More Nintendo woes

Arrhhh
just...arghhhhhhhhhh
Frustation seems to be more and more common when you are dealing with Nintendo these days. They used to be such an easy friendly company to work with now its all, rules regs and beaurocracy.

Oh and apparent innefficiency. I needed to order some dev kits in November for my project, and it took ages to get them to agree the order as I'm still technically a home based developer (we've had this rant before) But on this occasion I am actually working from an office as there are some team members involved in the project, so that managed to circumvent the silly "no home office" rule they have.

But it took so long to have my order "approved" (I mean...honestly...approved? I want to buy something not join a country club). That I was worried it would get delivered during the Christmas break, when of course I was not going to be there.
So reluctantly I had to postpone the order till I got back. Leaving the funds at the mercy of the plummeting $ - £ market. Still I shifted them to an interest account (not that that will generate much with the banks dropping rates to almost nothing now)

Still, on my return I confirmed the order and gave them card details to buy the kits, several thousand US$ worth (the import tax is going to be a pain).
And I waited....and waited and waited...And the funds were still sat in my account over a week later.
WTF?

An email to Nintendo draw a strange response, "We were updating our card processing systems last week, well let you know if there's a problem with your card". So it hadn't been processed at that point...

A few more days go by, still no funds removed. So I send another email, which this time does draw a response, indicating payment processed and order shipping.
Phew, good, we need those kits quite urgently now.

So this weekend, I check my account, and what do I find...not several thousand US$ missing, but a few hundred....Odd. I'll have to call them and ask whats going on, but as its the weekend I just have to wait.

But lo...guess what, this morning I get a delivery at the office. Rather a small box though...yup..no Dev kits. Just some memory carts that I had also ordered (in the same order).

Stroppy email sent, I'm just hoping they are not shipping/charging the order in 2 seperate invocies..The $ has been getting stronger against the £ in recent weeks so the longer this goes on the more it costs me.

Import taxes seems to be around 22% as well...damm. Buying kit can be a frustrating AND expensive business.

Ahthankyew