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Comment by 59percentmore | Hacker News Reader

Can you tell me where your local eBay fulfillment center is? I can tell you where my local Gamestop is (no, not that one, the other one).

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I can't tell you where the nearest GameStop is because afaik they don't have any locations in my country. Can find half a dozen convenience stores that will handle eBay (or Amazon) goods for me within walking distance.

No, why does it matter? I also don't know where my local GameStop is since the few by me closed a couple years ago :P

Plenty of stuff on EBay offers me 2 day shipping clearly via fulfillment centers, as far as I'm concerned that's all that matters. Do you think the addition of GameStop stores would mean EBay can offer faster shipping than that on a significant number of items?

You asked what could be improved with Gamestop. Public knowledge of Gamestop locations is a boon if people don't know where your existing fulfillment centers are.

Yes but I don't need to go to my nearest fulfillment center if they ship everything to my house, that's why I don't know where it is.

What do you think people need to visit fulfillment centers to do?

Buyers? Sure. (Unless you're like me and paranoid after getting porch-pirated.)

Sellers...?

Sellers what? You generally don't just drop stuff off at a fulfillment center, when you get to that size you're dealing with large amounts of inventory and you ship it to them.

If you're saying sellers could come into a GameStop to have their individual items packed and shipped out, I suppose, but:

1. They don't really have the space for much shipping volume at any of their stores.

2. You can walk into any USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. store and do that already, you don't need an 'EBay' store. GameStop would presumably get the packages picked up by one of those carriers so it's not saving any shipping time or expense.

For buyers, in many cases there's already alternative drop-off locations similar to GameStop Ex. For UPS deliveries I can get them shipped to a bunch of different convenience stores near me. GameStop stores might be a nice addition to that list but it's not enabling something you couldn't do before, and I would think for most people they already have a closer location than a GameStop.

Well, look at what you can already do with their trading card program. You could just list cards yourself on eBay, of course. You could drop them off at a shipper to send them off. You could keep them at home while you're waiting for a sale, where I guess they're insured by your renter's/homeowner's insurance. And if you want them graded, you can send them off for that however you like, too.

Or, you can bring your cards into Gamestop, and they'll send them off to get them graded and/or buy them from you, at which point they become inventory for their lootbox. With eBay, you'd be able to do all of that, too, except you'd be selling directly to someone else through a consignment service - more pricing freedom.

And then you could start doing it with things other than cards.

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