Online purchase frustration...the hard fact about being a collector on the other side of the world...

If you haven't noticed, I've been rambling about Mattel's movie Egon Spengler figure since it was first hyped out (AND sold out) during the recent SDCC 2009. It was an instant hit, sold out within minutes at Mattel's booth. But rest assured that Mattel would be opening the figure up for sale through their http://www.mattycollector/ website on the 3rd of August.....so it seems.

And so began my quest of waiting for the figure to be finally released online on Mattel's website. It was quite a wait, coupled with the fact that time differences meant that sleep disorder patterns would definitely accompany me while waiting for the order time to be opened to the mass public. When the the word "Available Now" appeared for the 1st time (that was about midnight circa 11 pm local Malaysian time) next to the product picture, I was ecstatic and immediately tried to buy one immediately. God knows I've been waiting to get this figure since it was first announced mid of last year!!! But I was instantly greeted with frustration as my transaction could not get through. Heck I tried both my credit cards to see if there was any problem in using either Visa or Mastercard. Many attempts ensued, each time I was prompted with an error message that says "Unable to process request. Kindly check information".....which I did many many times.

I gave up sometime near 2am and decided to try again the next day. Yup, you've guessed it....it didn't work either. And on Wednesday again I was left flabbergasted as the error message continued to pop out again and again. I was eventually left prepared to face the inevitable fate of missing out on this figure. What made matters worse was that Mattel did not have any email addresses that I could refer my case to. Their hotline was...well, rather hard to reach. *Sigh*

And on Thursday morning (Malaysian time), the figure was sold out......as expected.

For the record, I refuse to bow down to the demands of eBay scalpers who instantenously marked up Egon's prices up to ridiculous amounts. And for that, I'm left frustrated and I shall now accept that there isn't a level playing field in action-figure collecting for us here on the other side of the world.....sounds pretty whiny eh? That's because I am trying to be...hahahah!

I've always maintained that I have no qualms on using online transactions and all those means of cyber payments. Unfortunately, this is one time that the ever-reliable technology wasn't on my side....very timely indeed!

Darn....