I’m sure most of you are familiar with the retail concept of “pre-orders”. This is where you plop down your hard-earned money to a store for a product that isn’t even released yet. Pre-ordering is usually done with video games and movies. As an incentive to separate you from your money, retailers will often give pre-order customers bonus items or even a bit of a discount. Normally, I never buy anything with a pre-order. There is normally no consumer item that I am so excited for that I’m willing to put my money down before the product is even available.
An exception to this was the Blu-ray release for The Avengers, a small indie film that was released this summer. I knew I was gonna buy it when the disc went on sale and then I saw that if I pre-ordered it at Future Shop online, I’d save a few bucks. Me being cheap, I thought it made sense for me to go ahead and do that.
Fast-forward to today, the day before the release. I check the web site and the exact same disc is now discounted to my pre-order price for everyone, even in store. To add insult to injury, my disc hasn’t even shipped. So what was the point of pre-ordering? With shipping, I’d have to wait until later this week to get the movie. Meanwhile, some dude could have just wiped his ass with sock and then sauntered into a brick and mortar store and gotten the disc for the same price and days earlier.
Since my order hadn’t shipped, I canceled it. I’m just going to the store myself tomorrow and get it the old-fashioned way. Pre-ordering is stupid!