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It's never happened to me. I've pre-ordered limited edition vinyls and regular imported CDs from Amazon UK (sold and shipped by Amazon UK) multiple times for more than a year, sometimes months in advance but every time they fail to deliver. It will get to the day of release on the pre-order and "it'll be with you by 10pm", then by mid afternoon it'll change status to "we don't have it, we'll let you know." - The only good thing is at least they don't take the money on pre-orders before putting it in the box.
I've lost count now of how many times Amazon UK have failed to deliver on pre-orders. The best that happened once was more than a week later finally getting a dispatch notice saying it was coming from an Amazon Italy warehouse (a Korean vinyl record so not exactly locally made to Italy.)
I can't imagine it being a price (low priority) issue as my most recent delay this past Friday was a Limited Edition Japan CD+Blu-ray item costing £70 that Amazon UK has now removed themselves as a seller completely (not even "temp out of stock" on the store page.) On my order page it's just the "we'll let you know when we know."
Its not all bad though, thanks to Amazon UK having issues I just ordered hunted and ordered direct from CDJapan for £45 using DHL the exact same item (£30+shipping.) Talk about a price difference bypassing Amazon UK.
What has your experience been with pre-orders? Do they fill almost everything and only unusual items have issues or have even common things like Marvel Blu-ray's been delayed from release day to you?
I've lost count now of how many times Amazon UK have failed to deliver on pre-orders. The best that happened once was more than a week later finally getting a dispatch notice saying it was coming from an Amazon Italy warehouse (a Korean vinyl record so not exactly locally made to Italy.)
I can't imagine it being a price (low priority) issue as my most recent delay this past Friday was a Limited Edition Japan CD+Blu-ray item costing £70 that Amazon UK has now removed themselves as a seller completely (not even "temp out of stock" on the store page.) On my order page it's just the "we'll let you know when we know."
Its not all bad though, thanks to Amazon UK having issues I just ordered hunted and ordered direct from CDJapan for £45 using DHL the exact same item (£30+shipping.) Talk about a price difference bypassing Amazon UK.
What has your experience been with pre-orders? Do they fill almost everything and only unusual items have issues or have even common things like Marvel Blu-ray's been delayed from release day to you?
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sorted byMain ones of interest (and results) out of about 8 instances so far:
Joy - Hello (Vinyl) - Was the later Italy dispatched. Very high profile vinyl release for the audience.
Sunmi - 1/6 (CD) - Three weeks late on dispatch.
Red Velvet - Bloom (Most expensive Limited Blu-ray version of the 8 versions sold by Amazon) - This weeks issue.
Reason the pre-order window is important is most of the time with Korean (vinyl) especially on Amazon UK they bump up the price 30% the moment it hits release day and it just keeps going higher. So finding out Amazon can't fill the order normally means a panic search elsewhere with extremely limited production runs.
The Joy vinyl was £48 when I pre-ordered it compared to the £92 Amazon are selling it at now. "Rose - R", "Lisa - Lalisa". (I'd avoid the second one) I could name more but essentially all popular artist vinyl versions that have at doubled since release in less than a 18 months.
For fun context on Korean vinyl. The first vinyl album from another artist at the same (Joy) company was £50 new around 2016, current asking price second hand is about £1,300 because of massive popularity of the artist globally. Not a typo. (Taeyeon - 'I') Most Korean CD albums sell around 80,000-500,000 copies globally (per album) with only a few thousand of the vinyl versions released per so its an ultra high profile item so don't think its a low focus issue, that made me wonder about if it was a general issue.
With all the horror stories about that launch you were seriously lucky (edited)
maybe depends on size?
part of it came friday (game)
part saturday (ball and seel book)
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Thanks for the reply. Similar item size (small books for the most part) but what you've mentioned sounds like highly popular (common in the UK) items so that might be the main clue to this, along with the PS5 item mentioned later by someone else.
It could be if they don't have a UK based supplier they are more likely to drop the ball on release dates.
It usually tells you in the description but from experience it can sometimes just say Amazon and get fulfilled from somewhere in Europe these will often track as a next day delivery and even show an estimated delivery time (sometimes up to or past 9pm but then later change to the following day or the day after these are most likely to be imports)
That said I've had pre order releases on the day of release, a whole week before official release and whole week after release
Sounds like you've had some crazy luck. For me it's always items sold and shipped by Amazon (UK), not listed as Amazon EU or Amazon US that have the trouble.
Fun fact you might like - I've got into using Amazon.jp directly for some items recently and the site is amazing. The day before release taking the money out, dispatching on release day (Wed) and arriving via DHL on Friday the same week. Think its the only Amazon region website where you have to re-sign up because it doesn't share account data with other regions at all.
The last couple have actually arrived at the "local" Amazon location a day early, then been held until the day of release.