Quote Originally Posted by LittleImp View Post
I know someone who pre-ordered SHB on the SE store, but didn't actually receive their key until after the expansion had already launched..
By "after the expansion already launched" do you mean the "day it launched" or "in time to meet the deadline for the pre-order key to time out"? Because that has been the behavior of pre-order keys since the HW expansion. You either get the actual game key the day of official launch (in this case, 7 December), or within the "you must enter a new key or get locked out" deadline if you already have a pre-order key that you've used.

The "pre-order" key that gets you the earrings, etc. is available with the confirmation sent when you do the pre-order, and gets you early access to an expansion, with a grace period to enter the "real" key after official launch.

From my experience, the only problem I had was when my bank changed hands back in October. I was told that things that were related to the old account's debit card would be honored, but that was not the case yesterday. I logged in to the store, gave the info for both the old card and the new one per instructions, with no issues.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Some players outside North America play on NA servers, and banking is always a gamble when it is across the Atlantic for the EU servers, or the Pacific for the Japanese servers.