About the EU campaign for maid outfit and fat chocobo

[Celef]

I do believe that is a ban-able offense.

Sure, that's why they won't probably use PF but Reddit instead, like they did for housing

[Voltyblast]

Sure, that's why they won't probably use PF but Reddit instead, like they did for housing

I was going to reply to Riusvell, but yeah you got it before I could post: maybe PF won't be used but it won't stop people to make profit.

The average player can be smarter than you ever think and the fact that the US player essentially outsmarted Amazon by exploiting a mistake in their system, just shows the extent of what someone would go for obtaining what they want.

[Niwashi]

the US player essentially outsmarted Amazon by exploiting a mistake in their system

Nobody outsmarted Amazon. They know their system perfectly well and have been using it for many years on dozens if not hundreds of promotions just like this. Amazon knew perfectly well that there would be orders that got cancelled. It happens with every such promotion they do. They accept that as a standard part of their business model. The point of the whole thing was to get people to their site and buying things and it accomplished that. I expect Amazon is probably quite happy with the sales boost it gave them. They couldn't care less if along with that there were also a few extraneous codes sent out.

[Voltyblast]

Nobody outsmarted Amazon. They know their system perfectly well and have been using it for many years on dozens if not hundreds of promotions just like this. Amazon knew perfectly well that there would be orders that got cancelled. It happens with every such promotion they do. They accept that as a standard part of their business model. The point of the whole thing was to get people to their site and buying things and it accomplished that(?). I expect Amazon is probably quite happy with the sales boost it gave them. They couldn't care less if along with that there were also a few extraneous codes sent out.

I'm not sure about that statement, because they cancelled their purchase didn't they? I mean I don't know how amazon works to be very honest (so i might be wrong here, please correct me), but if the purpose was to buy things over their site how would it work if these people actually deleted their purchase after getting their codes? I mean this is (probably) one of the main issues why we EU got essentially "screwed" when it comes to the promotion, and it worked "perfectly"?

I'm just saying because, if this worked "perfectly", then it means that they purposedly did all this to ruin us. I'm probably exagerating and I HOPE that this was simply a mistake on their decision (they seem to be doing that a lot lately though...), but if this fiasco was all thought up, this would be really, REALLY bad.

But this would all be fixed if we had a response already...

[HermitUK]

Amazon promos have always worked this way - it's nothing new. They expect a certain percentage of cancellations once codes have gone out, but they still get a good chunk of additional sales and traffic through the site. I remember way back buying into the Champions online hype and pre ordering from Amazon - I cancelled my pre order after they sent the beta code out and it turned out to be rubbish.

Potentially the ffxiv community did this too much, but it's unlikely. I expect the decision for Europe may have been based on getting as much money in for the codes as possible by doing deals country by country. The EU marketing team makes its own decisions - they weren't obligated to try and do a deal with Amazon just because the US did, even though that would have been better for fans.

[Niwashi]

I'm not sure about that statement, because they cancelled their purchase didn't they?

The vast majority didn't. Amazon expects to get some orders that are cancelled along with a bunch of other orders that aren't cancelled. The ones that get cancelled are pretty much irrelevant to them. They only care about the orders that go through. Most people going there for this promotion will have found something they wanted and bought it. I, for example, picked up a copy of the latest Star Ocean game. (Fun game, by the way. I'd recommend it.) So Amazon got about $60 from me that they wouldn't have gotten if this promotion hadn't convinced me to go to their site and browse their video games. When the sales boost from a bunch of orders like that are compared to the "cost" of sending out an extra couple emails to a customer who cancelled instead, which do you think they'll care about?

Now, I don't actually know how successful this promotion was for Amazon since I don't have access to any of their sales figures. But when they're assessing how successful it was, it's going to be based on whether the revenue boost they got on completed orders is greater or less than the amount they had predicted it would be and the amount they paid SE for it. Though they might also track how many orders were cancelled, that number isn't nearly as relevant to them.