Just when I thought I couldn't possibly get more angry at frigging Oculus for this botch job launch, I read a report on Road to VR that someone who ordered within 60 minutes is getting their Rift??? My order email came in at 8 minutes! Why the hell is someone who ordered 52 minutes after me getting theirs first?
And just as bad, why are people that are buying PC bundles just now getting their Rifts shipped immediately when you HAVEN'T EVEN FULFILLED YOUR PRE-ORDERS YET? What kind of treatment of your customers do you call that? If I have to wait, why should they get theirs immediately? How does that make any sense? How does this build customer trust? How do you expect us to feel about the way you are treating us?
Why are customers who's updated shipping estimates are the May 23rd to June 2nd getting their Rifts when my updated estimate is 2-12 of May and I haven't gotten mine yet? Are you all out of your collective God-damned minds???
I can understand a component shortage causing a delay... I think it's bull when you started production in October, but I can understand unforeseen things happening. But when you fill the orders completely out of order, show preference to those who didn't jump in line immediately when pre-orders opened, and then have the friggin' GALL to go on PC Gamer acting all proud and like you are so great, I have had about enough of you!
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DK1, DK2, CV1 order w/in 30 sec. of sale. Vive order w/ in 5 min. of sale. PSVR soon.
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At least for why the PC bundle orders are shipping out now - I'll repeat what I said in a different thread.
That's likely because Oculus has business contracts with those PC vendors. Contracts and obligations that they have to fulfill, possibly even legally have to fulfill. So, as a business entity, Oculus is going to honor those contracts before they honor preorders. Why? A preorder is only a "promise" really. Whereas a contract can be legally binding. So from a business perspective, the right thing to do is honor the contract.
I'm not saying it's not a sh**ty deal for those who have been waiting since January and ordered very early. But think about it from a business perspective - if you had to choose between pissing off a business you have a very large contract with, or pissing off a handful of your direct customers, which is the right one to choose? Not morally, but only from a business standpoint. Only some of the direct customers will be upset, many won't even know it happened. Whereas those businesses will certainly be upset, may even cancel their contract and you've just lost a huge chunk of money.
That's what I think happened regarding that. I'm not defending it, rather just trying to explain it. Oculus is a business. And the main goal of all businesses is to make money, whether we like that or not. It sucks, but that's capitalism for you. Highest bid wins the prize.
As for the other though - your guess is as good as mine. I'm very lucky and have my Rift(order completed at +4:30). But I have some very good friends that are in the situation you describe. My good friend in the U.K. had his order complete at +5 minutes. He's even been charged( a week ago) and got the "Your Rift is almost ready to ship!" email. But no Rift for him. His estimate is mid May. Who knows what's going on.
A little bit of information would go a long way in this situation, I think. Back when I was waiting, that's what frustrated me so. Not the delay itself - I can wait. I can be patient. I understand this is a pretty complicated launch, and I understand the component shortage. A tiny little blip of information woulda been all it took to put my mind at ease. So yeah.
Everyone seems to think these companies are in the queue with the rest of us. It sucks but no, they're not.
Oculus DID plan for preorders to ship first, but then we had Problems(tm) and it all fell apart. Here's what I reckon happened:
1) Oculus pre-arrange the store bundles and their contracts way ahead of time. These schedules are surely set in stone, much as @Blyss4226 suggests.
2) Oculus plan to accept preorders, manufacture and ship them, then have stores start selling bundles soon thereafter. So far so good, everyone is happy.
3) Preorders go live. The site is smashed by, WAY more preorders than they expected, it seems. (Comments from Palmer at the time about there being "lots of lurkers" and before preorders opened about "IF we run out of preorder stock" (paraphrased) suggest he wasn't expecting this volume of orders) - this pushed the date of preorders out quite far for late orders, not to mention hammering the website at the time.
4) ComponentGate occurs, ruining much of the early weeks of launch. The stores "opening day" for Rift bundles draws closer. Oculus are contractually obligated to provide them with stock (if they hadn't already in advance, at this point). At this point they probably know what is coming, and I bet they're not looking forward to it...
5) The stores open their doors for bundles, and the inevitable occurs - people can appear to "jump the queue" by way of ordering bundles and returning/cancelling the PC part of the order. As predicted, the Internet. Freaks. Out.
The point being, as much as it may be their fault for grossly underestimating preorder volume, or negotiating contracts that must be fulfilled first (or at least, too early in the preorder cycle, being late April), or dealing with the component shortage in the worst possible way (clamming up about it) or being in a situation where a component shortage can even occur weeks before launch - uh.... um... as much as that may be the case...
Crap, I forgot what the point was.
Oh wait there it is: the point is they didn't WANT this to happen. So there's that. We were supposed to, intended to, get our preorders first. And it's the thought that counts, after all! Right?
@r00x I think that's a good point you bring up really. I get the feeling from a lot of posts I read that people seriously think Oculus planned to screw us.
How does that compute? The amount of money on the line here is not trivial at all. It's not the type of money you'd just throw a way for some lulz at the expense of some people on the Internet.
In my opinion the only thing Oculus has actively done wrong is keeping too quiet and keeping people out of the loop. That fuels speculation. And this is the Internet. That sort of thing blows up and gets out of control super quickly on the Internet.
That and maybe lack of market research. They definitely seemed to have underestimate demand by a lot. I'm not sure how they managed that, but maybe there are just a crap ton of lurkers. If that's the case, they really had no chance from the start to pull this off cleanly
@Blyss4226 right?? Yes, they definitely screwed up, but it wasn't out of malice or disrespect. I think it all started to go wrong from them the moment we started hammering the website on Jan 6th. That set this snowball rolling down the mountain, I reckon.
I mean, I'm grumpy with them (especially about the communication thing... number one PET HATE right there, argh) but I'm not furious or anything. Eventually, maybe, we'll get our Rifts and this drama will be behind us.
I do hope that this time, finally, at long last, they learn something before they launch Touch. After the mess that was DK2 launch and then this debacle, that should be enough to make them wary of almost every step of the process and triple-check to make sure everything goes to plan and is not being underestimated.... right?
As others have said, company contracts win. That's just business. Not only that, but if you want to be a nitpick about this, the company who is selling the PCs probably "preordered" (Made the business arrangement) before you did.
As for the 60 minute guy, probably a fluke and he was lucky, or he's a fat liar.
It's not exactly that company contracts win - it's that they made the calculations / estimates before the pre-orders (that we know). What is unknown is how many pre-orders they got. If the demand is wildly higher than expected then that is a bloody good thing for Oculus and for us.
So tell me, we have been waiting since 6 January, thats almost 4 months, now a guy go to bestbuy buy a bundle and cancel the pc and get the rift in 1 week? are you surprised that we are just f***** mad about this? Dont tell me contracts, policys and bs story, we have been screwed out! end of story! Oculus wins, customers lose. Now they come telling us about free t-shirts or any sort of present to write good things on the forums, what in hell am I going to write if I feel cheated?! you tell me.