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TheMoon

|OT|
Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,780
Video Games
I can see why it makes sense, I mean amazon must get so many people ordering stuff months in advance, forgetting about it, and then having no money available when amazon try to take the payment. Obviously it benefits amazon to charge now but it's not too wild to see how that benefits a customer too who could potentially end up overdrawn or something.

In most cases I'd probably rather be charged at the time of order, to be honest, it's not like that £40 is going to be worth keeping in my account earning interest for two months, and it's easier to budget knowing that what's in my account isn't tied up already. It'd be amazing if a store gave people a choice though, pay now or pay on dispatch.
Could easily be solved by email reminders a week or so before the thing releases/ships that you pre-ordered. You want to preorder early for limited edition items, those tend to be expensive. You might not have the funds for it right now but you know it'll be no prob by the time they come out. Their option is just generally fucked up.
 

Zafir

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,097
I can see why it makes sense, I mean amazon must get so many people ordering stuff months in advance, forgetting about it, and then having no money available when amazon try to take the payment. Obviously it benefits amazon to charge now but it's not too wild to see how that benefits a customer too who could potentially end up overdrawn or something.

In most cases I'd probably rather be charged at the time of order, to be honest, it's not like that £40 is going to be worth keeping in my account earning interest for two months, and it's easier to budget knowing that what's in my account isn't tied up already. It'd be amazing if a store gave people a choice though, pay now or pay on dispatch.
I mean that's solvable through other means, like a reminder before they charge like GAME and Nintendo UK does(Never thought I'd be praising those two for their approach, lol).

I'd rather pay on dispatch because I don't want to be giving them money for something I don't own yet/won't own until weeks-months later. I'll begrudingly accept doing so if I absolutely know I'll want something and it's likely going to be the cheapest price. It's extremely rare for Amazon to be the cheapest these days though. As I said above the only reason I occasionally used Amazon for pre-orders was because they were so easy to manage. You paid the lowest price anyway, they didn't charge till dispatch and they had very easy cancellations. Now they don't even have that going for them with this change.
 

Oldmario

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,145
I can see why it makes sense, I mean amazon must get so many people ordering stuff months in advance, forgetting about it, and then having no money available when amazon try to take the payment. Obviously it benefits amazon to charge now but it's not too wild to see how that benefits a customer too who could potentially end up overdrawn or something.

In most cases I'd probably rather be charged at the time of order, to be honest, it's not like that £40 is going to be worth keeping in my account earning interest for two months, and it's easier to budget knowing that what's in my account isn't tied up already. It'd be amazing if a store gave people a choice though, pay now or pay on dispatch.
people were joking in the thread that amazon is probably gonna store the money and collect the interest on it
 

toythatkills

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,827
London, UK
I don't disagree, and the point about reminders is obviously an easy fix in most cases, but I still reckon just giving customers a choice would be the best option, that way everyone's happy. I guess amazon decided it's more cost effective for them to charge on order though, have the money sitting in their account and not waste time/money charging people who don't have the funds available. amazon are big enough to do whatever the fuck they want without having to worry about stuff like making everyone happy.

I reckon we should whack together a little chart for the OP with the main players, when they charge for pre-orders, and when you'll probably get your pre-order.
 

flowsnake

Member
Oct 25, 2017
159
I wonder how the preorder price guarantee even works with those changes, unless they're also getting rid of that.
 
Oct 27, 2017
1,730
I'm disappointed in Amazon, first they removed their 2 euros discount when you preordered and now this.

Gonna stick with Fnac from now on
 

StallionDan

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,705
Hopefully they'll get a huge drop in pre-order numbers and reverse course. I know I won't be pre-ordering on anything except a sure to never be beat price, which is almost never these days.

If I'm not getting an item in the next week then I want to use that money for something else right now.
 

Zafir

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,097
Can get £10 off games on the Currys website in the UK with the the code 200004802712745, needs to be over £24.99 though.

Notably you can get Pokemon Lets Go Pikachu for £28(£30 for Eevee), Super Mario Odyssey or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for £29 and a number of others.
 

xendless

Teyvat Traveler
Member
Jan 23, 2019
10,767
Can get £10 off games on the Currys website in the UK with the the code 200004802712745, needs to be over £24.99 though.

Notably you can get Pokemon Lets Go Pikachu for £28(£30 for Eevee), Super Mario Odyssey or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for £29 and a number of others.

Wish I could get this to work, the basket just loads infinitely
 
Dec 3, 2018
22
Just cancelled any Amazon preorders that I had sitting because of this. I feel like if they get away with it everyone will start doing the same, and I don't think we should be handing over money months in advance.

It's not like Amazon can't afford it, and there are better alternatives to avoid people not being able to pay for their preorders at release time.
 

monketron

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,900
Could the Amazon change be to stop people pre-ordering for beta codes then cancelling? I know I've done that so many times in the past.
 

LAM09

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,216
Even less of a reason to use Amazon

Can get £10 off games on the Currys website in the UK with the the code 200004802712745, needs to be over £24.99 though.

Notably you can get Pokemon Lets Go Pikachu for £28(£30 for Eevee), Super Mario Odyssey or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for £29 and a number of others.

It doesn't work on all games
 
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Aurora

Member
Jul 22, 2018
1,376
Lemuria
Apologies for my stupidity but what are the exact implications of the Amazon changes? I preordered the Switch version of CTR Nitro Fueled from Amazon France, what was the previous policy and what's changed now?
 

catboy

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,322
Apologies for my stupidity but what are the exact implications of the Amazon changes? I preordered the Switch version of CTR Nitro Fueled from Amazon France, what was the previous policy and what's changed now?
If I am reading correctly

If you preorder it and the game is coming out within 5 days, you are charged immediately

If you preorder it and the game is not out for > 5 days, you will be charged on the 5th day after ordering it anyway (even if it's not coming out for a year)

Whereas previously preorders were totally free and only charged you when the item was preparing for dispatch (usually a day or two before release)
 

Deleted member 11517

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,260

Zafir

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,097
That's nice and all (and sold out lol) but that's standard price for Shibuya Scramble PS4, I want it on Steam where it apparently never goes on sale or I'm just really bad at finding deals.
It went on sale for like £12 just the other week on Steam. I picked it up myself, just haven't got round to playing it.
 

NateDog

"This guy are sick"
Member
Jan 8, 2018
1,770
I don't think I saw Nintendo's voucher program mentioned on here at all.

TL;DR - if you are willing to switch regions to Sweden or Australia, you can get two Nintendo-published digital games for £37 each (mostly £49.99, some £59.99, usually) and enough Gold Coins to get something like BOXBOY/Picross S3 for less than £1. Combined with the "game sharing" you can do with digital games, this works out great.

Seriously, the sharing feature is saving me and my sister a ton of money for games that we would both otherwise buy separately.
I'm tempted to do it but I need confirmation first of whether Animal Crossing will be an applicable title or not.
 

mclem

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,512
I'm tempted to do it but I need confirmation first of whether Animal Crossing will be an applicable title or not.

I'd be very surprised if it isn't *intended* to be, but I'd wait until we have an explicit release date (which hopefully we'd get at E3?); the vouchers expire one year after purchase, so if AC is delayed significantly it might topple out of that window.

The fact that AC isn;'t explicitly named on the page (whereas, say, Astral Chain is) suggests to me that Nintendo are slightly hedging their bets just in case this occurs; I suspect it'll be added as soon as they officially lock in a date.

Edit: FWIW I've bought a set of vouchers on a reasonable assumption that something will be released that I'd like to use them for! Sure I have specific intents in mind... but I can shift that if necessary.
 
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TheMoon

|OT|
Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,780
Video Games
I think all Nintendo published games are so far? So I'd be 90% sure, but yeah, should hopefully be up for pre-order come E3 and know for sure
The problem is that they somehow mentioned on the NA site of this promotion that you can only get coupons until end of July. This is not mentioned in any other region. It makes the whole affair highly irritating and confusing. If this were not a factor to wait for clarification on, it would be safe to assume any title we already know exists (such as AC) would be definitely eligible (as all current and scheduled first-party games are, up until Astral Chain in August).
 

Hasney

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
18,749
Yeah, I've just cancelled Prime that was going to be renewed tomorrow. Not just because of that, but their offering has been reducing recently, especially if you don't care for their streaming services.
 

Laserdisk

Banned
May 11, 2018
8,942
UK
How come no one has received any email to tell us about these changes. It's very shady.
They said I wont get the pre-order prince change guarantee as they don't do it now as its a price match.
I said you always do it and its your price that dropped.
Then they said tough shit.
I cancelled all my pre-orders and 10 mins later they emailed the standard price drop email...
 

SnowHawk

Member
Oct 28, 2017
455
England
They said I wont get the pre-order prince change guarantee as they don't do it now as its a price match.
I said you always do it and its your price that dropped.
Then they said tough shit.
I cancelled all my pre-orders and 10 mins later they emailed the standard price drop email...

It looks like I'm cancelling my pre-order then. It's such a scummy thing to charge for pre-orders.
 

YuSuzzune

Member
Nov 21, 2018
4,900
I can see why it makes sense, I mean amazon must get so many people ordering stuff months in advance, forgetting about it, and then having no money available when amazon try to take the payment. Obviously it benefits amazon to charge now but it's not too wild to see how that benefits a customer too who could potentially end up overdrawn or something.

In most cases I'd probably rather be charged at the time of order, to be honest, it's not like that £40 is going to be worth keeping in my account earning interest for two months, and it's easier to budget knowing that what's in my account isn't tied up already. It'd be amazing if a store gave people a choice though, pay now or pay on dispatch.
I doubt that's the case, the whole thing is automated, if you have not enough money they will send a mail to tell you about, you can than modify your payment method and try again. If you ignore the mails they will eventually cancel your order.
I think this is just a way to lock up pre-orders so people won't cancel it anymore, which is crappy. A scenario: I pre-order X games one year before the release. There was a good deal from Amazon, or I had a 5€ off, anyway I wanted to secure the game for a lower price. Than Gamestop or someone else do a good offer, I'm still waiting to see if other retailers do better offers. Unieuro set a pre-order for 50€, I'm going to cancel my Amazon pre-order because I want to get the game from Unieuro...and I can't, because the game will release in 5 days and they already charged me. Ok, you can return the item, but by doing so you'll need to pay shipment which is around 4€ here, so it's not really worth.

Pre-ordering games via Amazon for me was a good option because, if I couldn't find a good offer on something I wanted on D1, Amazon still gave me the option to save 2-3€, With this method I won't pre-order games from them anymore, even because here in Italy they fail to deliver stuff (not only games) on the release date on a regular basis even with Prime. Dunno what's happening, but their Prime service turned into garbage here, if I check my order for the last six months I managed to receive only one item during the time window Amazon told me I'd get the item, otherwise I have a 2-3 and even a whole month delay for items available right now sold by Amazon directly. Last game I got from them was Uncharted 4 and it arrived 5 days after the release, yes they gave me a 5€ voucher but I wanted it on D1.
 

Evildeadhead

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,678
They said I wont get the pre-order prince change guarantee as they don't do it now as its a price match.
I said you always do it and its your price that dropped.
Then they said tough shit.
I cancelled all my pre-orders and 10 mins later they emailed the standard price drop email...
So their delivery times have gone to shit, they've got rid of the pre-order price guarantee and you have to pay upfront. What a fucking mess.
 

jts

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
3,018
Excuse me if this is too off-topic but since it's all about euro-based games purchasing and the Nintendo voucher has been talked about, does anyone know if with the voucher you can order the edition of MM2 with the stylus? I was going to buy the voucher last night for that, only to realize MM2 with the stylus costs 10 euro more, despite having been told that it was a pre-order bonus :/ Nintendo pls.