Walmart cancels Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii orders; Claims requests for cancellation were made by customers

After reading on Kotaku that Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii was available for pre-order from Walmart for $19.82, I quickly jumped on the site and placed my pre-order.

I, along with a few other people who also ordered this morning, just received the following email from Walmart:

Walmart.com Request for Order Cancellation
from: orderfulfillment@walmart.com
to: [censored]@gmail.com,
date: Jan 11, 2008 9:44 PM
subject: Walmart.com Request for Order Cancellation
mailed-by: ndc-fulmail3.walmart.com

Dear [censored],

We have received your request to cancel the item(s) listed
below from your order (#267730xxxxxxx).

We will attempt to cancel this order, however, we may
already have processed your order for shipping. If you need
to contact us about this order, please call us at 1-800-966-6456
between 6 a.m. and 1 a.m (CT), seven days a week.

===========================================================
ITEM(S) REQUESTED TO BE CANCELED
-----------------------------------------------------------
Order Date: 11 JAN 2008 08:41
Order Number: 267730xxxxxxx

ITEM QTY PRICE TOTAL
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii 1 19.82 19.82

===========================================================
Returns
If we are unable to cancel your order because it already has been
processed, then you can return any unwanted items to us after you receive
them. You will have the option of returning the item(s) to us via mail or
directly to a Wal-Mart store, whichever is more convenient for you.
Instructions on how to return items will arrive with your order.

Help
If you have any questions, please visit our Help section:

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=5436

Sincerely,

Customer Service at Walmart.com
http://www.walmart.com

Hey Walmart, wtf? I can definitely understand that you probably made a huge pricing error and don’t want to ship out these games for under $20, but it really pisses me off that you are not owning up to your mistake. Sending customers an email indicating they have requested to cancel their order is bullshit — WHY would anyone want to cancel their $20 SSBB order?

This isn’t going to fly to well, how about an apology?

Frustrating XBOX Live Problems during the Holidays

I am expecting to see huge numbers from Microsoft’s Video Gaming division this holiday season. It’s hard to say if they’ve dropped the ball or not with their XBOX Live service, during what is likely the most important time for the service to be 100%. But we’ve already seen comparisons such as “XBOX Live starting to have the stability of the 360 systems” pop up all over the place.

It’s not good when a paid service experiences issues during the whole holiday break. We’ve seen a bunch of updates from Major Nelson reassuring us that “the service was never completely offline.” The problem with that statement is that while it’s great for people who where not affected, it’s sort of a smack in the face for the rest of us. Everyone that I know that uses the service has experienced some sort of issue during these last 10 days, including myself. Most of us have had problems quite a few times during the last week, and it’s damn frustrating.

I don’t doubt for a second that when Major Nelson said “The entire LIVE team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great LIVE experience,” he was not exaggerating. The LIVE team understand they need to provide exceptional service, especially since it’s paid.

All that being said, I honestly believe that Microsoft needs to offer some compensation to all the LIVE users for these very frustrating problematic times. A free week or two of Live? Maybe 800 MS points? I have no idea what, but it would certainly be a shame not to take responsibility and make this right.