July 2015
Preorders open for "Zero Escape 3 - Limited Edition!" (it wasn't named "Zero Time Dilemma" yet). All us excited Zero Escape fans run to our browsers and visit www.amazon.com to order a copy or two. It comes with a copy of the game, and a replica watch, modelled on the one in the game. Each Zero Escape game has used a different watch, and they are very important and symbolic to the series. So this is cool!
Although I am in the UK, and the offer is on Amazon.com, Aksys state that they don't mind who orders from where, so I go ahead and order two copies - a 3DS copy (I have an import USA 3DS), and a PS Vita version. It is my intention that I am buying one copy for me, and another copy for my brother. It was, after all, by brother who first brought Kotaro Uchikoshi's writing talent to my attention, all those years back when I first got him a copy of Ever 17 back when Hirameki were still around selling copies.
I pay for the games, I pay for the shipping, and pre-pay the customs charges, it comes to over $100. It will be worth it! Yes!
Late June 2016.
Zero Time Dilemma is out, but there has been a problem with the watches! They have been damaged in transit, and so all us Zero Escape fans get an email apologising, and they promise to send out the games as soon as possible, the watches after a while longer, and give us $10 per game store credit to appease us. Not like that goes anywhere when you're an international customer, but I appreciate the gesture.
This is such a kerfuffle that it appear in the news on Siliconera, Kotaku, Polygon... I joke that it's a zero timepiece dilemma and get 34 upvotes, which pleases me far more than it ought to.
8th September 2016.
I receive an email, which I expect all us lovely patient Zero Escape fans who ordered the Ltd Edition game from Amazon have also received. It says that I have received promotional credit thanks to my order, includes a link to a PDF "premium booklet", and there's a link for more details. So I follow it!
...is this a puzzle? XD
It leads to a page on Amazon marked "Zero Time Dilemma: Bonus Watch by Aksys". There's a watch there and it costs $500. So I put two of them in my basket and head to the checkout to see if the credit works. It doesn't. Oh God it fails so bad.
a) It only removes the cost of one watch
b) It charges me for shipping
c) It charges me for pre-paying customs.
I try contacting Aksys Games but that does NOTHING. I guess it is the middle of the night for them, though.
So I head on over to Customer Services and chat to a nice fellow who says he'd love to give me credit for both watches but he can't, because this is something that Promotions and Marketing handle. So he's sent the details over to them and he promises they'll get in touch within 24 hours.
A few hours later I get an email from the Promotions department, telling me that promotions are limited to ONE PER CUSTOMER. It links me to terms which it says are specific to this promotion: http://www.amazon.com/promos/
No. That's the generic promos Terms and Conditions.
I take another look at the Bonus Watch page on Amazon. For some reason the cost is now up to $600 and the page is filling up with 1-star reviews from people in the same boat as me.
And why is this even going through the promotions department to begin with? All it is, is that we're waiting on watches that failed to ship with the original game! It's not an Amazon special promotion item, it's an unfulfilled partial shipment.
So I went to the message from Amazon, and clicked the "Was this representative helpful? NO" option. Filled in the subsequent form with "terrible! Your policies on this matter are bad!" etc. It did not make me feel better. Then when that was completed, it showed me options to contact another representative. So I clicked... via chat.
This time, I seem to be in contact with an American representative. This is my impression because of her name, the way she reacts to things, and the fact she says "crud" and "darn" when things go wrong, instead of just saying nothing and pretending everything is going perfectly fine.
I explain to her what's happened and she asks me to be patient and allow her time to read through my orders and work out what's been going on. So I allow her that.
And eventually, she comes back and sends me a link to the promotions T & Cs and tells me I'm only allowed one.
I tell her that it seems like she's shutting me out. She asks me to get on the phone. I tell her that that's shutting me out too. I want her to listen, pay attention, and get this sorted out now.
So I re-explain that this was never set up as an Amazon promotion to begin with, and if these were the terms, they should have been stated back in 2015 and not right now. That it was part of the Limited Edition package which was supposed to have been included, but couldn't be fulfilled at the time, and I am owed the second half of the goods I am waiting for, which are the sole reason I bought the Limited Edition and not the Standard Edition.
Something clicks! Suddenly she has an epiphany! *_*
It came with a watch, and was not an edition exclusive to an Amazon promotion, it was originally a bundle!
(Did I accidentally manage to put her in mortal danger? Did a morphogenetic field come into effect and suddenly she channelled the solution from another member of Amazon staff nearby?)
And then all she wants to do is set things right for me.
So what ended happening was an unholy kludge of a workaround but god I hope it works, because if not I end up with no watches and $129 towards nothing.
I ordered two $600 watches, had $620 taken off the price as promotional credit (the promo credit for the watch and the other $20 they gave me in apology for it being late), there was still shipping and customs charges on top of that.... oh my god I have never placed such an expensive order for watches in my entire life! Perhaps... not on anything else as an internet purchase, not in one order!
Then the lovely Amazon representative jumped onto the order, and somehow reduced it to $129, which I will be charged on my credit card, and then she'll refund that amount after it ships. I have not had a shipping confirmation yet! But I have this in writing, that I will get a refund! Oh, oh, oh, I hope this all works! I want my watches but this is a serious amount of money on the line!
I did mention to her that the Bonus Watch page is filling up with 1-star reviews that are people in the same situation as me, but I don't know how their orders will be dealt with.
UPDATE: 10th September, item was shipped. 12th September, 3pm: no refund in sight!
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