I ordered a Wii Fit – I subscribed to a notification site, and put an order in with game.co.uk on Friday afternoon, at about 4 p.m.
Looking at the site later that evening, I was disappointed that it hadn’t been shipped, but thought perhaps I was just too late for the cut off.
The site is currently telling me:
06/05/2008 09:24:26 Your order is currently being picked and packed. 06/05/2008 07:20:20 Your credit/ debit card has been authorised and your order is now being released for packing. Funds will not be debited until your order is shipped.
So it has apparently been stuck in packing since yesterday morning. And they lie – they debited the card on Friday afternoon. Last night I sent them an e-mail thus:
Wii Fit – order placed
I placed an order – your reference xxxx/x – via your web site on 2 May 2008, last Friday.
At time of writing, this item is still showing that it is waiting to be packed. Despite your best assurances on the site that money will not be debited before the goods are shipped, the money was taken from our account on 2nd May.
This really is unacceptable. Please confirm by lunchtime tomorrow whether you do in fact have stock of this item for shipment, and if so when I can expect it, or I shall instigate a chargeback from our bank.
This is very shabby practice – I’m not amused.
Of course I’ve had no response, and I don’t know what to do next.
Anyone ever dealt with this company? Are they normally this rubbish?
I’ve ordered quite a few things from them, both things that were on ‘pre-order’ and things that were ‘in stock’ – I’ve never noticed them charge me before the item was shipped although I guess it might have happened without me realising.
That’s a shame really – quite apart from the annoyance/worry factor for you, I’d never had any trouble with them before. I’d be interested to see what they say to you, as I’ve recommended them to people in the past and naturally don’t want to do that again if they’re a bit ‘sharp’.
I routinely manage pre-orders through GAME, as I’ve found them consistently reliable in an area where understocking and retroactively cancelling orders are both common sins.
On Wii Fit, they sent me an email when managing my pre-order saying that because of shipping and packing times (Wii Fit is ten times the size and perhaps 50 times as heavy as the average video game), they were taking pre-order cash a little earlier than usual. But the item arrived as expected on the morning of 25 April.
Interested to hear what they say.
I don’t mind that if they are *up front*. But when I got an e-mail on Friday from them that said “despatch immediate”, and they debited our bank account, I confess that I believed that it would indeed be despatched.
Grand little machine, mind – loving it.
I buy most of my games from the Game store in Leicester but that’s from the shop itself. I went in to pick up my pre-order copy of GTA IV last week and felt sorry for the people in front of me in the huge line. They’d picked up a box from the shelf, waited 20 minutes only to be told they were for pre-orders only. Seemed crappy that they didn’t have a sign up anywhere that you couldn’t pick it up unless you’d already ordered the game. They should’ve just removed them from the shelves.