PS5: Maxxi-Games is getting a bad buzz for consoles sold at...

Certainly, the launch of the PlayStation 5 will have been painful for many of us. After confinement which will have complicated the delivery work, after inevitable hiccups in delivery to the Day One for more or less all brands, after people who are still waiting for their console and do not really know when they will be able to have one, a black market which allows them to afford the latest console of Sony between 800 and 3000 € and unpleasant surprises for some customers, this launch continues to be talked about badly with a video posted on Saturday on Twitter through https://twitter.com/TORC93/status/1329815934354280457?s=20, a dissatisfied user.

Rather than posting this information in a raw manner, we therefore decided to conduct our little survey with the creator of the video and the managers of the brand, in order to provide you with more complete information than what the short video suggests and the sometimes hateful comments from ordinary users who accompany it. After a long day and several exchanges, here is what we can say about this incredible bad buzz which especially highlights the expectation generated by the PS5 in the face of starving deliveries from Sony. We will start by presenting you the point of view of the customer, the one who posted the video, then we will give you ours after having discussed at length with both parties.

To summarize, kyliane93 had reserved his console with a deposit of 200 € when opening pre-orders of the PlayStation 5 and was awaiting news as to its delivery date. According to him, the store contacted him to tell him that his console had arrived and he showed up at his store. Maxxi-Games de Stains (93) to recover it. As you will see by watching the video, the discussion that follows is quite startling at first. The seller explains that the consoles he has in stock were bought at a higher price and therefore must be sold for 600 € (instead of 399 €, NDLR). While remaining polite, even angry, the father of the young man expresses his disappointment and especially his incomprehension in the face of this practice. he believes he has paid a deposit, the consoles are there, so he must logically leave with a copy by paying the price initially planned. The salesperson, who for information is not the boss, tries to explain to him why, but these arguments are not understood by the customer and it ends with an “I’m sorry, there is nothing I can do” and a proposal to repay their deposit.

Taken roughly, this video (with over 200,000 views to date) shows that this store has consoles, but sells them for € 600, even to customers who have booked this PlayStation 5 Digital Edition for € 399. Looking a little closer, it’s easy to see that the video is shot very well, well framed, and it’s hard to imagine that it was made in the heat of anger. After speaking with its author, he admits having cut the latter, because in some shots, the seller’s head was visible. In fact, this focuses on the problem without making it possible to form an opinion since some information is missing. However, according to him, he started filming after learning that the console he could recover was sold at this price of 600 €. What is also cut on the video, and it is still important, is the part where the seller shows him and his father the invoice for the purchase of the PS5 from England in the amount of 475, 99 € excluding tax to which must be added the European mains cable (2.23 € excluding tax), i.e. 573.42 € including tax. Without passing judgment on the subject, we will come back to this later, it must be recognized that earning twenty six euros and fifty eight cents on the resale of a console can clearly not be considered a scam. Subsequently, he explained to us that he had been contacted by the regional manager of the sign who told him that he was no longer on the waiting list and offered to come and get his deposit refunded.

Before doing this article, we have in addition to contacting the author of the video, called the store involved. The seller present, a replacement, confirmed to us that he had in stock consoles bought in England and resold in this store at the aforementioned price. They are intended for customers in a hurry who would like to have the console right away, whether they have pre-ordered a console before, or not. Comments also confirmed on the opinion corner on Google Map by an “official” response from the store owner:

The seller offers (on the video, Editor’s note) to customers the UK consoles that we received this Friday, we decided to buy more expensive, to offer them to the most impatient customers.
It is a proposal and he has the right to refuse.
As far as his reservation is concerned, she’s still running and he’s on a waiting list, he’ll have his console at the retail price when Sony drops stock.

For information, we contacted other stores of this brand, in the 93 and 94, and no other had opted for this option of troubleshooting by ordering, for its part, consoles abroad.

Following our calls, we were contacted by Youssef Bouchaouch, the director and founder of the brand. For his part, he explained to us the procedure that was applied for all clients, including his client. Kyliane93. Sony having sent a very low number of consoles to its brand, all stores have therefore delivered these PS5 to customers who booked first. To try to satisfy impatient customers, the store manager Maxxi-Games de Stains decided to have UK consoles delivered via a wholesaler despite a prohibitive price. Upon receipt of these copies, Friday, the seller’s mission was to contact the buyers on the waiting list by explaining the problem to them, that is to say that their console had not yet been delivered by Sony, but that if they were in a hurry, there were some available at 600 €. In order to prove his good faith to us, he sent us a scan of the invoice where the purchase price excluding tax appears. For information, a console sold € 600 including VAT in stores will “leave” him only € 500 since € 100 (20%) goes to the State as VAT. Once again, and this time with supporting evidence, it is still difficult to accuse this store of having wanted to rip off its customers with a gain of less than € 27. In addition, still according to him, all the other customers contacted understood the problem and either accepted or refused this offer without creating more difficulties. It is clear that this shortage of PlayStation 5 is no secret and that all brands are, each at their own level, victims. Note that it seems that the next deliveries are scheduled for next week, but that still remains to be verified.

By talking to Youssef Bouchaouche, we also learned that his brand is known to offer games before their release in Day One on French territory. Thus, offering products from the UK, or other, is not a first attempt. He gave us as a generic example that at home the games in FR version are at 54 €, but at 69.99 €, imported a few days earlier. For those who would be wondering, selling an imported game or console at a different price than the one purchased locally is legal knowing that, technically, the products are not identical and have barcodes. different.

Without recoil, and that’s what makes the video turn so much on Twitter, it may look like a scam with a seller who wants to sell their consoles to the highest bidders. However, after investigation, as you have just read, this is not the case and does not deserve as much attention. If we have understood the store’s wishes correctly, we are also convinced, having really discussed it at length with him, that Kyliane93 is in good faith and that he did not really understand what has just been explained to us. It is quite possible that the seller, by repeating himself call after call, has finally missed a piece of information when he received Kyliane93 on the line. It is also possible that the latter, in the excitement of wanting to retrieve his console, did not hear what the seller was saying on the phone.

That said, the origin of this anger was first born by the few consoles that Sony delivered to members of this small franchise. It must be admitted that seeing consoles in store and not being able to recover them at the initially announced price is still torture for a gamer which has already been waiting for months for its new grail. By wanting to prevent his customers from waiting (or giving in to an overpriced ad on resale sites between individuals), the store owner has just offered himself a bad buzz national level that could have been avoided. Most unbearable in all of this are the hate comments, and even the call for violence against the seller, which have been posted and which Twitter has absolutely nothing to do since they are still online at this time. Note also that the young man had similar calls given by unidentified people (except one). Our world is sometimes very sad.

Anyway, note that following our intervention the two parties are in contact again and have an appointment Monday morning in order to find a positive outcome to this commercial imbroglio. We will of course keep you posted in the future by updating this article.