Published: Wednesday, 30th April, 2008 09:30
Preorder? I'll stick to the shop thanks...
By Geek Chic
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Is the Wii hype getting a bit much?
I only ask because after being sucked into the whole Chicken Little stylee 'they're going to sell out! They're going to sell out!' hysteria of the launch of Wii Fit on Friday and preordering mine, I ended up finding them available in a plethora of shops with none of the hassle I've gone through the last couple of days. And I'm still Wii Fitless.
I preordered mine early last week. Having heard the horror stories of companies taking preorders they had no hope of fulfilling I decided to go, for the first time ever, with Comet. They had a cunning system where they took £10 as an initial deposit and then only contacted you to pay the balance when they could guarantee the item was there and ready to ship. So I signed up, got my email confirming they had a Wii Fit for me on Wednesday, paid the balance and then waited for the delivery - handily I was told exactly the day it would be and the hours between which it would be delivered. Hoorah.
So I waited in. And waited. And waited.
In the middle of the day I had to duck to the post office for 20 minutes. I left a note on my letter box asking my potential deliverer to go to my neighbour's and went into town, where I could have picked up the aforementioned Wii Fit in Game, GameStation, Argos or Woolies, all for less than I'd paid, without the cost of postage and without a day of sitting in my house leaping up every ten minutes to check the window to see if a van had driven into my road.
I got back to my flat to find no Wii Fit had come. No one had knocked. So I resumed my waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Nothing.
By the time I had given up hope of any potential delivery the phone line for Comet customer services had closed so I sent them an email asking exactly what happened. I finally got a response this morning:
"Your order was not properly submitted to us, which caused cancellation of the delivery. This can happen for a number of reasons including network disruption. This can result in orders being lost in the system. I am sure you will appreciate that we would be unaware of this until the customer contacts us. I have asked for our internet department to rearrange the delivery and you will be contacted shortly to confirm the details."
So, to clarify my order worked well enough for them to take my money but the bit that organises the shipment of the item is the bit that fails. Hmmmm. A cynical person would wonder whether Comet had a Wii Fit in the system for me at all. Of course now I'm over a barrel as nowhere has any in stock. Do I cancel the item completely (let's face it, £75 including postage is steep - ok if you get it for launch day but not great for a week or so down the line, plus I don't have a day this week where I can take time off to be in to sign for the thing) and hope somewhere else gets stock soon? Or do I hold on in the hope Comet come through? Frankly my hopes aren't high and my phone remains resolutely silent.
The one thing I've learned from this whole debacle is next time I'm not going to get sucked into the Nintendo preorder hype - I'll head down to the shop on the day of release and just hope for the best.
In the meantime I suppose on the plus side I don't have to start my diet just yet...
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