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Best Buy drops the ball on Oculus Touch preorders

Today (Dec. 6) is the launch day for the Oculus Touch, the highly anticipated motion controllers for the Oculus Rift.  However, it appears that most preorders from Best Buy in the US and Canada won’t be delivered today.

Unfortunately for me, I also ordered from Best Buy and will miss the release day as well.  I usually order from Amazon because of their price, reliability, and customer service, but I decided to order the Oculus Touch from Best Buy because that’s where I demo’d the Rift and the Touch, and plus they had it available for in-store pickup.  I ordered Nov. 3 and it had shown it to be available for in-store pickup Dec. 5 (woohoo!).

Strangely, the status stayed at “processing” as recently as Dec. 4.  I went to the local store on Dec. 4 to confirm and the manager said they had it in hold for me (great!) but couldn’t release it until the 6th (rats!).  The night of Dec. 4 the status changed from “processing” to “preparing,” which I thought was reassuring.

But on the morning of Dec. 5, the status changed back to “processing.”  Last night, I went to the local store again to check and they told me that contrary to what the manager previously said, there were only two Oculus Touch units in the entire Los Angeles area, and likely already spoken for.  That sounded troubling.

Finally around midnight last night, the status on my order changed to “There’s something wrong with your order.”  I thought it was just a temporary glitch but nope – the status stayed that way.  I was forced to change my shipping to standard shipping.  (Who knows when delivery would be for that?)  It wasn’t available for pickup anywhere either.

And I was not alone.  Across the US and Canada, the same thing happened to many (most?) Oculus Touch preorders.  For those who opted to have their orders shipped, some got delivery dates as late as January 2017.

Here’s the twist: on Best Buy’s website, you can order the Oculus Touch and have free 2-day shipping for delivery on Thursday.  In other words, preorders were mysteriously sent to the back of the line.

As for my order, I called customer service to express my disappointment and they agreed to expedite my shipping to one day.  I hope they will deliver but we’ll just have to see.

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Mic Ty

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