Castle Grayskull Unfulfilled Orders

[MrCellophane]

Hey guys, quick question for you. I remember somewhere along the line Scott saying something to the effect of anyone that pre-ordered a Castle Grayskull but didn't end up purchasing it when it went on sale can still get it for the pre-order price if they contact Customer Service. Does anyone know if this is true, or has anyone tried this? Just wondering because this is exactly what I did. I didn't want to cancel my pre-order so that the castle would get made, but I didn't have money to purchase it when it went on sale, and now I'm having some non-buyer's remorse about it. Thanks!

[Captain Atkin]

As far as I know, that is the case. It might be good to call them when placing the order, to make sure that they give you the proper discount.

[MrCellophane]

Awesome, thank you for letting me know that. I will definitely do that and let you guys know what happens.

[MrCellophane]

Yeah, so no dice apparently...

Thank you for contacting the MattyCollector.com online store.

We understand that your pre order for Castle Grayskull has been
cancelled.

Unfortunately the price that was offered for this product during the pre
order dates is not available anymore.

The Castle Grayskull is in stock and is available for $300.00.

If you wish to purchase the product for the current pricing you can
attempt a new order by using the link below:

[Mechanizor]

Too bad, I hope they would honor the price after complaining to them on Matty, that if Scott wasn't actually lying!...

BTW, if I may ask where do you live, you can PM me, since I do have a spare unopened Castle with the poster that it came with, and I would sell it to you without making extra money off you ($302 is what I paid for after shipping and taxes), however I don't know how much it would cost to ship it to you!, probably it's not worth it for you after all.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Digital River can be a pain to deal with. I can't promise that you will be successful, but based on my past experiences, here is some advice on how to navigate this that will likely increase your odds...

If you have / can look up your original order number, have that ready. Call the toll free 'go matty' number from the website.

What you want to do is ask them to generate a ticket for the "ESCALATION DEPARTMENT" to get your castle order reinstated for the original price. This usually works to get things taken care of (I had to get my castle order corrected last year after they had some weird problem charging my card, which was still good at the time, and fixing it went surprisingly smoothly, even though it made no sense that the problem occurred in the first place).

I personally have never attempted to get something like this correted THIS LONG after the fact, so I suspect that you may potentially get some resistance from the random CS rep that you will speak with.

Above all push for them to generate the ticket, and be sure to get the ticket number from them. Refer to Scott's comments about allowing those who originally preorded to get their castles reinstated at the preorder price if need be. You want to get this sent to the escalation department because, while still not perfect, they are much more capable of actually helping you. They actually have a rep who specifically deals with MattyCollector orders (assuming it's still the same guy, I think his name is Brady).

More often than not, when people complain about getting incorrect and inconsistent responses from customer service, they are dealing with the people from the main toll free number and not the escelation department. It got to the point where many people, myself included, got ahold of the number to call that department directly and would go straight to them, bypassing the toll free number. Unfortunately since then, probably due to the number of people who did that, they got more strict about it and won't talk to you until a ticket is generated from the main cs group. So all that you want from that main cs group is to have them create the ticket and pass it on... nothing more.

Once the ticket is sent in, give the escalation department a couple/few business days to get back to you (weekends and holidays are not business days, and the escelation department is closed during those times). They are pretty good about responding reasonably quickly.... much better than years ago. If they have no problem reinstating the order, they may just place a new order for you at the original price and you will get email confirmation of that, and you should be good to go. If they have a problem with reinstating it at all, or if they simply need more info to do so, they will likely call or email you and leave info to let you contact them back directly.

Please update this thread with any progress on this issue, especially if you have further problems. I'll see if I can help you further if you have more issues.


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I hope this goes well for you and you get it for the original price.

That being said, while ToyGuru did at one point say that they would still honor the price for those who had problems with their preorders and needed them reinstated, the last time I recall him saying that was back around the beginning of the year, only a couple of months after the original preorders started shipping.

In a couple of days it is going to be September. We aren't THAT far off from it being a year since the preorders started shipping out (I think it was sometime in November last year, if memory serves). While a specific cut off date for reistating them at the original price was not stated (and probably should have been), I wouldn't expect this offer to be ongoing forever. If they have in fact stopped honoring it, it's not like people weren't given a reasonable amount of time to get their orders straightened out.


But on the flip side of that coin, they are still sitting on quite a few of these castles. I would think they'd be better off selling one to you for the price that you would have paid originally anyway than to just have that stock sitting there taking up space. So, hopefully it all pans out.

[MrCellophane]

Thank you for your detailed response, I will begin that process today. I really appreciate it.

[barrasco]

Bait-and-Switch, then and now.

[Guest]

Well isn't that interesting. I thought Scott said they would honor the original agreement.

Neitlich says a lot of things, which is one of his biggest problems...

[Guest]

Bait-and-Switch, then and now.

I had thought the same thing ever since Matty removed the "Biggest most ambitious thing Mattel has ever done" (I paraphrase, but I think you know the part that Im talking about), part away from the post pre-order Castle Grayskull ad.

[GREP-A-TOR]

Just buy it off of EBAY. Quite a few people speculated and bought an extra one. Put the word out, someone is most likely desperate to get that giant box out of storage.

UPS used to be the best way to send it, but things change up the beginning of this year.