Now with less Phantom Burnout

Friday, October 1, 2004 » gaming update

This just turned up in my email:

Dear PlayStation.com Consumer,

We recently had a technical error on our site that caused the prices of several games to be significantly marked down. Our records indicate that you have placed an order for one or more of these titles. Unfortunately we've had to cancel the erroneous orders, yours included, and we sincerely apologize for this error and any inconvenience this may cause.

The titles in question, at least in my case, were Phantom Brave and Burnout 3, both recent releases which the site had listed for $30 off the retail price. My entrepreneurial side finally convinced my likes-to-eat-and-pay-rent side that I had enough money saved up and I ordered several copies of each, hoping to turn a quick profit on the 'Bay. I was pretty confident it would be a successful operation. My greatest fear was I might receive an email like this, so go figure. (Actually, my true greatest fear was that Sony would correct their mistake and not send me an email, and a month later send me a bill for hundreds of dollars worth of games.)

However, there is a bright side:

We'd like to give you a $10 coupon as a way of saying thanks for understanding. While we're not required to do this under our site's terms of use we value our customers and we want you to be happy.

I guess that's pretty cool, although I'm worried how I immediately started scheming ways to stretch this coupon code farther than Sony would like. When will I ever learn?