Comments on: A token head-scratcher

By: JERRY

JERRY — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 16:12:56 +0000

The last time I took my children to chuck e cheese (gasp) I used a coupon that netted me 100 tokens for $10, the coupon has expired but i found it on fatwallet.

I wouldnt doubt that some of the auctions on ebay are by minimum wage employees who have found a way to pilfer large quantities of tokens.

By: sc

sc — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:43:19 +0000

When I was in grade school (90’s), I would get 100 “free tokens” per quarter for my report card. Someone with a bunch of kids that get good grades could easily acquire a lot of tokens if the kids don’t use them. I’m sure there are plenty of other promotions where you get free or cheap tokens and could try to sell them for a profit.

Just saying.. that chance of them being stolen is probably not “high 90’s” and I wouldn’t assume they were illegally obtained.

By: shawn

shawn — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:29:14 +0000

I think you’re being intentionally naive in assuming the tokens aren’t stolen. Otherwise how would you end up with 1000 tokens? You bought 5000 and just couldn’t use them all? I put the likelihood that these are stolen by employees in the high 90s. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that if it’s too good to be true it probably is? Now, as long as the tokens were legitimately acquired then there is no moral ambiguity at all. Go ahead and buy them because you aren’t depriving Chuck E. Cheese of anything.

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:59:35 +0000

Maybe these sellers are running an operation like http://www.giftcardbuyback.com/ which resells gift cards. Offer to buy unused tokens for 10 cents each, sell them for 15 cents each.

I don’t think it’s unethical at all, and it’s entirely unreasonable to expect people to independently verify the legitimacy of every good they purchase. Keeping in mind the activities of organized crime in the past century, not to mention dubious labor practices in some countries, does anybody go through the trouble of verifying every normal good they purchase? Did those shoes come from a child labor camp? Does that flashlight use copper that was stolen in bulk by the Russian mob and resold to the factory? Probably not… we rely on organizations like the FBI, various watchdog groups, etc to check those things for us.

By: rocketc

rocketc — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:49:52 +0000

Last night, we got 110 tokens for $10. I’m sure I could have sold them for a profit, but they gave them to us in the form of a credit card – that can only be used at their store. Problem solved.

By: vh

vh — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:14:07 +0000

I can’t work up a lot of sympathy for Chuck E. Cheese. As anyone who has ever been sucked into staging a kid’s birthday party there knows, that outfit manipulates children to fleece parents of astonishing amounts of money. And the pizza is just vile.

While of course we should not purchase or use stolen tokens, if the E-bay tokens are not counterfeit and you have no reason to believe they’re hot, by all means buy them at the discount.

Better yet: find someplace else to entertain the little ones. For what you shell out for one kiddie birthday party at CEC, you could buy the kids a Wii and have enough left to treat them to a pizza with real cheese on it.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:06:27 +0000

Interesting way of thinking about it Curtis, but my instinct is that you are wrong. I feel that the reason that tokens exist is to decouple the act of using the machine from money. That way, you can give out bonus tokens if the person converts a lot of money.

In reality, I think that CEC or other arcades would have no problem with you converting money into tokens without ever using them. The token itself does not cost 25 cents to replace, the manager still gets good sales numbers, and the machines receive no wear-and-tear.

By: Amanda D

Amanda D — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:00:40 +0000

So how are these sellers on ebay collecting large quantities of tokens? Are they most likely collecting them by legal means or illegal means? I don’t have a problem with buying them at a discount, as long as you can reasonably verify that you are not purchasing illegal (stolen) goods.

By: Joel

Joel — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:59:17 +0000

There’s nothing unethical about this, unless you sign some kind of agreement or CEC has a clearly visible policy that you can’t resell your tickets (which I’ve nevere seen). Yes one manager’s store loses out while another’s gains, but this happens all the time. If that were the sole basis for whether it’s ethical, then you shouldn’t return clothes bought at one JCPenney to another JCPenney because it will hurt the second JCPenney’s numbers!

This is a way of for prospective customers to get tokens at a discount, for others not to have to throw money down the drain, and CEC benefits in the end because they’ll still get more traffic to their locations and sell pizza, soda, etc. at a huge markup.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:26:55 +0000

As the question relates to morality, this is bogus. Chuck E. Cheese is a casino for children. Most of their games are token-sucking games of chance. Skeeball may be a game of skill, but one has to be very good to get enough tickets cranked out to make it worth it when one considers the actual value of the prizes at the ticket-redemption counter. I took the children of a poor friend to Chuck E. Cheese for her son’s birthday at the mother’s request. Her son within minutes burned through several dollars’ worth of tokens! She could have used that money!