It appears that UK retailer GAME has cancelled a number of PlayStation 4 pre-orders without any explanation.
The issue was raised on the PlayStation Forums and since then many gamers have found their PS4 pre-orders have been annulled. A Twitter search reveals the problem is widespread.
It appears that GAME is trying to take money off old credit cards. TSA regular Cameron Brewster pre-ordered his PS4 in June and paid a £20 deposit at GAME and £4.95 delivery “just to make sure it got to me for launch day on November 29th”. Then, during the Eurogamer Expo he upgraded to the Killzone Mega-bundle for £429.99.
“On November 25th, I get an email to say my PS4 pre-order had been cancelled. No prior warning, no previous attempts at taking the money. They just instantly cancelled because they couldn’t get any money off of me.”
“However, I checked the night before that my GAME account had my new and up-to-date card registered with it, which it did. I also made sure my old debit card was deleted, which it was. They had tried to take my money twice using my old, now out-dated, debit card and didn’t even consider trying to use the new one linked to my account. My bank account also has the funds available to fulfil the order, so it wasn’t that the money isn’t there to be taken.”
GAME gave him 48 hours to contact them and get the order reinstated. He tried phoning them “only to be greeted by some automated rubbish which is only used for product and store information.”
He was told to use the GAME customer services via a web chat “only to be disconnected once I’d got to the front of the 175+ strong queue.”
In the end he had to bombard the GAME Twitter account with tweets before they finally responded. He sent the information they requested but says, “Since I sent that DM, I’ve heard nothing from them, and time is ticking.”
“I’m afraid to say but this fiasco has resulted in me deciding to never use GAME again once I’ve finally got the PS4 in my hands (whenever that might be),” he added.
GAME seems to be aware they have a problem and posted the tweet below, and have also created a contact form for those experiencing problems, which you can access here.
#GAMEPS4Launch PS4 pre-orders. If you're having an issue with your pre-order don't worry we can fix it. Email us: http://t.co/bA0LTYBQth
— GAME.co.uk (@GAMEdigital) November 25, 2013
TSA’s Peter’s pre-orders both dispatched this morning, after payment was successfully taken from the card linked to the order. In that case, there was an email almost a week prior reminding him to check his order and ensure the payment details were correct.
This latest issue with PS4 pre-orders follows a weekend in which reports arose of ShopTo cancelling their customers’ orders without notice. Sufficed to say, if you’ve got a preorder with anyone, it would be wise to check up on it today.
If we hear anything from Game on this issue, we’ll keep you posted.
Many thanks to Cameron Brewster for his help with this item.
Crazy_Del
Man GAME are terrible, I never ordered anything online from them anymore after I had pre-ordered a PS3 Game years ago and it arrived on launch but it was not the game I ordered. Took two weeks to sort it out that. So went to ASDA 3days later and bought it and traded the other when it arrived two weeks time. Also GAME pre-owned section are a rip-off! Saw a Pre-owned game at £35 a few times!
I hope for those who were affected gets sorted ASAP!
I have fully paid my PS4 Bundle Pack along with Need For Speed Rivals earlier today at my local Game Shop. Now I just have to come in at 9am on Friday to collect it. Don’t trust online stuff!
sparkyscrum
I’ve had the joy of Amazon showing my pre order as due after 25th Dec while my Game order got cancelled (one is a present) and all the while my bank puts a block on my card without telling me for no reason.
Game have finally contacted me to let me know that someone will be ringing me soon. However they have tried to take for BF4 (PS4) on the correct bank details while trying to use my old address for my PS4! Seriously need to get a grip with themselves.
What’s made this worse is this morning they decided to shut the web chat service from the advertised 0730-1930 to 1100-1500 for two days while telling people with cancelled orders they have 48hrs to sort the mess out. The web chat was at 10hrs queue at 1400!
I’ve learnt a valuable lesson, never deal with Game.
djdustb
Glad I went for an in store pre-order now. I can nip over the road to get it at midnight and not have to worry about the terrible couriers amazon use losing it or delivering it a few days late.
Cannot wait
Lal
Have 2 units on pre-order at my local Game store, haven’t had any issues yet.
Also glad i ordered from the store rather than online.
Not long now, Friday can’t come quick enough.
CarBoyCam
I ordered my PS3 in-store back in the day. No issues. Not the same for me now! They didn’t phone me back at all today. So tomorrow they’re getting a phone call at 8:30. Someone with the same issue gave me their “Phase 1 PS4 preorder number”.
Lal
I hope it all works out for you tomorrow.
tatoemonkey
This is awful I purposefully avoid Game because of crazy ass crap like this, I hope all you guys get sorted.
Game big fat shame on you and your shoddy half arsed service.
Spence1115
They’ve messed up mine as well and seem to have no desire to fix it.
Tried the form, they emailed back to say the billing address didn’t match with the bank, because they used one from 5 years ago rather than my actual one because they messed up. They never replied again.
I tweeted like mad, got a lot of responses from others, eventually they DM’d me to get my order number. Today they then took my phone number after I hassled them again. They said they’d call. That was 2pm, still no call.
Useless company, they don’t even have a phone number to speak to someone! Their webchat is useless and they ignore emails.
johnwest
This might explain it. If you pre-ordered a PS4 using paypal more than a month ago, your payment status might have changed to expired. This means GAME can not charge you if you only have a linked bank account and no paypal balance and not enough on your linked credit card.
Apparently it looks normal from their end even though the status says expired in your paypal transactions. Rather then deal with everyone individually I guess they are cancelling everyone’s pre-orders. If they don’t the PS4 will get sent to you for free and they won’t even know it. By cancelling these pre-orders this will get rid of all those expired paypal transactions. When you get a new pre-order you get a new transaction with a pending status and because it is within a month till they ship the transction will not expire again.
I could be wrong but the same thing happened to me and I received my xbox one for free. Just search for xbox one expired paypal status. Also this link might explain from the paypal side of things why this is happening.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17443734/payment-status-remains-pending
Maybe GAME didn’t want to admit this but it seems the most likely cause.
NotHappyWithGame
That makes sense based on my experience (see previous post in this thread)
Further to my post, GAME called me today.
They have reprocessed by order and say I should now expect delivery on Friday – I am of course now very happy and ultimately pleased with the resolution.
I am not happy with the situation leading up to the resolution though – the initial cancellation, lack of communication from GAME, difficulty in getting through to them, subsequent flimsy excuses as to the cause and denial of responsibility.
They did not give me reasonable explanation as to the cause of the issue. They initially said that my bank declined the payment. I told them I paid by Paypal, and they then said, to ignore what they’d just said then and that they don;t know the cause.
I understand that some of these issues are related to payment methods not being set up but to clarify my particular instance:
I opted to pay via Paypal.
I have partial funding in my Paypal and my Paypal is linked to my current account, which has adequate funds (and has had throughout this month).
My Paypal account has not changed since I originally ordered in July.
I have used Paypal as recently as yesterday to purchase via Ebay.
I have two alternative methods of payment linked to my GAME account – one is my Debit Card (linked to my current account) and the other is a Credit Card with a clear balance.
Other than a failing on GAME’s payment system, I see no other reason for my order to have been cancelled…
…But I am getting my PS4 on Friday – Yay!
tibz
I’m still waiting for my call from game have bin since half 10 yesterday hate that I have to wait for them
To solve it I can’t do it my self
Ian13802
They rung up this morning trying to get me to pay again. I gave them the paypal transaction number and now been told to wait for an email. Havent been told im getting one on Friday yet.
johnwest
Is the original transaction in your paypal account for the pre-order listed as expired?
I was the same except I didn’t order through GAME and I ordered an XB1.
1. I used paypal as the payment method.
2. I had a zero paypal balance, a linked credit card which didn’t have enough funds to cover the console price and a linked debit card which had the right amount of money to cover the console price. I was obviously expecting the money to come out of my debit card account but it never did.
3. I pre-ordered back in August which resulted in the transaction being changed to expired after approximately one month(?)
This combination seems to be the problem along with how the Paypal API is setup in the online shop.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17443734/payment-status-remains-pending
If it is setup with the following code then this results in the merchant(GAME in this case) not being able to manually accept the payment after the transaction has expired. I think it only becomes apparent when they try to capture the payment and with the preorders it is too late as the window of time has passed.
$_REQUEST[‘paymentType’] = “Order”;
From this point on I can only assume if they had left the transactions in their system it would appeared to have been paid and the console would have been shipped. It might have been hard to tell who really paid and who didn’t so instead they did a blanket cancel on all people who paid by paypal.
So the explanation is money, if GAME didn’t cancel your pre-orders they would have lost their money like tears in rain. Time to die. Blade Runner 2 better be good.
Is this set of circumstances similar to others who’ve had their pre-order cancelled from GAME or elsewhere?
Ian13802
no paypal transaction says complete they also sent an email straight after confirming they have receive it
tibz
My 48 hours are almost up it’s getting close
Masenko
I preordered my PS4 from Game back in February, on the day the PS4 was announced.
My PS4 has since been dispatched, and I even managed to get a tracking number for TNT.
…however, they took payment from my account for my PS4 twice…5 days later and I still do not have the money in my account. Terrible.
etziochan
GAME have taken the money from my account but cancelled my order. they’re giving me some story that my bank has a different address for my order than my game account does even though when i checked it is the correct address. i’ve literally contacted them on web chat 10+ times to try and get an answer. the two times i did get through i was told they would call me within 15 minutes and failed to comply to even that. one of them did call but let it ring for a maximum of 3 seconds before i could even get the phone out of my pocket to answer it when he put the phone down. i’m sick of all of this. i don’t want my money back i just want the ps4 i pre-ordered in March!
i think whats happened is that because i picked just the ps4 at first and then changed to the killzone bundle they didnt send me an email saying it had changed. it was priced at £350 instead of £400 (i called them multiple times to see if the price was correct but was told to wait and they never got back to me) and so they computer must have seen that they didn’t match the title and price so maybe thats whats happened to some people?