Unusual sales practice by Razer

So I got a little excited the other day and placed a pre-order for the New Razer Blade 2016. It was a compulsive purchase, but the product seemed to fit my needs and the deal included a $100 discount on the Core, a free copy of The Division, and some Fruity Loops stuff.

A few days later they send me an Order Cancellation notice due to some payment authorization issues. I understand that the DigitalRiver service is not amazing and there are many people with similar issues. What I don't understand is why Razer would go ahead and actually cancel my order. I worked in sales and had to deal with credit card validation issues many-many times - it is often a matter of a simple phone call, either to a customer or their bank.

Now I had my second thoughts and I'm not sure if I want the laptop anymore, especially that The Division is no longer a part of the deal and Razer declined to honor it if I place another order (not that I want the game that bad, but the circumstance hurts me).

Anyways, the reason I'm writing this is to hear some opinions whether it is worth the hype or if I should go with my ego and take my $2200 elsewhere. I was also looking at the Aorus X3 V5, but their build quality was a concern.

 

It's common practice these days to do what Razer did. They just up and cancel the order, and leave it up to you to order again and fix the payment issue.

Most annoying with Pre-Orders, problems showing up much later when you aren't necessarily paying attention, but it also happens for custom builds of established products.

The game issue is common, as people order early, and the payment gets bounced - game goes off special offer - and they aren't going to pay for the real cost of the game.

There will likely be another "free game" coming, so you could time it with that too.

IDK if there is a way to force payment during pre-order placement, by doing it with a live person on the phone or chat online, but next time I am up for one of these pre-orders I am definitely going to try to complete the payment before ending the order call.

Maybe offer to give several payment methods and have them fallback to them should the primary method fail.

The Stealth is an awesome first eGPU package, but with the dual core low power CPU driving the eGPU video card, it's not going to do a high end GPU justice.

Unless you **must** get a laptop *right now*, I would wait until Pascal gets announced.

 

if you ebay the "Division Nvidia Code" you'll see alot of codes that are out there and can be had right next to free and guess what? You won't have to pay 2grand for a laptop to get it. Now I won't begin to speculate where those codes came from but I'll tell you that they work and are literally the same thing, if of course the game 'The Division' is that important to ya

 

I understand their process, I just don't get how in this competitive environment companies still get away with losing sales like this. In my personal experience we always went above and beyond to keep our sales. Although, I've mostly worked for small companies...

I do not have to buy a laptop "right now". My story goes back to December when I bought a Surface Book for my birthday and ended up getting rid of it shortly after. The Book turned out to be too bulky and heavy, while only packing a dual core i7, and didn't have enough ports for my liking. I then ordered a Aorus X3 V5, which arrived with multiple issues and had to be exchanged, but the replacement never showed up, so they refunded me in full. Now that my Razer order got cancelled, I feel like it's a sign that I should wait a little more. Been thinking about that Pascal myself, so thanks for the advice.

Another option that stuck in my head is the secret Asus ultrabook with a quad core CPU and an external graphics card that Linus Tech showed in their CES video a while back. Wonder when that is going to be announced.

 

Wait for Pascal. In my opinion it would be foolish to buy such an outdated GPU now. Pascal will be faster, less hot and more efficient and in the end more reliable in such thin notebooks.

 

Why wait there? I would wait for Copernicus to come out in 2026. It will be 1933314908253x faster, 239847238945723x cooler, and run on 1249874581x less battery.

 

Its a 2 year old gpu. Ofcourse there is always something better coming. But the 970m is slowly showing its age now already in games like rise of the tomb raider and the division.