Prospective Rift buyers are still reeling from the revelation that their devices will arrive later than expected. Now Oculus issued an official statement apologizing for the delay and saying they hope to beat the new estimate.
Here’s the statement:
The component shortage impacted our quantities more than we expected, and we’ve updated the shipment window to reflect these changes. We apologize for the delay.
We’re delivering Rifts to customers every day, and we’re focused on getting Rifts out the door as fast as we can. We’ve taken steps to address the component shortage, and we’ll continue shipping in higher volumes each week. We’ve also increased our manufacturing capacity to allow us to deliver in higher quantities, faster. Many Rifts will ship less than four weeks from original estimates, and we hope to beat the new estimates we’ve provided.
An Oculus representative also posted a large update to Reddit with additional information. Here’s that text:
Hello everyone,
As there is quite a bit of confusion swirling around, I want to make sure that we clarify a few things about failed payment, order processing and shipping estimates in a single location. I’ve posted in a number of threads, and as the information isn’t cascading well, I hope this centralized post will clear up some of that confusion.
Payment Failures
After reviewing the payment failures, a LARGE number of them are due to insufficient funds or blocks enabled by the banking institution tied to the payment instrument. These can lead to delays as this will result in your order being placed on a payment hold. We cannot ship your Rift until we auth and capture the full payment. Please make sure that you have sufficient funds available on either your credit card or PayPal, and reach out to the associated banking institution to make sure that there are no special fraud holds or other reasons why they may block the payment.
Order Processing
If your payment fails for any reason, your order will be placed on a payment hold. If you updated any of your order information, whether that be shipping or payment, your order will be placed on hold as there are a number of checks on the new information that must be completed before the hold can be released. If we tried to pull the funds and were unsuccessful, YOU DO NOT LOSE YOUR PLACE IN THE QUEUE. Once the information is updated and the holds are released, your order will attempt to be processed in the subsequent batch for your region. If it fails again, the same process applies. This said, if your payment fails, your order is skipped for the current batch as we must proceed with the successful orders. Each region does not ship every day as it is dependent on having stock in the warehouse. We are shipping globally, and ship as soon as product is kitted and ready to be assigned to orders.
Shipping Estimates for Processing Orders
If we have either already tried to pull the funds and were unsuccessful, or we authorized the full amount on your payment instrument and you are in processing, IGNORE YOUR SHIPPING ESTIMATE ON YOUR ORDER HISTORY. The shipping estimate on that page is not dynamic and will not change based on order status. We could be a bit ahead of schedule for your specific order.
I won’t be answering specific order inquiries on this thread as I don’t want this to turn into an AMA. If there is general confusion about anything above, I will work to clear that up.
We’re as frustrated about the delays as all of you. Yes, I sincerely apologize for my initial comment on the 1-3 weeks email. Unfortunately the situation changed quickly and estimates were modified, hence the extra time we needed for the April 11th update (which was initially planned for the 12th). There was no intentional deception, and when I found out, I was heartbroken. Truth.
Thanks for hanging in there with us. For those that are upset, I can empathize, and while I can ask for more patience, I know that is a tall order. Everyone is really working around the clock here to make this right. The road to consumer VR has been long, but it is worth the wait. That I promise. Whatever headset you choose, just know that VR is real, it is here, and we’re all working hard to bring quality VR experiences to the masses.
<3 []-)
