Furious trying to reserve a Steam Deck unit

In typical fashion these days, so many hardware providers have no clue on how to properly launch a pre-order system for new hardware. Case in point is the new Steam Deck from Valve.

 

They have completely botched the pre-order process and the little guy gets shut out and the bots and crooks win again. Yep, I’m pretty furious right now, but rightfully so. I got on early enough and managed to get one in my cart which apparently means nothing in the checkout process. I never could get the payment to process although I tried over the course of several minutes only to be told that my purchase was blocked because I had made too many purchases. None of them completed successfully I might add.

 

Why is it that here in the 21st century with so many tech companies that so few can actually manage a simple purchase process under a high demand? Apple does this flawlessly these days and yet so few can actually accomplish this.

Conversation 9 comments

  • navarac

    20 July, 2021 - 8:04 am

    <p>Because of this, I have a "don’t do business with" list. It is not all that long, fortunately.</p>

  • simont

    Premium Member
    20 July, 2021 - 8:43 am

    <p>Sadly it is the bots and scalpers that have the better systems. Doesn’t matter if it is GPU’s, shoes, show tickets or something else. The regular consumer struggles to get them.</p>

  • Daekar

    20 July, 2021 - 9:16 am

    <p>What I don’t understand is, how are these bots and scalpers making any money? Who are the ignorant schmucks that are buying these products from questionable sources at stupid prices? </p>

    • christianwilson

      Premium Member
      20 July, 2021 - 9:31 am

      <p>That’s the problem, unfortunately. Scalpers shouldn’t be making money because everyone should refuse to buy from them at inflated prices. Lots of people do anyway, though.</p>

      • waethorn

        21 July, 2021 - 1:51 pm

        <p>It’s Economics 101. It’s a supply vs. demand issue. People want it because of hype, and there’s a limited supply.</p><p><br></p><p>It happens everywhere, just like your current food, lumber, and steel prices. It’s not illegal to capitalize on it, but it should be illegal to artificially promote fraudulent shortages in essential commodity market supply to raise prices when there are none (….like what is happening with food, lumber and steel right now).</p>

    • Greg Green

      20 July, 2021 - 10:26 am

      <p>Wouldn’t it be smart to contract something like this out to Amazon, they’ve got a pretty good system going, at least for registering as an early buyer. Whether they’re good at fighting bots is a different thing.</p>

  • crunchyfrog

    20 July, 2021 - 11:20 am

    <p>One other option I was thinking about might help is a timed cart. I know when I reserve a hotel room I have like 15 minutes to finalize the reservation or it’s released. This way if I have an item in the cart like this Steam Deck I can get priority to check out and not have the inventory get sold out from underneath me while paying.</p><p><br></p><p>Not sure if this is an approach that would work but it sounds good.</p>

  • igor engelen

    20 July, 2021 - 12:13 pm

    <p>Some kind of approval in the process via an app to prove your identity would help a lot.</p><p>If it would get me a guaranteed (pre)order I wouldn’t have to think about it.</p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    28 July, 2021 - 11:27 am

    <p>With all these politicians leaning on "Big Tech" these days, why aren’t any of them leaning on eBay for carrying scalper sales?</p><p><br></p><p>eBay is easily twice as corrupt as Facebook, which is like saying Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars is more evil than Khan in Star Trek.</p>

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