PS2 from buy.com at launch

[Bassman]

Here is a link for a ps2 at launch from buy.com
http://www.us.buy.com/clickfrom/txtemail/ps2pack_1020.asp?offer=61,61_1
you get free shipping after 12:00am on 10/26 for it.

[dimwit]

No luck putting it in my shopping cart a little early. The "buy" button is there though. Good find, looks like a nice package.

[IrishSS]

Whats in the package, other than the obvious... The link doesnt show anything anymore...

[dimwit]

Hmmm, can't remember everything but it did have the one console, one controller, 2 games, MIB DVD and the DVD remote control. $449 I believe.

[Leon]

You guys gonna attempt this? Anyone want to guess how many they are going to have in stock? I say around 10. But I'll give it a shot too. Their server is gonna get hammered. :heh:

[pennypinch]

You betcha. This, and the Amazon link, were probably leaked by HQ themselves. How many hits do you want bet its going to generate?

[singing and dancing] My PS2 ships tomorr-OW! My PS2 ships tomorr-OW![/singing and dancing]

I think I'll try and get another one though. I need the other crap (games, 2nd controller) and the money wouldn't hurt. I'll bet the prices on Ebay top 6 hunny for a basic system tomorrow.

[pennypinch]

Oh, and BTW, I've been checking on my Toys R' Us order every week for the last month. They've told me right out that they're not going to have ANY for sale in their retail stores, and they've stopped taking online orders...which leads me to my next point:

Toys R' Us does not have an online presence any more. They are officially co-branded with Amazon. If they have no units in their stores, and have no units for sale on their imaginairy online prescence, how does Amazon get any units to sell? I smell a bait and switch...

[MaStAYoDA1]

Any word on those outpost.com orders? I personally pre-ordered mine at software etc (sadly) which I won't get till the third shipment (which is around january). I figured that outpost.com took a lot of orders in for the ps2.

[IrishSS]

Originally posted by pennypinch
You betcha. This, and the Amazon link, were probably leaked by HQ themselves. How many hits do you want bet its going to generate?

[singing and dancing] My PS2 ships tomorr-OW! My PS2 ships tomorr-OW![/singing and dancing]

I think I'll try and get another one though. I need the other crap (games, 2nd controller) and the money wouldn't hurt. I'll bet the prices on Ebay top 6 hunny for a basic system tomorrow.

I get mine to-night... I get mine to-night... at 12:01! Ha!

[dag16]

Not only is their server swamped right now, but they're not selling it yet(its after midnight)...

[MaStAYoDA1]

geez, the site is SOOOOO slow now... I'm getting a couple connection refuseds

[IrishSS]

cmon, its after 12, where is it...

[MaStAYoDA1]

Arghh.... hehe, I could be doing homework right now... I can't believe I sitting here clicking reload....

[IrishSS]

I have 10 windows just reloading, hoping to get on...

[Leon]

I could be anytime AFTER. I think they are doing this on purpose. They have banner ads. I wonder how much money they made just from that little ploy.

:yell:

[MaStAYoDA1]

It'd be great if they had some sort of counter to see how many hits their getting ;)

[IrishSS]

no doubt.. starting to piss me off... maybe I'll jsut wait and try and ge in on amazons deal... oh wait, they'll prolly do the same thing! Bitch-Ass retail stores...

[MaStAYoDA1]

Well, looks like the traffic is going down quite a bit, it reloads a lot faster now

[Woob01]

tis freakin sucks! i'm on 2 phone lines...i'm on the website but its not on sale yet and i've been holding for ike 25 min. now!!!

[namlook]

This Playstation 2 crap is total BS. Who wants to go through hell refreshing 100 windows at a time, camp out all night or get reamed financially to get one? Not me. Screw that. Maybe PS2 is slightly better than Dreamcast but not by much if at all.

Buy.com's web page:

"The Playstation 2 Bundle will go on sale Thursday, October 26th after 12:00 EST. Please check back then to take part of this amazing deal!"

Amazing deal? Huh? $450 for a playstation 2 bundle is not an amazing deal.

[lucky_sob]

this is classic...

The Playstation 2 Bundle will go on sale Thursday, October 26th after 12:00 EST. Please check back then to take part of this amazing deal!

Doesn't say when it will go on sell, just sometime afer 12:00 EST.

Someone post when they are able to buy one or know they are soldout.

[IrishSS]

I have to wait till midnight to go out to my EB and get mine anyways, so I guess I can sit here and keep hitting reload until then...

[MaStAYoDA1]

Hmmm... wonder if they mean like 12:00 PM or 12:00 AM thursday...

[IrishSS]

I was thinking the same thing... make it fair for everbody and offer it at noon thursday...

[MaStAYoDA1]

Yeah, I have a feeling it opens at 12:00 PM in the afternoon, I don't think buy.com would pull this off 30 minutes after midnight EST.

[namlook]

It's 12:00am October 26th....2001! They left the year off to increase traffic for the next year. You guys are gonna be refreshing your 100 buy.com windows for the next 365 days! Hehe..

[Edited by namlook on 10-25-2000 at 09:28 PM]

[Leon]

Oh well... I guess we just have to check back periodically and hope to get lucky.

The CompUSA says they will have some too. But I don't think I'll be camping outside their store. This is just getting ridiculous.

[MaStAYoDA1]

At this point, I think I'll wait till after christmas to get mine when software etc sends out their third shipment, I don't have the time to go lurking for a ps2 ;)

[lucky_sob]

All well they are all sold out! Everyone quit trying...

No seriously, I am not lying, I promise....

PS: I had my fingers crossed

[Leon]

True, true. I only wanted it for Metal Gear anyway. My Dreamcast will have to do.

[IrishSS]

maybe they meant 12:00 PST, not EST

[namlook]

You can play Unreal Tournament on your big screen TV ON-LINE using the Dreamcast while with the PS2 you can't play on-line and you can only play in small windows. Big advantage for the DC here. Be happy with your DC people. You do have advantages. There are like 200 DC games too.

[MaStAYoDA1]

Well, on their site they said 12 EST, but who knows... Doesn't look sold out to me. I'm in a state of confusion

[Woob01]

naw i called twice today and they said that they would go on sell at 12:00am EST on Oct. 26, 2000. i'm still waiting just to confirm for myself to see if its really all out...been on hold for like 40 min now. this sucks.

[lucky_sob]

did you see the form on buy.com, saying they will email you when they are for sale? its on the page where the playstation 2 games are for sale.

[tranman329]

I was able to purchase the bundle!!!!!!!!! @ 11:45 CST

[IrishSS]

It looks like its all gone now... says the PS2 is out of stock when you put it in your cart...

[IrishSS]

I can't even get to the bundle page anymore, it links you to the normal PS2 page.. Oh well, it was a shitty bundle anyways...

[lucky_sob]

Its not even for sale yet! Quit lying so you can get one...

[IrishSS]

htey tricked everbody... that link wiht the 61,1 or what ever wasnt where it actually was. I swear. You had to go to the games page, where they had a link saying "the PS2 is here:click to find out more" or something. It took you to the real bundle page, which is gone now. I put it in my basket, and when I did, it said the PS2 part of the bundle was out of stock. So I kept going till I got to the actual confiramtion page, and it took the PS2 out of my basket. Believe what ya want.

[tranman329]

I dont' care what yall say. I have my reciept in front of me.

[IrishSS]

I believe that you got one.. and youre one of the lucky ones... I wasnt so lucky...

[lucky_sob]

OK NOW I HAVE SEEN THE SOLD OUT PART, BUT I NEVER SAW IT ON SALE... ALL WELL

[hzn240]

This is total BS I have been on the pages since 12 ET and now it says that the PS2 is sold out...wtf is that.

[chipchen]

well.. it's official. all sold out. they didn't want you to buy the regular ps2 alone, you had to buy the bundle.

someone posted the link on anandtech and when i added it to my cart, the ps2 was not there. kept clicking around until it said so on the site that they were all gone.

stinkin buy.com, tricky tricky site... i'll have to talk to my account manager there. order $70,000 worth of stuff from there and they won't even save a ps2 for me.

ok... off to BB to wait in line... perhaps i'll see some of you there.

[LazYbOii]

bastards!!! i wasted so much time and i have to study too!!!! midterms, ps2!!! what should i do!?

[namlook]

We all got scammed by Buy.com so they could get some more hits on their web site. They lied and had none available after 12:00 am 10/26. What a waste of time.

[MaStAYoDA1]

How about this, don't buy into the hype, and wait a while to get it ;)

Really, there aren't any good launch games right now in my opinion (except madden 2001 and maybe SSX). The good games don't really come out till then beginning of next year, ie. Gran Turismo 3. Just saying, it'll save you the headache and a good nights sleep. Its a good system, but I won't trade it for my sanity...

[MaStAYoDA1]

Just read from ps2.ign.com, amazon.com's ps2 deal will be available at 12 noon PST Thursday.

[emat5]

I was able to get the bundle...refreshed about 200 hundred times b4 it showed up...thank the gods

[Woob01]

dude that freakin sucks...i still don't get the sold out message...it still doesn't have any message or options and i've gone to the PS2 link. oh well...i think i'm gonna complain to the execs.

[Leon]

That was the biggest waste of my time. Grrr...

chipchen: BestBuy is going to have them for sale?

[funkymonkey]

Here's what happened:

99% of the time they would offer up a page that said it wasn't available -- and people understood that as fair for a high demand item and kept trying. But once the item became "available" for a "lucky" customer the process did not allow a reasonable amount of time for purchasing the bundle that was in their cart as advertised. Actually behind our backs Buy.com was making the same bundle in our cart available for multiple other customers to purchase. There's a legal term for that I can't remember.

Essentially Buy.com overadvertised then verified thousands of units as being in stock when they knew that they could never fulfill everyone's shopping cart. Instead of having an orderly queue that maxed out at 250 bundles they simply used server magic to separate the bait PS2 from the rest of the bundles that, if you didn't pay attention, you got stuck with minus the hardware. There's a legal term for that too.

Making only the PS2 disappear from thousands of shopping carts when checking out was no more difficult programming wise than preventing thousands of people from putting the same box it in their cart simultaneously. Would it have hurt to give an excited customer a few seconds to check out before warning him the session would time out and the bundle go to the next person in line?

Unfortunately some of the "slowest/most loyal customers" who got screwed were actively filling up their cart with hundreds of dollars worth of additional game purchases thinking they now had one of the systems. Hit and run, see ya later customers were rewarded instead. Buy.com didn't bother with real world business sense though since they're a virtual company.

[scythic]

I beg to differ with the expressed opinions, although I have no affiliation with buy.com other than I have a small number of PS2s sitting in the "sent to warehouse" stage there.
<P>
Once I got the order into my cart, it stayed there, in one case over an HOUR from the original moment when it was available. If you clicked to add the bundle, and it did add the bundle including the PS2, then according to CSRs, you would have gotten one!
<P>
They have a number of different web sites.. you had to keep refreshing until you got one that had updated, and people like me were very vigorous in their clicking. Sorry -- I was more desperate than you.

[funkymonkey]

"according to the CSR's"

Unfortunately they misled you. Check the posts on other sites. Large numbers of people had the whole bundle ring up fine in their cart, only to have the PS2 taken out of the bundle, leaving the rest in the cart.

So your statement that "victory goes to the clever" is correct. Buy.com was more clever than many of their customers who trusted them.

[dag16]

I got one from AMAZON for the Sports package, a couple of minutes before 3EST!!!!!!!!

[chipchen]

Leon,

yep... i got one. no pre-orders... just stand in the rain and wait til they pass out the vouchers. 130 systems. 130 vouchers. over 150 people before 6:00am.

i was number 55. (no, i didn't count like a geek... it says on the voucher, so long as they passed them out in order)

i actually got the amazon.com order too. i just got an email from them that i got it.

[jman]

Hi guy,

I was one of the 500 person who get a hold on the PS2 with buy.com when it was launch, but now they said that all the stock are being back-order. So, what the hack with the stupid BUY.COM deal.