Canada – Monday night, city council hosted a meeting where the council, “instructed staff to examine potential changes to the secondhand dealers and pawnbrokers bylaw.” Game Quest owner, Kelsy Polnik, did a presentation suggesting the rules be relaxed.
Polnik’s Fourth Avenue business is adversely affected by parts of the bylaw, he told council, specifically, the sections detailing a 30-day holding period between getting products and being able to sell them and the restrictions on where products can be acquired and at what hours they can be sold.
Polnik mentioned that the rules do make sense for pawnshops, but in his line of business, second-hand dealing in video games, it requires much more flexibility and the turnover needs to be much faster in order to obtain decent customer service.
I have a very narrow window of opportunity to sell product to my customer when they’re in my store. If customers leave satisfied that means they’re going to come back. There have been several instances where I’ve gotten many copies of a game someone’s looking for and because of the existing bylaw I have to tell them to return in two to four weeks for that item. That’s definitely not a satisfied customer.
Read on for Polnik’s suggestions