Australians Shafted Again?

In Australia EB games apparently have some sort of exclusive deal with Nightfall for 7 days. The same thing happened with Factions.
EB are not common outside of capital cites, in fact the are only 3 EB shops in my state. The closest is 450km away.
One of the locals tried to organise some copies. EB will not ship us the game, they would not sell the pre-release separately to one of us who made the trip before Nightfall was available. Can't be there to put on a deposit for a CE, bad luck we won't reserve one. Our EBay copies haven't yet turned up either.

After Factions I was assured by email that this wouldn't happen again?

The rest of the world gets it on the 27th of October. We have to wait till the 2nd of November? We can't get the CE at all?

http://www.gameswarehouse.com.au/lon...p?gameid=13608

http://www.aussiegamer.com.au/catalo...y-p-16587.html

http://www.cheapgames.com.au/guild-w...ll-p-1289.html

http://www.gamehead.com.au/product.php?productid=91506

Not common outside capital cities>? I live in townsville, the arsehole of north queensland and we have two stores.

gamehead also do pre-orders

Same with New Zealand, no EB anywhere close to us down in Central otago, south island.

Gamesman and Game planet are the only two online stores i know of, both have no CE and have NF due on the second :/

Indeed. Its not bad enough that Nightfall and Factions was sold exclusively through EB, but the customer service i had was terrible.

I also live quite far from an EB store. So, when i was trying to get a copy of the Prerelease bonus pack i tried calling them. First off, they wouldnt let me have the bonus pack without buying the game too, which meant i actually wouldnt recieve the bonus pack or the game until the game was actually released. They also wanted me to pay upfront, and then have to wait patiently for it. And when i mentioned that they had it advertised on their website as SOLD SEPERATELY, they hung up on me. Without another word, they put the phone down.

Of all the stores in Australia to give exclusive rights to, why did it have to be EB? The worst expirience of customer service i have ever seen.

I decided to get the game and pre release pack from America instead, as i am disgusted at EB and never intend on buying from them ever again.

Why would i want to support a company that hangs up on me for requesting a product on their own website?

What does that have to do with us in SA? Gamehead release date, 2/11/06.

Since when did SA refer to Australia? You can always rename your thread title...

I reckon it just comes down to bad customer service, because it's clearly different between other EB stores.

Please re-read my post.

This, by and large, seems to be the major problem; vast differences in the service provided by various outlets of the same store chain.

I live in regional QLD, there are 2 EB games stores in town. The guys were helpful, rang me when the pre-order came in, collected that at no addditional cost (provided I had put a deposit on NF), then they rang me on the 25th October to say that NF has arrived. The let me pick it up prior to the "release date" of the 27th, and simply said bear in mind the servers won't be live until the afternoon of that Friday.

It seems more an issue of the kind of service being received locally as opposed to a nationwide shafting.

I think you guys are missing the main point from our pov. The EB exclusive for 7 days. We can't GET the game locally. The EB service completely a side issue.

Heh I guess I was lucky then, EB Games is like a 10 minute drive from my place and I was called at like 9am in the morning on the 27th because my copy of the CE had arrived

Well, now it's the 3rd of October and well STILL can't get Nightfall locally. The exact same problem happened with Factions, it took nearly 3 weeks after release for any local shops to get copies.

I'd be interested in how many European countries the same thing happens.. out in the country, not in the main cities, because as far as I'm aware, the main cities in Australia managed to get copies of both the standard and ce version of nightfall. (I'm in canberra, I got both before release date and the ce wasn't a pre-order.. for the pre-order, I got a phone call 3 days prior to release that its in)

I strolled in and picked up the CE no problems on Friday 27th.

sorry to hear that...

hated local eb (at sydney, won't name the store, but i am sure i won't visit that store ever again) but i did pick up my NF CE on 26th

as far as i heard, you do need to pre-order to get the pre-order pack... i think minimum deposit is 10bucks...

Wow! I thought Austrailians were too busy protecting themselves from the 10 most poisonous animals on the planet to be playing games. j/k

I'm sorry I didn't read the "Anet hates Austrailians" post that lasted for weeks earlier this year. But, it's obvious that either Anet or one of it's distributers has a deal with eb that put the dollar (or pound in your case I guess) ahead of the player.

I haven't figured out how eb could increase their profit by delaying the NF release, but I'm sure someone has a theory.

Tine for an update....

Australia hasn't used pounds for ages...

We have a dollar and cents system as well...

nossac, true.. but if you go to the online gw store, you get to pay in pounds if you're in Australia.. or did when I tried a while ago, not sure if they fixed it and are now letting us pay in Euro like our NZ counterparts.

I live in Australia, and I got the CE 3 days BEFORE release, because the servers didnt open before then EB just let me have it......

and I dont live in a capital city

3 stores I know of in my city, got my CE 3 days before release and I am officially in a regional area. It depends on the individual store. This is EB btw. No EB for 450kms? Where do you live?!? You've gotta be out west somewhere.

Exact same thing happened to me, got a call on the Wednesday saying my pre-order CE was in and went and picked it up, they had copies on the shelf too (both CE and SE), I'm not in a capitol either.