Why I cancelled my Oculus Rift Preorder

I cancelled my preorder for my Oculus Rift today. It was a decision I’d been toying with in my mind for some time now, but always the promise of it arriving kept me from doing so.

I remember the excitement at midnight on Jan 7th (Jan 6th in USA West Coast) when I was watching the reddit.com/r/oculus subreddit, I joined a discord with over 4000 people all watching the clock count down until the orders opened. The rush at 00:00 when everyone in the group chat went silent, then cursed at the price, it was more than people expected. I sat in a bit of shock, $649 USD, as well as $132 USD shipping, with the current exchange rate bringing it over $1000 AUD, an artificial limit I had set for myself. Feeling that I was a part of history, I took a deep breath and completed the order. 00:06 and order number 61300002602975.

It felt really good, I felt part of the cool kids, I felt like for the first time in my adult life I was able to indulge in being an early adopter for a new consumer product. I had the means to purchase the developer kit but I’d always been told by the company to wait, and being a loyal peon, I did.

So the wait until the release date felt like an aeon. March 28 finally came, and my excitement slowly rose again thinking finally it’s coming! I received communication to confirm my credit card details and delivery address, which I did, multiple times, to be sure I’d get my headset ASAP.

Again almost 2 weeks with no real communication then a general public announcement that there was a component delay, and they wouldn’t know when the deliveries would take place. They gave another date where more information would come. Again, waiting, and I finally was given a delivery window, April 18–28th.

Admittedly, impatiently I emailed support on the 26th of April, asking if they could confirm my details were entered on the file. Impatience drove me to email them, but I didn’t receive a response, and still haven’t 2 days later.

At the end of the day on the 28th, when my preorder status was the same, I decided I’d had enough waiting. So I sent another support ticket, and cancelled my preorder. I received a reply in 15 minutes confirming the cancellation.

I’m asking myself if I’m being overly entitled here. In most things I do, I try and under promise and over deliver. I do my best to meet commitments and exceed expectations. I feel let down by this company I was so excited to be a customer of. I feel let down in an age of such easy communication with their choice of silence in keeping their customers in the loop.

I’ve been waiting for this day since I saw John Carmack talking about it at Quakecon all those years back. I realised, waiting a little longer won’t hurt me, but I also decided I didn’t want to be a customer of Oculus anymore because they lost the trust in me as a consumer.

I will buy a headset, but not until I can purchase it retail from an organisation I can trust to provide support and deliver a product. Someone I can communicate with and receive a reply from on a query, even if it’s a stupid one.

I might even buy a HTC Vive, they look pretty good too. I have no reason to be loyal to Oculus anymore. Steam/Valve has always kept its promise to me in my interactions with them, as small or inconsequential as they may be. I know that not purchasing from Oculus won’t make a difference, nor do I hope to influence anyone else not to buy from them, I just hope they can get their shit together. They are letting their customers down and as pioneers in this industry need to build confidence, not reduce it.

I hope their “component” shortage issues are reduced and they get their product pipeline resolved soon.

I hope I can again believe in the dream of VR in the home, sometime soon.