CMBB Pre-orders Discussion

[Treeburst155]

BTS,

I think you guys may be passing up an opportunity to make a significant amount of extra money here. People are willing to buy extra copies or pay a fee to get priority status on the processing and shipping of their CMBB order. They don't give a hoot about having credit cards charged months in advance either.

Why not provide a "priority processing service". Those interested could pay the "fee" on top of the purchase price and be guaranteed their pre- order will arrive at the shipper's facility first. By "first" I mean DAYS BEFORE non-priority orders. Otherwise the shippers will mix them all up and it will be the luck of the draw again. The shippers must be made to process the priority orders first. If they only have priority orders to work on they can't mix them up with the others.

If people pre-order with cards that will expire before the game is ready then they are SOL. The

customers need to take responsibility here and NOT order with a nearly expired card. There are other ways to pay if need be.

Charge an extra $20 US for the priority processing pre-order service for single copies of the game, and let pre-orders for multiple copies get priority service automatically. If they don't pay the fee or order multiple copies they cannot pre-order at all. When the time comes all pre-orders go to the shipper. A few days later the first load of regular orders.

Money talks, BS walks!!

Treeburst155 out.

[ 12-20-2001: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]</p>

[Priest]

Folks,

Allow me to chime in here. Maddmatt is correct in his statement. The credit card world (at least in the US) is built around a 48 hour to ship from date of charge situation. This still allows one to authorize the card for the given amount (but not transfer the money) but that hold on the money only lasts between 3-5 days in most cases. This would present a great risk to BTS as while the auth would still be "valid" the secured money would not, and thus could muck up the whole process. Not to mention the possible increase in charges to the company for issueing charges on "old" auths which are labeled as higher risk transactions.

TreeBurst and Goanna please realize that all options have been pursued by BTS in this matter (it sounds that way to me) and that weighing all they options they made this decision for their business model and I think we should all respect that.

Ken

[Treeburst155]

Priest,

Can't the purchase be finalized, not just authorized? Why does it have to be only authorized for months. How do the credit card people know when the product is actually shipped? Why do they care?

The reason I'm so interested in this thread is because I was one of the original pre-demo pre-orders of CMBO, but didn't get my copy until 3 weeks after people who didn't pre-order at all. One reason for this IIRC, was that the shippers themselves did not prioritize. My pre-order may have made it TO the shipper first, but they just stacked other orders on top of mine. This made me the last one OUT of the shipper's facility. First IN, but LAST out.

[Treeburst155]

Here's another idea.

Allow pre-orders with Money Orders only. No checks, no credit cards, no hassles. Then implement the Priority Pre-order plan described in my post above.

Edit: This will involve snail mail and opening hundreds of envelopes. Hmmmm....

Treeburst155 out.

[ 12-20-2001: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]</p>

[Maastrictian]

Fundamentally I'll take any bone BTS chooses to throw me, and if they don't throw me a bone I won't complain. But I do want to chime it that it would be worth $20 to me to have my order be one of the first out the door. I'm also very happy to give BTS my money now and let them earn some well deserved money off the interest.

--Chris

[xerxes]

It's illegal to charge credit cards in advance (more than 30 days) for products that will ship. Given BTS is squishy on when they will ship, I can understand their hesitation to take pre-orders.

Anyone pre-ordering is going to buy anyways so it really doesn't gain BTS anything but some potential headaches.

I assume BTS cashflow is doing fine.

Does anyone know about how many copies of CM1 were sold?

-marc

[Treeburst155]

Can't customers "sign" a waiver of some sort on the 30 days shipping thing?

Nobody knows how many units of CMBO were sold. They're still in business so it couldn't have been too few.

Treeburst155 out.

[Priest]

TreeBurst,

Unluckily the law states that the item must ship or service rendered within 48 hours after the charge. <Slapdragon I am sure could give you the exact law >

All it takes is one rotten apple to spoil the bunch. What I mean by that is, if the allow pre-order and actually charge the card and one person complains, even if he "said" it was okay, BTS's business model may be put in question which could result in higher charges from different institutions. If BTS simply said "Okay TreeBurst why don't you just order" then if anyone found out they could cause a huge muck up at some consumer organizations and possible ill-will from thier clientale that did not get to pre-order.

All in all I believe they made the right decision, at least for them. As far as international orders and such, remember it works both ways. Final Fantasy X came out in Japan like 6-9 months ago and I have had to wait until yesterday to play it. Even if I read and understood Japanese I still would have had to wait 2-3 weeks for shipment to order it from Japan (not to mention "modding" my PS2).

In the end I think that BTS is sympathetic to your cause and will try the best they can to help everyone out but they have to work within the limits they are given just like any business.

The above two posts by the way are totally my views and opinions and in no way do I speak for BTS or even have any knowledge of BTS's actual thought process but I do have experience in this area and the extrapolations are all my own.

Later

[ 12-20-2001: Message edited by: Priest ]</p>

[Treeburst155]

Thanks, Priest! I appreciate you explaining that to me.

OK, here's how to get around all this stuff.

Accept Priority Pre-orders according to my plan posted earlier beginning on the day the game goes to the duplicators. This will insure that the product reaches the customers before 30 days, barring shipping glitches that BTS is not responsible for. If this is too early then open up for pre-orders AFTER the first load is back from the duplicators.

The key thing is to make sure that only people who pay the fee or order multiple copies are allowed to pre-order AND that the preorders arrive at the shipper a few days before regular orders. It does not matter WHEN we get to pre-order, just that we do, and our orders are processed before regular orders.

All BTS has to do to uphold their end of the pre-order deal is get the pre-orders to the shipper separate from, and a few days prior to, the regular orders.

Treeburst155 out.

[ 12-20-2001: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]</p>

[Stormbringer]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Joe Shaw:

I think we should do it by the current member number

Joe<hr></blockquote>

Hmmm, 4378?....I could do a lot worse! Count me in for the "by the number" method!

[Priest]

Folks,

I do not know what the real world law is but I can tell you this, a card not present situation such as what BTS is involved in has only a 48 hour time frame between the charging of the card and the shipping of the product. You can auth the card for much much longer but after three to five days the money hold (and BTS's security blanket) goes away even though they could still use the auth to finish the transaction.

[Treeburst155]

That's it, Priest. Keep trying to foul up the works with your bad news.

All they have to do is wait until they have 1,000 copies ready to go to the shipper. When that is the case they can open up for pre-orders and ship the goods within 48 hours. They might be limited to a maximum of 1,000 pre-orders, but that would suffice I think. Several days later they can open up for regular orders. The pre-orders are not even pre-orders in this case, but they are processed prior to and separate from all other orders.

Treeburst155.

[Priest]

Then really you are not looking for a pre-order but just an order to the shipping. First in first out, well that would have to be addressed by BTS and the shipping company and has little bearing on the credit card or order method.

[Treeburst155]

There would have to be a period where ONLY priority orders are accepted. This is to keep them separate from and prior to the rest. Also, shippers cannot be trusted to ship priority orders first. They can be forced to do this if they have ONLY priority orders to work on.

I do not care if I actually get to pre-order or not. I just want to have a chance to order before the masses, have my stuff arrive at the shipper before the masses, and have it leave the shipper before the masses. Once I've cleared the shipper's facility they can crush the shipper with regular orders.

Treeburst155 out.

[Priest]

Not to be too sarcastic, but everyone post who wants that!!!!!

Okay do not post I like the forum staying online and Maddmatt would kick my arse.

Now seriously I understand that but like I said, how many forum members are there and how many would priority order and how much is a batch of of CMBB going to cost, is it better for BTS to open it up for everyone due to overhead, etc etc

We do not know enough to second guess their choice, only try to possibly guess why.

[jshandorf]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Has anyone stopped to wonder what the price of CM2 will be?

With all the new features, coupled with the irresistable screen shots - they could probably get away with charging 70 or 80 dollars US for this game, knowing we would all buy it...

<hr></blockquote>

You are fricken stoned if you think I would pay 70-80 bucks for CMBB.

The only way I would pay that much for the game would be if Madmatt hand delivers it to my house, and then gives me a foot massage as I install the game.

Jeff

[ 12-20-2001: Message edited by: jshandorf ]</p>

[Treeburst155]

I don't follow your logic there, Priest.

Instead of opening the doors to everyone for orders, they just have a short period devoted to priority orders first. It's that simple. All they have to do is get the priority people a little ahead of the rest so they don't get bogged down in the masses. It's simple.

Treeburst155 out.

[Treeburst155]

EDIT: I misunderstood Shandorf's post.

[ 12-20-2001: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]</p>

[Priest]

Not to push the point and I see what you are saying but how long does BTS have storage for disks and manuels? What does it cost to store them if any? Will 48 hours matter?

IIRC Matt stated once that once an order is received it goes it gets sent to the shipping company and it is shipped within 48 hours. To give priority to certain people then you are talking about 4 days not 2 until general shipment. If we are truly going to keep the invoices seperate then we need to wait until the priority has been shipped hence the need to hold off other orders for at least 48 hours. Then once they submit those general orders another 48 hours until shipping.

This is just the tip of the iceberg I am sure of all that went into the decision, like I said I am just going to trust in that decision.

[Treeburst155]

Yes, that's right. All they need to do is get the priority orders 48 hours ahead of the rest and keep them there every step of the way. Especially important is that the shippers have nothing to ship EXCEPT the priority orders for a couple of days.

If this is too difficult or expensive to do for some reason I'll just take my backseat and be happy that I'll be playing the game by July 4th I guess. If I was running BTS, I could do it. It's all a matter of willingness to put forth the extra effort, whatever it takes. That's why I don't mind paying $20 bucks for priority status.

Treeburst155 out.

[Julio Bailey]

I would not pre-order, because I have no clue on

when CMBB is being released. Could somebody just

let me know the estimated date of release.

[aka_tom_w]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Julio Bailey:

I would not pre-order, because I have no clue on

when CMBB is being released. Could somebody just

let me know the estimated date of release.<hr></blockquote>

Q1 2002

maybe Jan? ( not likely)

Maybe feb 2002?

Maybe March 2002?

My guess is late March

and I predict they might sell out their first run by May 2002

-tom w

[Doug Beman]

I care very much about getting the game. I care very little whether it arrives on a day, or 2 weeks after that, or 2 weeks after that. I have PLENTY of other crap to do, and it's not like OTHER people having the game before me will hurt me.

However-much earlier I'd get the game by being able to pre-order would probably not outweigh the energy I'd waste getting all het up about it.

I would pay $50 (as Pip says, "yes yes I will pay 50 dollars for one!!"). I would pay $70. I would even pay $100. I am single, unattached, live a very staid lifestyle...both a blessing and a curse, because I usually have money to do what I want because I'm single and unattached, yet I'm single and unattached and never have anybody to do anything with, so I never do anything, so I usually have money...

At least I didn't sweat the cost of every holiday purchase I made, the way I always used to.

DjB

[Michael Dorosh]

BTS is kind of taking a lot on faith as it is - I can't imagine them manually keeping money orders and cheques for three months and in order of receipt no less! Besides which, the cheques would be staledated by the time CM ships.

Why would they want the hassle? Is anyone NOT going to buy the game because they can't order now?

Credit card purchases are touchy as it is, since we're not signing a receipt, technically, if we all went to the credit card company and said "hey, I never bought this, and if you say I did, show me the signature where I approved it..."

Someone would be in a lot of trouble.

I certainly wouldn't do something like that, but it just seems to me this whole credit card purchas proposition is dicey enough as it is, without the added hassle of prioritizing money orders by date, or maintaining a database of preorders.

What if their server goes down? How would they explain to all the preorders that their credit card purchases are meaningless since they lost track, and oh, if you send an original copy of your statement (not a photocopy) we will refund your money/ship your game, but it will take 6 weeks to a year because we now have to audit all our lists to see who we got a copy of the statement from and who didn't. What do you mean you don't keep your credit card statements?

It would be fun to see the price go to 70 dollars and watch jshandorf eat his words here on the forum, though...

[Treeburst155]

That's great, Doug! We can move you right to the end of the list then. Thanks for stepping aside for me.

Treeburst155 out.