Thursday, November 09, 2006

BestBuy: "No PS3 preorders. And there's no Santa Claus either."

CE Pro: Best Buy Cancels PS3 Pre-orders

There's no real need for me to re-report this story. I just enjoy tales of large, doddering companies screwing up.

Imagine telling your children that the new PS3 you promised them for Christmas wasn't actually coming, and that it was because the big blue box wasn't really taking preorders on their Web site. Many parents will be dealing with that scenario, reports Business Week.
Blake Lane, a 13-year-old from Irvine, Calif., couldn't have been more thrilled when his dad told him that he would soon have one of the much-coveted PlayStation 3 game consoles from Sony (SNE). PlayStation 3 will be released on Nov. 17, and Blake has been anticipating the system's release for a year now, ever since it was first announced. Gary Lane, his dad, gave him the good news that he had preordered it on the Web from Best Buy (BBY) on Nov. 4, after Blake got back from a friend's birthday party. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," a thrilled Blake told his dad, hugging him.
Three days later, excitement turned to disappointment. Best Buy, on Nov. 7, sent an e-mail explaining that the order had been canceled and that "our system was not intended to take preorders on the PlayStation 3 gaming system." Best Buy says that it will offer the new PlayStations only in its stores on the day it is released. The electronics retailer won't say how many preorders had been placed, but said it was an errant posting
Best Buy is providing those customers a $10 coupon ... but unless Blake and his dad
start camping out now, they'll be hard pressed to find a system on launch day.

No word yet on Best Buy's proposed Christmas Marketing Blitz centered on taking candy away from babies.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thats one of the reasons I'll be buying a Nintendo WII. Nintendo is expecting to have 4-6 million units in stores by the end of the year and about a month ago had already manufactured over 2 million units.

They will be actually be in stores everwhere for X-mas and at a price of $250 and a Wii Sports is bundled with the system.

Compare that to the $600 PS3 that you probably aren't even going to find on the shelves.