Who sucks more, BestBuy or Asus when it comes to the flop of a pre-order promotion for what is arguably the most wanted Android tablet to date. They both do. Obviously Asus had fulfillment issues getting the thing out the door. And BestBuy seems to have done little to quickly get it into consumer’s hands after the nearly 6 week delay from the original pre-order date.
In my case, mine sat in stock according to the web order system for several days, till I finally emailed and complained. A customer service person emailed me back to say it was ready to ship and will be leaving right away, and I would receive an email with a tracking number. Three days later that happened. Now it is on route to my location. Not impressive from either company. And of course to top it all off BestBuy ships with Canada Post, the worst carrier (in my opinion) in the country. So I’ll be lucky if they actually deliver it. Canada Post delivery people (in my personal experience and on my street) have often lied about making the deliver and take it to a package drop far from my intended post office.
How do I know Canada Post package delivery people have lied about attempting deliveries to my location? I work from home, they post times on their tracking system when they claim to attempt deliveries and claim to have left a card. In many cases they did not do either. I have cameras on the outside of my house. And on 5 separate occasions when I have been at the local post office, other people in my area have complained in line about the same thing. Sometimes even when I am there to pick up a parcel that was never attempted to be delivered, and I’m there to complain. To be fair I’ve now had 2 successful deliveries in a row from them, after 3 lied about deliveries in a row. So here’s hoping I get this one without having to drive across the city to pick it up 2 to 3 days later after a claimed attempt. And when I filed a complaint to Canada Post no one ever followed up on it by phone as customer service promised. No surprise.
And as Transformer Prime fans already know, Asus is trying to lock down the bootloader on the device. Many people that are buying this over priced tablet are hacker types that will want to unlock and root it. I hear that after a storm of complaints they “plan” to release an unlocking tool, but it will void your warranty and not allow you to rent videos on most online services due to DRM licensing. Like that will stop piracy! The people that know how to unlock and root a device are the types that know how to get movies without paying for them if they want. So not allowing them to purchase legally may only encourage them to pirate the videos. Not giving them an avenue to so it the legal way even if they want to. Genius!
So who sucks today? BestBuy, Asus and Canada Post. Not necessarily in that order.