Zavvi.com in new street date row

[Shrygue]

via MCV


The Hut Group-owned online retailer Zavvi.com has once again been accused of deliberately selling games early with listings for BioShock 2 on its eBay portal stating that game is “now in stock and despatching”.

Zavvi.com was caught up in a similar storm last year when some customers who had pre-ordered Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 received their orders four days before the tightly controlled global release date.

BioShock 2 is due to be released worldwide next Tuesday, February 9th.

However, The Hut Group’s commercial director Richard Chapple has told MCV that the high level of interest in 2K’s game means that retailers have to begin processing orders early.

“The Hut Group, like all online entertainment retailers do have the product in stock at our warehouse now,” he stated. “Because this title is in such high demand we're processing the orders already, so some customers have already had our 'dispatched email'.

“This allows us to get the tens of thousands of orders sorted by postcode and ready in bulk to hand over to our postal partners today.

"The majority of the orders will arrive with our customers on Tuesday 9th February, which in our experience will be over 90 per cent , the other 10 per cent may arrive a day early or late, but we have no control over this 10 per cent as the product is in the mail system by that point."

[VampDude]

Companies shouldn't be held completely accountable for games arriving too early, because the mail is a hit or miss for the most part (strikes etc). For customer satisfaction, they dispatch the titles so they have enough time to pass all the processes of being with the customer the very day of release which many companies dispatch the very day before and it could be a whole week later that the item arrives if not the launch day.

I think that if games are tightly controlled for their releases, the games companies should enact more procedures of preventing the titles from being played until the date of release. Much like on Windows, where certain programs cannot be used when the date has been set back, though work fine when the date has been set forwards. Online updates can be the simple answer, preventing any issues with the retailers who only provide a service of customer satisfaction.