually regret now. My Doom 3 (was it Doom 3?) biscuit tin thing arrived with a huge dent in it...

In fact, on further consideration, I'm pretty much a walking fucking disaster area with collector's editions. Excluding the Borg megacube as other genre, the only time I got it 100% right was with the id anthology which I picked up real cheap before I even had my first PC. I should've taken better care of it but I was young then, it's still pretty much complete though and that's where my Doom wads came from, copied + pasted ever since...

GhostlyDeath said:

Those 100 USD netbooks which run Windows CE 4.

I fail to see the problem...

pritch said:

Duke Nukem Forever

Honestly, I'm suprised it wasn't said sooner. But, you're right, I wasn't going for things that are crap, but where the SPECIFIC one you bought was crap.

Hulu. Next day episodes of current shows.... yeah if you have a cable provider. If I had a cable provider I could just record or watch them on demand. Oh and there's commercials too? Even when I'm paying for it? Awesome. Fails to load commercial leaving a black screen. Fails to load content after commercials? I had the problem on 3 computers. I wrote them about it. They never got back to me.

Thinking about it, I wasted money purchasing Doom and Doom II on the XBox 360 arcade. I just bought the BFG Edition and it comes with the same exact arcade games. Could have saved that cash back then.

I have a feeling "One-Life" will cause a lot of disappointment more than Infected: Survivor Stories.

Actually, one time I was involved with someone else getting dicked over, I went to GameStop with a friend, and I picked up BlazBlue Chronophantasma Extend, got it brand new (something I rarely do, as I can't afford it, especially when I mostly buy SNES and N64 games). As my friend and I were walking out, I hear the guy that was behind me in line ask the cashier if they had BlazBlue Chronophantasma Extend, and she said they didn't.

A licensed TV show game from a book fair since what I originally wanted was sold out.

I bought an EA Nascar game. Biggest pile of shit I've ever played. The old PC games made by Papyrus rocked. EA destroyed that franchise.

I wanted Super Smash Brothers Brawl when it was coming out and saved up for it. Keep in mind I was like 12 so this was the first game I ever worked towards getting. So I saved up the $60 over the course of 2 or 3 months and when the release date arrived I went to a local store I loved back then. I asked for a copy of SSBB and he said "sorry we're all out." And my heart sank so fucking hard that day. I was so sad over a videogame. We left and went back in the car where my stepdad called my mom that we were coming home and she was pissed because my mom is silly like that. She eventually got them to give me one of the pre-ordered ones because the guy never showed up for it.

I still feel bad about them giving me one of those copies, but they aren't in business anymore so whatever.

Was it worth the wait?

Clonehunter said:

If I've learned anything from Goodwill, it's to check the damn case. I thought I had Led Zeppelin IV, got home, and found a very damaged copy of the Wayne's World soundtrack.

Ahhh that reminds me. One time (several months ago) I bought a few DVDs in Value Village and one was supposed to be The Eagle, but it had a copy of The Dark Knight inside the case, which I already had a copy of. So ya, one has to check the damned case. ;)

I got a few:

I was ill and wanted Battlefield 4 so I sent out my brother to get it for me with my money. He later came back after 6 hours with Call of Duty Ghosts...

I was displeased... Very displeased.

Ghosts is without a doubt the worst Call of Duty game I have ever played, it was so fucking awful that it gave me the most overwhelming buyers remorse I could ever imagine and the fucking wankers he bought them off said that I couldn't return it despite there being a 30 day return policy!

I sold it for £27, nearly half of the price my brother got it for.

I still don't know why he got Ghosts, the cunt, but I have the suspicion it was because his CoD fanboy friend was with him.

-

I sold most of my old games to buy Duke Nukem Forever because I'm a fucking idiot big Duke Nukem fan...

The result was self explanatory.

-

I bought Destiny and one of the expansions for it.

The next big DLC comes out for it (The Taken King) and the fucking thing costs £40 (fuck that shit, I ain't getting that crap for that shady price). I play Destiny a lot so I just look forward to the new gear all the non-DLC plebs get to replace the old gear.

The Taken King rolls out, non-DLC pleb level cap is 34, all the gear and activities have been replaced with things that require higher than level 34, they remove all base activities to non-DLC owners (you can't even set mission difficulty higher than default FFS), you can no longer use earned faction gear (Making the only reason I played the game void and pointless), they remove all previous DLC activities...

Basically fuck your ass deep and hard until you get The Taken King.

I payed for a shit game (£37) and 1 overpriced DLC (£20) just for it to all be stripped down to basically the demo version until I pay another £40.

No thanks, sold that shit, fuck you Bungie and fuck you Activision. You shafted this poor bastard for the last time, I am out.

(Destiny fans proceed to defend Bungie because people wouldn't "Pony up £40" to "help support Bungie" like the fuckers were financially bankrupt, they made fucking millions off of dumb cunts like me and will shaft anyone who remains loyal so fuck that)

-

I bought Red Faction 2 for the PS2 and almost left the store with the thing until I realized they had just sold me Pro Evolution Soccer. Turns out they didn't have Red Faction 2...

I left with nothing that day.

-

I bought a wristwatch from a stall on a beach side market stall, the thing worked for about 5 days until the thing deconstructed on my arm and flung itself to pieces all over the place.

£20 well spent on a portable ballistic clusterbomb, shitty watch though...

mrthejoshmon said:

I was ill and wanted Battlefield 4 so I sent out my brother to get it for me with my money. He later came back after 6 hours with Call of Duty Ghosts...

You should have bought it yourself then, you lazy sod.

Dave The Daring said:

You should have bought it yourself then, you lazy sod.

mrthejoshmon said:

I was ill

I put that part there because I knew I'd get the "should have done it yourself" comment.

Perhaps I should elaborate a bit more, it was the really fun kind of ill where it hurts to move and you shit out of your face if you dare eat anything.

Sorry, I completely missed the ill bit. I'm not feeling too well today myself, so put my inability to read a simple sentence down to that. ;)

Purchased 2 Gran Turismo 4 copies, due to a copy i owned not working and guess what?!
It was the fuckin' PS2 itself!
The PS2 was reading games that weren't exclusives, but those who are Sony exclusives didn't work, in other words, my PS2 was being a bitch, but then again it was old, so i bought another and it worked fine.

What a shock that this thread turned out to be about games only. Nerds.

darkreaver said:

What a shock that this thread turned out to be about games only. Nerds.

Hehe.

Drunk purchases anyone? I bought a beginner's electric guitar kit (guitar, amp etc.) off Amazon. It's been in my cupboard since. No idea how to play it, and no idea what I was thinking at the time.