[semanticist]

GameStop's idea behind using their physical locations isn't for ease of shipping so much as ease of verification. People buying brand-name stuff off eBay (and Vinted, etc) pay for verification services to make sure that it's real. The idea - which is the only good/sane part of this entire takeover proposal - is to have retail locations that do the verification in person instead of shipping items to a central location for verification on sale.

But if eBay thought that would bring in more sales, I doubt it would be hard to find empty retail outlets in every city/town in the US and Europe since high street retail has been on a death spiral for years.

You can already use lockers for delivery/drop off with eBay through their courier company partners, at least in the UK.

[WJW]

Wouldn't verification for almost anything beyond the extremely basic need specialized people? I don't think it's reasonable to train every Gamestop employee to be able to verify everything from fancy Swiss watches to brand name clothing to playing cards. At least if you do it in a central location you can have actual experts do the verification.

[sanswork]

Yup, you save a few dollars per verification on shipping in exchange for spending tens of thousands on training each employee to verify items. Mind you these are retail employees so turnover is going to be high. Also since they need to be able to verify everything they won't have time to be in store since they'll constantly need to be studying new products. That or you just have them work off checklists for each product in which case the value of the verification isn't great since counterfeiters will just buy those check lists and manufacture to them.

The end result is much much higher cost per verification, and a less trusted quality of verification. But you save a few bucks on shipping.

[eszed]

The verification I'd be looking for immediately in-store would be "is this [product] or is this a brick?" - that once happened to me, with (for all I see sellers complain about excessively buyer-friendly policies) no recourse or compensation. If there's a more-complicated verification needed, the buyer could request that it be held onto until that's performed (elsewhere, if necessary). Verifiable chain of custody protects both buyers and sellers.

Not that a dodgy Gamestop merger is necessary for this, but I'd be (much) more likely to both buy and sell on eBay if it existed.