The Oculus Rift has had so much hype behind it. Facebook bought the company. Developers had development kits, so they could already start putting together products for launch. People were seeing the future, and they were excited. They put down money to be part of that future. And not a little bit of money, either. People were ready to spend $600 per headset. But, seeing how Oculus’ customer service goes, they might not be so eager anymore.
There’ve been Oculus Rift shipping issues. People who pre-ordered units aren’t getting their units. Worse, there has been no comprehensive, official response from Oculus. There are no emails going out with exact dates. People were only being told they’d get an email when their order is being prepared, and another when you’re charged and it’s actually shipping. That first email, by the way, can come between one and three weeks before the second. There’s no information on your order page.
To make things worse, Palmer Luckey, one of the Oculus Rift’s creators, has been handling the situation horribly. In one Reddit thread , he says he won’t give an update until he knows it’s good and final information. Which may seem admirable, but you can’t suddenly go incommunicado on a $600 device you’ve hyped up and people were expecting to already have. It’s a noble goal, but people need to hear something to know wheels are in motion. It was only a few days after the delays that Oculus emails went out citing “an unexpected component shortage” as the problem. What component? We don’t know, of course.
Plus, Luckey’s subsequent messages were passive aggressive. In another Reddit thread , it almost sounds like he’s blaming the consumers. He tries to say that people would have been complaining either way, no matter how many units shipped, and tries to downplay the negative feedback by saying the reaction on Reddit is from “a tiny minority of the overall VR market.” On Twitter , instead of giving real responses, he’s copying and pasting images of a previous response. It’s juvenile behavior. In this situation, Luckey should be apologizing, naming the exact issue, and providing constant updates to consumers.
Especially since this happened before. People may not realize it, since it had to do with the developer kits, but this isn’t the first time there have been delays in Oculus Rift models shipping. Which means Oculus should have known there was an existing problem, addressed it during a previous phase, and had some sort of support system and backlog of headsets in place. They needed to make sure that during this, the most critical launch period, everyone got their Oculus Rift and was satisfied.
It’s all very disappointing. In the service industry, the saying is that the customer is always right. And here, the customers are definitely are in the right. They’re expecting a certain level of professionalism from Oculus, and they aren’t getting it. Instead, the company isn’t acting like a technology powerhouse putting together $600 machines. It’s acting like an Etsy seller indignant that someone’s daring to ask for an update on a product ordered weeks ago. It’s wrong, and the company needs to step up and start being more open and prepared.