The Company Apologizes to Fans, Investigates What Went Awry, and Promises to ‘Make This Right’; Why Not Just Send the Product Through Distribution?
Wizards of the Coast released a statement regarding their recent Secret Lair x MSCHF: The Zeta Set sale, for Magic: The Gathering, declaring that “it was a disaster.”
Not long after The Zeta Set preorder sale concluded, which was run through the Chaos Vault (see “Sale Experiences Technical Difficulties“), WotC released a statement apologizing for all of the issues customers experienced through the sale. They are currently investigating what exactly went wrong with the sale that caused such a preorder queue mess, and essentially acknowledged that customers may have experienced the following issues:
- Some orders were completed, but the customer may not have received a confirmation e-mail. If a customer thought they successfully ordered the drop, but did not receive a confirmation email within 24 hours, they should contact customer support.
- Duplicate confirmation emails were sent out to some customers that completed their orders.
- There were some number of failed orders, but WotC may not be able to track them all.
WotC also mentioned that they have received a several contacts about The Zeta Set orders, and their customer support team is working through these messages as fast as they can. They also offered the following note:
“We’re continuing to investigate what happened today and it may take a little while to fully get our heads around it. For everyone who participated in what can only be described as a frustrating and disappointing experience, whether you made it through the queue or not, we are going to try and make this right. Once we have a better sense of orders that actually got through, failed orders that we can track, and everything in between, we’ll come back and share as much as we can.”
As mentioned in a previous ICv2 editorial about similar Secret Lair queue incidents, one solution to crashing queues and failed online checkouts would be to simply send The Zeta Set through the hobby retail channel as a booster set (see “Goblin-storming Flippers“). Clearly, the demand was there for this product, and most games retailers have few problems handling preorders from their own customers. As an added bonus, sending the product through the hobby channel mitigates flipping to some degree because the product is more widely available. In short, what is the point of leaving this money on the table and not sending into the hobby channel for a greater profit?
Source: ICv2
