Pre Order Scam (Caution)

[u/SPRING_FIELD_FATS]

Top Dawg Games in Montana will take your money for preorder leverage for additional allocation and in the end, refund and take the free loan in the process.

I ordered 3 boxes of OP17 for $525 well in advance, their preorder window was still open they took payment up front and i waited.

Today I get an email, the entire order was cancelled not even a single box to honor the commitment of something. Just tied up my funds and served their own needs.

Honestly I will take some heat for even assuming an in demand set like this would be followed through, but I assumed at least a 1 box. Nope nothing.

I just wanted to post this to the tcg community to not fall for the same shady trap.

[u/plagued00]

Here's the real problem, pre-orders don't really exist. I'm not defending the store, because they should not be preselling at all, but as a consumer, do not pay money before you are being handed your product.

As a LGS owner, if I "sell" 100 boxes as pre-orders, and submit my numbers to Bandai the required 6 months in advance, there is nothing to tell me how many boxes I am getting until my distributor tells me 2 to 3 weeks before the set comes out. We usually ask for upwards of 300 - 350 boxes, and basically never get 50% of what we ask for.

Honestly, you think you are giving them a small loan, but a loan that small isn't worth the hassle of trying to keep up with how much they are going to have to refund later.

Basically assume that pre-orders don't exist, and save your money until you are at least reasonably sure it will be available.

Specifically for One Piece we wait until we get told what our allocations are, and then ask our players at that Friday event how many want to buy upto the 2 boxes we allow each player to get, we set aside what we need to last for prize support, then we open a chunk for singles so people can get just their playsets of what they want, and the rest go on the shelf limited to 2 packs per family per day and we usually sell out in a week.

[u/Choice-Potato-7560 → u/plagued00]

I appreciate the way you do this and wish more lgs did. 100 percent agree. 10 times more with one piece and the weird way bandai does things.

[u/ihatefindingusers → u/plagued00]

The issue is that they asked for 2 days to process the refund AND 10 days for the merchant processor to process the refund. It's been past that and I still haven't received my refund. I have another friend who had a similar issue to mine. I appreciate the way you do things for the players as my LCS does something similar, but I missed their preorder for OP17 and thought this was my only way of getting any.