Why are people mad about a company doing preorders?
Apple sells millions of iPhones every year... if you’re not in the first batch of lucky customers you could be waiting months without a new phone. This is particularly annoying if you’re paying £80 a month on the upgrade programme.
The fact that OcUK let you preorder at least guarantees you’ll have a card at some point. They’re not a finite supply... they won’t run out before getting to your order. It’ll just take longer to fulfil it.
Don’t want to preorder? You don’t have to.
I don't think people are mad about pre orders on the whole, I think there a several factors at play here. Firstly with regards to money, I think it's probably because the full amount of money is taken upfront and with no real idea given as to how long it will be until a product is delivered (weather it's possible to give that or not isn't going to change how people feel about that) rather than a deposit and then the full amount later when the product ships, personally I think that would be a more customer friendly way to do it and people would be more ok with that I think.
Secondly many people ordered while stock was either showing or there was a date on it, exactly what that meant or weather you 'should' have believed it is again beside the point really, it did say that and perhaps quite expectedly many people would have expected they were actually going to get a card quite quickly because of that, little were they to know something had gone awry and it should have said 'Pre-Order' without a date given after about the first 10 minutes or so, especially if said people aren't normally followers of the forum and or the hardware industry in general, they couldn't have known it would be like this to be fair to them. And thirdly I think people who actually might be knowingly pre-ordering are probably a bit peeved at not having any sort of clear idea when they might get it, it's a shot in the dark and we really don't even have enough information to even try to make an educated guess at the moment, I suppose this last group will likely know this by now but I still get that they wouldn't be terribly happy about it still. It's mostly just the not knowing part that is really getting to people I think, even though OcUK don't know so can't tell them, it doesn't make people feel any better.
Edit: Sorry I had another point in mind too, which is a bit less 'concrete' than the above but more or an observation of people. Silly as this may be or sound, we do live and have done for a few years now in a 'Next Day Delivery' perhaps even same day from the Big River (hat tip Jonny Cash) world now, we are used to getting things fast, waiting very long from the point of deciding to buy to the point of receiving a consumer product like this, isn't too much of a thing anymore and people just aren't that used to it. People are impatient for stuff now (I know I am, and I preach patience to the impatient!) they don't want to wait they want it NOW or at least tomorrow ...it's a mentality and a way of living that many have become accustomed to ...this is also a big factor in all this. Much as I loathe this phrase as it hardly says anything but it seems to fit this well, 'it is what it is'.
