WiiHunt 2006: Wii Is Brining Out the Best in Retailers, Online Lines

[Leecher]

It seems RadioShack has cancelled all of our Wii pre-orders from yesterday. And then on top of that, I get this series of emails about Amazon in my inbox. Hit the jump for the complete text along with what's sure to be a small to medium rant on the complete failure of online retailing to deal with the Wii.

For those who used their feature of having them send an email when it was available, we got an email a couple of days ago that it would be available 11/19 "PST." Of course, many people thought that meant hit the refresh button promptly at midnight, and order that puppy!Noooo! There now are 800+ comments on amazon, under the Wii listing, from people who've literally been up all night -- midnight 'til now -- waiting for amazon to throw the stupid thing online!
Along the way, there have been tips that Sears had it online (they did, quickly sold out) and, ironies of all ironies, that Toys R Us had it online (they did, in two bundles -- family and action -- that also sold out in 20 minutes). The irony is that when Toys R Us was aligned more closely with amazon, these things went off without a hitch.

By the way...this has to have set a record for most comments on a product (800 and counting) that amazon hasn't even sold one unit of!!! WHOA!!! :)
NOW AMAZON IS WIPING OUT THE CUSTOMER REVIEWS THAT WERE BITCHING ABOUT THEIR SERVICE! PEAKING AT 800+, IT CONTINUES TO DECLINE! JUST CHECK: GO TO THE WII, THEN REFRESH AND YOU'LL SEE A LOWER TOTAL!!! A FIRST!!!
Down to 528...amazon was taking a real beating for not releasing it around midnight...although, in fairness to them, they didn't specifically state that time.

Here's copy of email they sent to folks who had signed up to get it...foolish consumers: They thought "Sunday morning" meant 12:01 a.m. ... technically, amazon has 'til 11:59 a.m. Pacific Time...just frustrating for folks who stayed up all night (which I did not)...

Cheers!

Scribe54

Important News For Amazon.com Video Games Customers
The Nintendo Wii will be available for purchase on Amazon.com on 11/19, Sunday morning (PST). We will be limiting purchases to one per household and we anticipate that we will sell through our inventory very quickly as we've received 100 times more Wii email sign-ups than consoles we'll have available for sale (i.e., for every Nintendo Wii we'll have for sale, over 100 people have signed up to be notified).
We expect to receive periodic shipments of the Wii from Nintendo throughout the holidays and we will post availability updates on the product detail page as well as in the customer discussions on the Nintendo Wii product page:
http://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-Wii/dp/B0009VXBAQ.
Thank you for your continued support of Amazon.com.

Right now I can't find the Wii at all on Amazon, I guess you need a direct link to get there. UPDATE: Got it. Kudos to Sears for doing a good job (though I was too late to order mine by about 1 minute). But how is it that retailers can screw up this launch so much? When else do you have a product that's completely guaranteed to sell out? Maybe they could have said, hey, don't wait up all night. – Mark Wilson
Thanks for the nice reporting, Steve!
Nintendo Wii [amazon]

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