Amazon + Wizards = More Disappointment

Well, it looks like gamers have been hit again. 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons was released this last weekend (June 6th). But gamers have been anticipating D&D 4.0 for quite a while now. So I, like most of them, preordered a full set of books from Amazon.com.

I, like most gamers, misread what Amazon said on their website. The expected ship date was the 10th, however, most of us thought that would be the expected delivery date. It was a mistake on our part, there is no doubt of that. Of course Amazon wasn't shipping the books on the weekend, they only ship on weekdays. But why would it take until Tuesday to get the books shipped? Especially since they are preorders, couldn't they be packaged and ready to go?

It gets worse though. Here it is the 11th. And my books are not shipped yet. Most people I have talked to have not had their books shipped yet. I understand, an expected ship date is not a hard date, it can move. Currently anticipated delivery date is somewhere around the 23rd for my books.

But it gets even worse than that! Many gamers wanted there D&D books before the weekend, because that is when their group was planning on gaming. Realizing that their books wouldn't be here by then, they decided to upgrade their shipping, in hopes that it would get here by late Friday. Now comes an extremely important warning to all D&D gamers out there that might consider this: Changing your shipping appears to put you to the BACK of the shipping queue! There are people out there that upgraded their shipping to 2 day, but now their estimated ship date is in late July!

When Harry Potter books are released, everyone received their books on the day that the book was released. Except for the time that people received their books early. I understand that D&D books are not as popular as Harry Potter. A few days wait is understandable. However, some people are going to have to wait over a month before they get theirs. Right now I haven't heard anything to suggest if this mess is to blame on Amazon, Wizards, or both.

Our gaming group was lucky. I purchased a copy of the PH from Borders (we have two gamers in our house) and a full set from Amazon. The other half of our gaming group is halfway across the country (we play over the net), and it sounds like one of their books did ship and will hopefully get there before the weekend, so all of them get to share one book. If their book doesn't get there by Friday, then I guess we will have to cancel our session. Maybe I will play Wii Fit instead, if only I could find one in any of the stores... Whoa, deja vu...