Goozex

[erilar]

OK, I've spent a few hours over the last few days checking this service out. (It's the one I emailed you all invites to. Sign up via my link if you don't mind, and then pass your invite onto your work buddies, etc.) I must say it's incredibly well done.

The deal is, you put all your games you're willing to trade in a queue (a la Netflix). Then you do the same with the games you're looking for.

When someone wants a game you're offering, you get an email and you are supposed to mail it off to them within two days. Once you've done so, the points for that game will be credited to your account, plus some "trades".

They have lots of stopgaps in place to make sure people don't cheat, and they give a points-back guarantee if you don't receive the game you requested.

Most used games seem to be about 300 pts, and a newly released one might be as much as 900. Each time you cash in your points to get a game someone's offering, Goozex will debit those accrued points from your account plus one "trade", and you pay Goozex one dollar.

So, compare that to GameStop or GameCrazy. You trade in your used copy of Gears of War that you bought used for $40, and they give you $15 in trade credit. Then you try to buy a used copy of another game that's $40. You're $25 in the hole. It's even worse if you bought Gears new.

With this service, it just costs you a buck plus whatever USPS postage it took to send the games off to get you those points - typically about $3 if you're trading for a game of equal demand.

So, the money you spend at the store can be recycled practically ad nauseam, while if you did the same thing at GameStop your value drops off almost geometrically.

Example: I have a copy of Lego Star Wars 2 (Original Trilogy) for Xbox. I want to trade for the same title but in Xbox360 format. The Xbox one is actually worth 50 points more, so I'll be minus $4 and plus 50 points after the trades go through. Awesome.

Compare that to GameStop - I'm betting both of those are about $20 used. So, I'd get about $5 for the old one and have to spend $15 to get the 360 one. Way worse.

Unfortunately, I'd just traded in a huge stack of PS2 and Xbox titles at GameCrazy, and only got about $30 for the whole thing. I would have done so much better via this service.

Their inventory is good too - it won't be hard to get what I want. My copy of Xbox360 Lego Star Wars is already available - I just need to wait 'till someone bites on the dregs of stuff that I had left around to put in my "want to trade" queue. (If you want, you can even buy points with cash, which would put the transaction at roughly what GameCrazy or someone would charge.) Check it out.