Amazon!

One day when I was checking Amazon and I saw that there was a ULCE in stock! No way! There was only one in stock, so I acted very fast and pre-ordered it.  I sent the seller an email asking if they really did have any, as it seemed too good to be true. Of course, very sadly they responded that they were out of stock of the pre-orders and recommended that I cancelled my order. I then responded with another email, and they never responded, so I have been in contact with Amazon about this. I should have more news in 1-2 weeks.

De Nederland!

User Iggy from the Gearbox Borderlands 2 forums shared that the Netherlands online retailer bol.com was selling Borderlands 2 Ultimate Loot Chest editions!  Oh but it gets even better!  Iggy said that there was a good chance the edition would be in English.  So I proceeded to contact bol.com.  Luckily there was someone there that spoke English.  They told me that I would be able to use American credit card.  They also told me that the version they were selling was produced for the Dutch market.  This was great, as it meant that the game was in English, and that the cover was in Dutch.  This was great news! They also did mention that there would be extra fees for the shipping and such. But there was one point that I missed in the email, and that was that they only ship certain items outside of the Netherlands, video games not being one of them.  Through another email I learned that all the contents of the edition, including the game, all the stickers and the book all the extra stuff in the edition would indeed be in English! But they pointed out that they wouldn't ship it outside the Netherlands. I was so close! So I sent them another email asking if there was anyway they could possibly do it, just this one time. I have yet to get another email back from them yet. Great customer service from them so far though.

Wait for Launch

There still is hope right?  I started to believe that there might be a chance if I wait until launch to grab one.  I figured that they would have some on the shelves at stores when the game launched. I also figured they would have some more at launch, put off to the side. But after a while from seeing what people were saying on the forums, and Randy Pitchford's statement, I lost hope that there would be more at launch. By this time the ULCEs were sold out on Amazon.de.  So I went back to the forums to see if anyone else had had any luck.

Ultimative Beutekiste

Checking out foreign retailers seemed like a great idea. Thanks to user "Rokenroleg", they suggested to get the Borderlands 2 Ultimative Beutekiste from the German site Amazon.de.  So I went to Amazon.de and loaded it up on Google Chrome, in order to get automatic translation.  I successfully found the Ultimative Beutekiste on the site, but I was worried that I could not use my American Credit card, and that the game was fully in German. So I did an online chat with the US Amazon.com. This did not help at all.  They couldn't help me one bit.  But from my previous experiences with Amazon, I've learned to use their email service, and not there online chat.  So I emailed Amazon.de with my queries.  They told me that I could indeed buy the game with my American card.  But they did say that the game would be in German and that all the content it came with would be in German too.  Also I would have to pay extra for shipping and other fees.  So I became a bit hesitant.  I really didn't want to have to buy a German copy, then buy another copy of the game in English, I'm not rolling in the dough.  So I decided to pass on that for now. 

It Begins

Here I am, 20 days late, looking through the Gearbox Borderlands 2 forums trying to find any way to get the Ultimate Loot Chest Edition.  I'm reading post after post and I start generating some ideas. One was in-store pre-orders.  I was checking retailers from Best Buy to Amazon to Gamestop, and they all said something like "Sold Out Online".  So I figured, maybe it is possible to still get a pre-order in-store.  But as the day went on and I was planning to call Best Buy later that night, I figured there was no chance that they would be able to set me up with a pre-order, as they probably use something similar to the online site for the pre-orders.  So that idea was a goner. 


The next thing is buy.com. Someone had said that they got a pre-order from them recently, but they are not listed as an official retailer, so they were a bit worried.  But by the time I checked buy.com, there were none left anyway.


Then something really hopeful came up.  How about buying the game from a non-US retailer. This was brilliant I thought! Next I will talk about my fun with Amazon.de.

Prologue

The Borderlands 2 Loot Chest Edition is full of many awesome goodies for any Borderlands fan. It comes with stickers, posters, a cloth map, a bobble head, but most importantly it comes with a big loot chest, modeled after one of the chests in the game.  This loot chest is very cool, as it is something that Borderlands fans know very well from the game in a material state. To have a piece of the game like that is just too cool.

I'm a big Borderlands fan, I have been watching the game ever since its original announcement in GameInformer. I was then very disappointed when I saw the game take a dramatic artistic style change.  But the whole idea of being able to loot millions of guns and have RPG elements in a shooter sounded like the coolest game ever.  So I did get it eventually, and when I did, it did not disappoint one bit.  The art style with its cartoony looks and humor fit perfectly, better than I could of ever imagined. 


Once Borderlands 2 was announced I was extremely excited, and when that first trailer came out, I ended up watching it many times over the next coming days.  When they announced the Limited Editions and I saw that chest, I was instantly sold on it.  Next comes my mistake.


I have seen many limited editions of games in stores well after the game had been released, so to me a "limited edition" of a game is never quite a limited edition.  It just is more of a special edition, that they make a ton of copies of, and they end up sitting in store shelves for a while.  So I felt when pre-orders opened for Borderlands 2 Ultimate Loot Chest "Limited Edition" I didn't have to rush to get it, I figured I'd get it sometime before September.  I was on vacation when the pre-order was opened, and I never heard any news of it anywhere, nor was there any announcement saying it would happen on that day.  If I had seen something I probably would of done it out of excitement, but I had figured the pre-orders would open up later sometime like July or August. So I was in no rush.


Of course by the time I notice that the Borderlands 2 Ultimate Loot Chest edition was open for pre-order was about June 20th.  Now by that time the pre-orders were sold out just about everywhere. Hearing from others it was sold out 2 days from the time it opened which was something like June 1st. 


So here I was, 20 days after the pre-order opened and I'm without a pre-order.  So I head on over to Amazon to do my pre-order and of course there's none available. So I start Googling around and find that they had sold out very quickly.  I then head to the Gearbox Forums to whats going on.


And this is where my adventure starts. My goal: Get a Borderlands 2 Ultimate Loot Chest Edition for PC. My Deadline: September 18th.