This week has been the official first week the Vive began shipping and like many of those who pre-ordered within the first few minutes, I seriously thought my Vive would have shipped by now. The internet has gone pretty wild with their suspicions and has noticed some unusual activity when it comes to the method’s used for shipping the Vive. HTC has been taking a lot of heat for the timeliness in which shipments are going out so in response the team posted on the Vive blog with some answers to some frequently asked questions.
One of the first things that set pre-order customers off was the odd way a bundle of recipients in the south west corner of the US received tracking info at the end of last week. These lucky individuals were sharing some of their order details, like the fact they didn’t pre-order within the first few minutes. In this instance, it appears that regions were being selected for shipments and that this wasn’t being handled on a first ordered, first shipped basis. While the company has admitted this happened in error they’ve also stated that the issue has been corrected and all shipments are being processed in the order they were received.
When pre-orders opened at the end of February, there were two ways to pay for the Vive:
- Credit card – which meant the card transaction wouldn’t take place until the Vive was processed for shipping.
- PayPal – which meant the transaction took place right away and shipment would execute in the order the purchase was made.
This created some panic online as many of us credit card buyers have noticed a pending transaction in the accounts our cards are tied to. Digital River Inc., HTC’s e-commerce partner, hasn’t completed the transaction which is in some cases alerting customer’s bank to possible credit theft and the transaction is aborted. HTC’s customer service tells buyers the process will re-initiate, but that it could take up to 48 hours in an effort to avoid causing a false-positive reaction from the creditor.
The issue has been drawing so much attention that there’s even a hashtag on Twitter called #wheresmyvive and I’ve seen a few parody accounts for Oculus’ Palmer Luckey making fun of the situation.
HTC is heavily engaged with handling all the inquiries that have been coming in this week and making sure it delivers your orders as soon as possible. I talked to an HTC insider today and he mentioned everyone on the Vive team was focused on shipments. International HTC reps are heavily engaged too. @shen and @JulesHTC are just a couple of examples of dedication to trying to resolve customer’s issues.
So ur aware, I’m based in UK, I’ll work over wkend 2 try 2 get ansas, in some cases i can’t provide immediate updates however much i want to
— Julia Herd – Top Cat (@julesyherd) April 8, 2016
To see the latest updates about the Vive shipping questions head over to the HTC Vive Blog for details.
