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The Zavvi Thread of Monumental Incompetence

Shiggy

Member
Perfo said:
Me too. Except that Monster Hunter Trii limited edition that arrived all destroyed because of the poor packaging :(

Did you send it back? That's what I would've done as it's part of the product I bought...
 
Don't know what happened @ Zavvi ( was quite satisfied in the past ), but lately I have to wait weeks for games to arrive in Europe ( Netherlands ). Portal 2 arrived 6 weeks late...

No more Zavvi for me.
 

LiK

Member
dani_dc said:
My issue with GAME and Gameplay is that I've often got opened "new" copies, sometimes in pretty bad conditions. So I avoid using them unless it's a pre-order..
Oic, I only preorder from them so I never encountered that.
 
I've ordered a lot of stuff from Zavvi and 95% of the time it works fine, I accept the not always speedy deliveries as a tradeoff for the lower price. It's acceptable up to a point. Generally it takes 7-10 days to Sweden, I'm ok with that.

I've got two problems with Zavvi though.
  1. Cardboard boxes are shit. They don't protect the item at all, and on the last two they sent me the glue had become unstuck. As in the boxes were open. One of these days I'll receive an empty cardboard box...
  2. They sometimes claim to have items in stock, but don't. They can then claim that it's not possible to cancel the order as it's in the process of getting dispatched. My copy of Blur was awaiting dispatch for four days or something.
 

Codeblue

Member
They just canceled my Disaster order I put in a week ago because they didn't have any stock left. I have my Xenoblade pre-order with them, but this thread is probably going to make me switch over to someone else as soon as they put the vanilla game up.
 

legend166

Member
I'm probably ordered around 10 games from their to Australia and haven't had any problems. Yeah the shipping is slow but I can accept that. Compare it to something like Amazon US whose lowest shipping option to Australia is around $20, I'm willing to swallow the two weeks to get free shipping.

I understand people have had legitimate problems with them, but the OP seems to have had issues trying to game the system and is annoyed he didn't get away with it. It's like people complaining about the Blu-Ray Action thing from yesterday. For those who don't know, there was a page offering a Blu-Ray Action DVD which included 10 Blu-Rays (including the Bourne Trilogy and the BttF Trilogy counted as one Blu-Ray each) for a total of 11 pounds. Who actually thought that was a legit price? And now people are complaining about then not honoring it? Damn.

My preferred UK games store is 365games.co.uk/ozgameshop.com (same thing) because the prices are usually the same and shipping is quicker.
 

Label

The Amiga Brotherhood
LiK said:
they do, i ordered from them a few times before. but i sorta stopped after they were hacked.

iirc they were never hacked, it was the credit card company they used, even then it was not proven. From the Euro deals thread:

In 2008, ShopTo had some problems that led to some of their customer's credit card details leaking out. This was never proven, but some people, including some Gaffer's had credit card problems around the time of the supposed leak, and swear ShopTo were the cause – some of these people had credit cards ONLY used on that site. ShopTo quickly fixed the flaw, and allowed PayPal to be used to make things even safer, but it was too late, and the site’s url got banned from NeoGAF. ShopTo deals are still posted at times, but without a link. It seems no one has had any big problems with the site recently, and ShopTo can now, more or less, be considered safe to buy from, you just have to navigate there yourself.
 

MNC

Member
FUCK ZAVVI. I waited 1,5 months for 3 portal 2 copies. Took them 2 weeks to send me back my money because I canceled the order.

I ordered Portal 2 new from a secondhand shop for half the price of zavvi's and it got delivered within 3 days.
 
blitzcloud said:
I have a question. Why amazon.co.uk and play.com have weak casing (portal2 , ACB, DS2)

while zavvi had hard casing for ACB and all the other games? I'm thinking on not ordering more drom amazon.co.uk or play.com because i HATE the weak case.
I'll quote myself to know other PS3 games consumers opinion on the matter, and whether they receive the good or the bad cases

also, got my Enslaved copy for 8,95€ in 5 days with weekend between. Then again, i'm from Spain. International is always risky business.
 

glaurung

Member
Behold the glory and awesome power of Zavvi!

I have just returned from the post office with my two rags that I have been provided with for attempting to order games at low prices!

After they themselves wrote me an email and said that my orders got cancelled by accident (after the rags had been shipped, for laughing out loud), I have sent them two letters saying that I would very much like to receive the games that I ordered and that I was entitled to. No replies so far.

Chances that the world ends before Zavvi honors their campaign rules: 50/50
 

DrM

Redmond's Baby
Ordered only once at Zavvi.

Waited for whole month (stuff from UK or Germany arrives here in 3-6 days), package arrived in very bad shape. So I will never order again from them.
 

elektrixx

Banned
I ordered LittleBigPlanet 2 but it never arrived. Most preorders previously have taken three weeks or longer to arrive.

I no longer use Zavvi. They're on my enemies list, just like Play-Asia.
 

Roronoa95

Member
I never had problem with them. I have ordered many games and the longest delay was less than 3 weeks, btw I live in France.

I always check the availability so as to get the shortest delivery time. I won't buy a game dispatched within a month, only 24 hours.
 
yeah i wont be using them again. got sent a link for their 10 Blurays for 10 pounds deal - lined it all up - then got an email saying they made a mistake and its supposed to be 84 pounds. I think this was just a marketing ploy to get people on to the site because there was a whole campaign about it.

it backfired tho,i wont be using them again.
 
I use them a lot, just not for new releases or games that I'm dying to play. The longest I've had to wait was a month for a Toy Story 1 and 2 Blu ray boxset.

Having said that, I've ordered GeoW3 from them as I had a discount code, hopefully I won't get screwed on that.
 
zavvi is terrible. Ten days to deliver in central London? Fuck that shit

gameplay.co.uk is where it's at, took ONE day to deliver me three orders. or amazon.uk, or shopto. Anything is better than this bollocks site
 
I heard bad stories about their shipping time, although none of my friends who ordered from them had any other issues.
Since I'm from Continental Europe as well, my best experience was with Shopto. Cheap, delivers fast, has a great customer service. Some people have lost confidence due to cc breach, although I haven't been affected. Many of my friends prefer dvd.co.uk, though, as they don't charge you VAT since the game gets shipped to Europe. The only issue with them is that although they're generaly faster than shopto, sometimes the games arrive 20 days after orders. Since my country is not in the EU, there's also the issue with customs. In general, shopto never gets charged by them, while dvd.co.uk does.
 

Scotch

Member
I preordered Mafia 2 on Zavvi and received it more than a month after release. Now I only consider ordering from Zavvi with older titles where I'm not in a hurry to play them.
 

ymmv

Banned
sinnergy said:
Never had any problems with them, abd they reply pretty fast. They did make a mistake I ordered 1 Zelda OOT 3D, but I am getting two, they also took 2 of my CC. I have to sell that one online.

But as of late my package take 3 weeks to get here... before it was 5 days but I think it has to do with the postal services here in The Netherlands and in the UK.

Here in The Netherlands they fucked up the postal service :( Going private and shit..

The biggest problem with Zavvi are the slow delivery times and for that both Zavvi and European postal delivery services are to blame. Delivery times have become a crapshoot in the Netherlands since the postal market was opened so we could enjoy cheaper rates and better service thanks to the miracle of capitalism and increased competition. Instead it's gotten worse, especially for foreign deliveries. When the good old PTT (aka TNT or PostNL) is in charge an order arrives in a couple of days. If a package ends up with Sand, SelektMail or some other crap company it will takes 2, sometimes even 3-4 weeks. Amazon orders are always delivered by TNT/PostNL but packages from other companies (Zavvi, Play, BookDepository, etc) are totally random. It sucks. You never know when an order will arrive, you can't track packages, you don't know which company is sitting on your delivery, you don't get any notifications that a package couldn't be delivered, you can't pick up a package from a nearby post office because Sandd, Selektmail, etc don't offer that service.

To get back to the original subject, I've also had problems with Zavvi/The Hut. Order didn't ship after a couple of days so I got it from Amazon.co.uk that had it in stock. When I tried to cancel it, I found I couldn't yet the item still wasn't in stock or shipping. Five days later I got a message that my Zavvi order had been dispatched so I now had two Chaplin DVD sets.

That's a crappy service.
 
Bee.com seem to be stepping up to replace Zavvi as a good place for deals. They don't really drop games that quickly after release, but they offer some good preorders at £29.99 every now and then.

Personally, I have never had a huge problem with Zavvi. Everything came within two week, and most in or around 1 weeks.

I accept that tshirtgate and bluraygate were mistakes, and they had to cancel them, or they would be out £10,000. However, they really need to stop making those mistakes.

TheHut had a preorder of Gears of War III for £23 a few months back, but that was canceled for everyone too, so these recent mistakes are not new, but they have not leanred.

Sending the t-shirts, and charging people for them, even though their games were cancelled, is the worst thing they ever did.
 

Manp

Member
ordered a dozen of games and never had a problem with them. actually getting AAA games for like 15€ i would say i'm pretty happy with them.

i don't get the complaints on slow delivery either. i know from the start that they use standard mail and that it can take up to a couple of weeks (i'm in Italy btw) for my order to arrive once it left their warehouse and that's fine.
they're usually fast to dispatch too since it never took more than one day in my experience. of course when the item i ordered was reported available, if that's not the case then you have to wait but that's a given.

on top of that for my last 3 orders it took between 4 and 6 days to have the game delivered. from UK to Italy in 4 days (i couldn't believe it when my copy of Enslaved showed up in the mail), well i must say that's kind of good if anything.

one complain i used to have was their packaging but lately they fixed it by using some sort of rigid cardboard boxes. much better than play.com packages for example.

now let's hope i'm not going to be among the unhappy costumers with my next orders.

:)
 

Detox

Member
Psychotext said:
No other company has screwed up my orders as much as Zavvi have. I'll only ever order from them now if I don't care when I get the item.
.
Once pre-ordered Vanquish from them and they put it in this state - packing / shipping and basically when I asked them to cancel after a week they said sorry we can't when the item is in this state. It stayed like that for one month after launch and then they sent me a copy.
 

glaurung

Member
Detox said:
.
Once pre-ordered Vanquish from them and they put it in this state - packing / shipping and basically when I asked them to cancel after a week they said sorry we can't when the item is in this state. It stayed like that for one month after launch and then they sent me a copy.
They did the same for me, but I never got the game. After 60 days they refunded my card.
 

Rolf NB

Member
kurtrussell said:
Recently, a promotion was offered where you could buy a cheap and nasty sweater and receive around 50% on a game. Many enterprising GAFfers realised that you could actually pop 2 games in your cart at 50% off with one sweater. Sadly, this was also a pricing mistake and the orders were cancelled. Well, most of the orders - the nasty overpriced sweater was still charged for and despatched. Ironically, these arrived pretty much instantaneously.
Can we please start using "instantly" again. It's such a good word. I knew it since it was young. Always decent. It doesn't deserve that kind of neglect.
 

micster

Member
Well after being told yesterday that the DVD ive had on order would be in stock at the end of the week, they've now processed my payment and put it into awaiting despatch. That was either a quick delivery, or they've found one roaming on the floor.
 
Will anyone (please) share their experiences with PS3 casing (boxes) depending on the online store?

Two kind of cases:

original: the side which opens has a rectangular extrusion with a line across.

New (?): The side which opens has two crossing lines of plastic.

The difference is that the original feels consistent, while the other one feels like something they'd gift with a diary purchase.

So far: Zavvi. All original (5+ purchases in a year)
Play.com: All new (3 purchases).
amazon.co.uk: new (portal 2).

At first I thought it was heavily dependant on the novelty of the game. As in, newer game, new casing. But Zavvi sent me ACB with original casing while play.com sent it with new casing. This was in the very same month.


I just want to know which online stores I should avoid.
 

daffy

Banned
Zavvi.com: The Price of Free Shipping

Ordered a Motorstorm Apocalypse from them after it was delayed for NA. After it ran over their expected up to two weeks delivery, I called custo to see if there was anything they could do. The guy was a total dick, responding to my questions with, "Uhhh yeah well, are you sure you did it right?" and "look. It'll get there when it gets there, ok?" ...the fuck? So after dealing with John Doe, I decide to just wait it out because fuck them. Game didn't arrive until, I kid you not, the same week of the NA release. And to add insult to injury, the disc was loose and the cardboard was cereal box quality.

Will likely never order from them again. If you don't have problems fine, but if you do you're on your own.. I shouldn't have to play postal Russian roulette to get my agreed upon deal.

PlayAsia sends me candy.
 
blitzcloud said:
At first I thought it was heavily dependant on the novelty of the game. As in, newer game, new casing. But Zavvi sent me ACB with original casing while play.com sent it with new casing. This was in the very same month.
Its might still be. A game like ACB needs a lot of copies to be produced which takes time and the packaging type could have changed during production.

That happened in America with Super Mario Galaxy 2. Some of the first run were in the older no-eco cases while the rest was in the eco-cases...at least I recall it was eco cases.
 
Starwolf_UK said:
Its might still be. A game like ACB needs a lot of copies to be produced which takes time and the packaging type could have changed during production.

That happened in America with Super Mario Galaxy 2. Some of the first run were in the older no-eco cases while the rest was in the eco-cases...at least I recall it was eco cases.

Could be... could be.... but if that's it I want to cry. The new boxes are horrible, HORRIBLE. They look like promo stuff, with one finger you can easily bend the whole cover
 

RPGCrazied

Member
This thread makes me sad. I'm getting Xenoblade from them, the free shipping and no tax is just to good to pass by. Thats like a $20 value. Sure it's going to take 2 weeks to get here, but that's the price to pay when importing something.

I sure hope I don't get screwed with my first purchase though.
 
Starwolf_UK said:
Its might still be. A game like ACB needs a lot of copies to be produced which takes time and the packaging type could have changed during production.

That happened in America with Super Mario Galaxy 2. Some of the first run were in the older no-eco cases while the rest was in the eco-cases...at least I recall it was eco cases.


well, I checked portal 2 ps3 unboxing and it has the original casing. Somehow, amazon.co.uk sent me it with that cheap case... both are launch units.

I believe maybe some online retailers can ask for cheaper versions in order to save up some money? or maybe going "eco-friendly" as they say?
 

RPGCrazied

Member
FTH said:

It was only like $42 for the whole order. I'd rather it be that than say $70+. If the case gets fucked, I just use another one. I have plenty of those laying around. Now if the disc is fucked, then yeah, I'll be upset.
 
Been popping in and out of this thread and wondering why all the fuss.
Just got my copy of Assassins Creed Brotherhood delivered today and it's the standard, non-classic edition without DLC.
FUCK YOU ZAVVI!
 

micster

Member
and here. we. go.

One or more of your items are now in our warehouse and ready to dispatch but we're sorry there has been a problem processing the payment for your order.

Please login to your account and update your credit card details or alternatively contact one of our customer service colleagues on 0844 264 0702 and they will be happy to help resolve this issue.

Please allow 30 minutes from receiving this e-mail before contacting us. This will ensure our system is updated.

For security reasons please do not send any payment details by email

We hope to see you soon,
zavvi

Oh. Theres been a problem, has there?

EI9jD.png


Why, that doesn't look like a problem. Of course a problem would be if you tried charging my card on file which is my old card. But why, Zavvi. Why would you be trying to take money from my card when ive already paid you via paypal. 'Hope to see you soon' As soon as this is sorted and I get my item, if ever, I am never using these incompetent cretins ever again.
 
I've considered ordering from them, but now I'm not so sure. I've used Game.co.uk before, but I don't want that expensive bundle. I would prefer just the game.
 

micster

Member
Update on my Zavvi order. They said it was 'strange' and had to cancel my order. Wait they couldnt just set the order to not payment needed? So then they credited my Zavvi account with £7.45 so I could reorder. Awesome. Apart from, like I told them, the price had gone up since. Anyway they must be fed up of me so gave me the extra money in credit and I reordered it. Its sat in awaiting stock pick since, which confuses me seeing how they supposedly had it right there ready to send.

If I get it still seems up in the air to me and after this I will never use them again. Ive had less problems ordering things from Japanese text only sites. Incompetent doesn't come close.
 

RPGCrazied

Member
They finally updated the Xenoblade product page on Zavvi. I don't think that is the real box art, but its better than a blank page.
 
It only took a month (sent June 13th), but my Infamous 2 is finally here.
I had the time to receive several packages from Japan in the meantime.

I bought a lot on Zavvi but it's really the first time a delivery has been delayed for a whole month. Glad the wait's over.
 

masterkajo

Member
Jigsaw said:
i remember when castlevania dropped to £17 only 2-3 weeks after release,i pre-ordered it and of course if was sold out within minutes,they said it would take 2-3 months for the next shipment,but i didn't cancel my pre-order,2 weeks later they had it back in stock and i got the game for £17

in short,i never had any problems with zavvi yet,besides some slightly damaged collectors editions
But as a collector that is the worst thing! I personally could wait 2-3 weeks (still pissed but at least I get my item) but when my CE is damaged I will lose it. Never ordered through Zavvi and never will. (Unfortunately, I also ended up with a slightly damaged CE of ME2 from game.co.uk... but since for ME3 game.co.uk seems to have the monopol in the UK I have to order from them again... or are there any other options? Xbox version here.)
 
these guys seem very dodgy to me. fake 10 BDs for 10 pounds sale, then they cancel my order and basically used it to get my email to spam me with more sales. not happy at all and wont be ordering from them again.
 

Minamu

Member
Last game I purchased arrived in my mail box before the despatch email arrived :lol After about a month of repeated auto-emails about how they were out of stock.
 

Ningo

Member


Confusion? Only one confused is Zavvi

All but one of the games has shipped since then, looks like i'm not gonna get the copy of vanquish I ordered.
Also had an issue with thehut which is a related company. Did the 3 pc games for 9.99 but apparently they can't source a copy of Alpha Protocol.
Only telling me after the steam daily deal so I missed out. They show it in stock at both thehut and zavvi still. ugh.
 
I started ordering from Zavvi this year (5 orders so far) and I have yet to have any problem with their services. Pre-ordered Yakuza 4 from them, it arrived here 5 days later, which is actually quite fast, expected to wait 2 weeks.

They are a bit slower than Amazon UK when it comes to shipping to continental Europe but the longest I had to wait so far was 7 days and considering the lower prices, it's pretty fast imo. I also like their "sturdy" cardboard boxes, it's better than Play.com which ship their games in a pretty thin envelope.

Maybe I'm just lucky though but I'll keep ordering from them. *knocks on wood*
 
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