Admin error & product scalping: What happened & how we’re fixing it

Hey everyone,

As you know, we want to provide the best possible experience in board and card games for all our customers but unfortunately, a recent admin error caused a mix-up in sales for a particular product. We want to be upfront about what happened, how we’re fixing it for customers, and also address a growing challenge in the games industry - scalpers.

What happened

Due to the admin error on our side, an as-yet-unreleased Pokemon TCG product, Prismatic Evolutions Super-Premium Collection, was made live on our website. This was removed from sale around 6 minutes later.

Frustratingly, this product listing was seized upon by genuine customers and online scalpers and during this time we received over 700 orders amounting to a substantial value.

Since this product hasn’t yet been released by distributors, no game shop - ours included - has received physical stock. This fact is well-known by prolific Pokemon product scalpers and the Pokemon fanbase as a whole. All concerned would also know there would be an incredibly limited supply of this product released and this is why we never listed the item as ‘live’ in the first place.

As you can imagine, we initially thought we’d been hacked or the target of something malicious. As soon as we realised it was an admin error, we immediately began the process of refunds.

How we’re fixing it

We’ve begun cancelling all the orders and all customers will automatically receive a full refund in due course.

Refunds take time because funds must first be fully processed by our eCommerce platform (Shopify) and our bank before they can be sent back to customers. This is standard banking procedure, and while we are processing refunds as quickly as possible, final clearing times will depend on individual banks. Banks work at different speeds, but rest assured, if you haven’t received your refund yet at the time of reading, it should be with you by the end of next week (w/c 17th March).

 There is no need to issue a ‘charge-back’ with your bank and those who do will have to wait substantially longer for their funds as charge-backs traditionally take some time to fully process.

If you have any concerns about your refund, please get in touch at games@rulesofplay.co.uk. We appreciate your patience as we work with the necessary processing times with Shopify and banks.

Why it happened: The issue with scalpers

 We’re fortunate enough to have a brilliant local and online community of Pokemon TCG players and fans affiliated with Rules of Play. From attending our in-store events to securing new product releases through our shop or online, these are the customers we want to ensure can enjoy the game they love.

Sadly, the industry has become rife with network scalpers who buy up new products for resale at ridiculous prices - which puts up barriers to actual customers who genuinely want the products.

Unfortunately, the demand for this particular product, combined with our listing error, led to an overwhelming number of orders - many from scalpers, who capitalise on these rare products.

Our team is here to help; not to be harassed

Another unfortunate side effect of this error has meant our team has been subject to a barrage of verbal abuse and disrespectful behaviour from various ‘buyers’ across the UK.

We understand that mistakes like this are frustrating, and we’re always happy to help customers with any concerns. However, personal attacks on our team cross a line and will not be tolerated.

Through phone calls and online messages, our staff members have faced frankly unacceptable, offensive remarks. These are people simply doing their jobs and they do not deserve to receive any kind of verbal or online harassment. We have and will continue to report such incidences to the relevant authorities.

We are also being subjected to malicious, false Google reviews and comments on our social media channels. As a small business, fake reviews can damage our well-earned reputation with genuine customers but, sadly, it’s an easy way for harassers to ‘punish’ a business, even when completely uncalled for. We will be appealing against all the fake reviews and our team will also not be engaging in any further abusive phone calls or messages.

We want to reassure our Pokemon customers and collectors in our network that you don’t need to be concerned about stock misnomers or issues; this was just a very unfortunate coincidence for one product. We’re also reviewing our processes to ensure similar product listing errors don’t happen again in the future.

We’d like to say thanks to our customers and particularly our Pokemon TCG community of customers for your understanding.

If you have any questions in the meantime, you can contact us at games@rulesofplay.co.uk.