Update: three days after ordering and being charged three times, my duplicate “authorization” charges have finally been removed from my account.
So, here’s what’s going on.
First the countdown till the time we could order the Dollhouse SDCC Limited Edition DVD set ended, but the order form did not appear. Instead, the countdown started counting up.
Then the order form appeared, but it rejected more credit cards than it approved and kept giving errors or blank pages. Problem: refreshing the page, using your back button or pressing “submit” more than once apparently caused it to try your credit card again, resulting in multiple charges on the cards of many fans, me included. According to Fox these multiple charges are “authorization charges only” and will be refunded/canceled within one to two business days, depending on your bank.
And the promised confirmation e-mails were not coming out.
Then they brought down the page and redirected it to the main Fox store while they worked on the problem.
Things seem to be a bit more stable now. One of the credit card problems was fixed (if you typed in 2009 for your credit card expiration date, it only read the 20 part and not the 09 part, causing the validation to bounce) and orders are now going through. Give it a shot!
I just received my confirmation e-mail, about 8 hours after I received my confirmation number.
About the sneak peek of “Epitaph One” we were promised: In your confirmation e-mail you get a JAGTAG, which you must take a picture of with your cellphone and send it to a specified number. Also, you must be a customer of Verizon, AT&T or Alltel, none of which was mentioned by Fox beforehand. Also, your phone must be the right sort to handle the content, which mine apparently is not. From reports it was JagTag’s problem, as their own site was giving up errors. A few hours later, I finally received the video to my phone (even though earlier I got a text message telling me my phone wasn’t good enough), and there it was: 25 seconds of a confrontation involving a familiar face. And there’s Felicia Day! Hi Felicia! By the next day the clip was posted at Dollverse.com for everyone to see.
I don’t know what the deal ultimately was, but this promotion had serious problems on every level. Glad to see they seem to have it patched up now — and I don’t know if they’ve ever tried anything like this before — but I’m glad to see the mood among fans is mostly tolerant, with some very understandable beefs.
All of this is to get the limited SDCC edition Dollhouse Season One, numbered, with different packaging (see above) and a note from creator Joss Whedon. Only 5,000 will be produced, and you’ll have to pick it up at the con or have a friend pick it up at the Fox booth at the con (#4129) starting Wednesday at 6 pm.for you, and you’ll need to provide your friend’s e-mail address when you order. One per customer.
$49.95 for the regular set, $69.95 for Blu-Ray. Or you could just order the regular edition from Amazon for just $31.99 (or $48.99 for Blu-Ray).