I got a wild story to share with you today class. So grab you popcorn, get on the magic school bus and hold on to your seats for this one, because we are kicking things into overdrive and shooting straight to the sun.

(Quick Note: The place that is affected in this circumstance is Puerto Rico, and if your address is located somewhere that is also affected, you WILL be treated the same way)

Context: 

Almost 4 months ago, I was selected to win a 2021 calendar. I was excited for this calendar because I’m someone that likes physical goods and I would like to remember the good times with E7 when I look at this calendar years from now.

A month passes and people start receiving calendars, but mine hadn’t arrived yet and there was no Emails or Phone calls, I was absolutely fine with waiting as long as necessary, but just to be sure, I decided to contact Customer Support in regards to this and was reassured by GM Cartuja that the calendar was SENT. Another month passes, and I have received nothing. I started to ask around the community and see if it should be taking this long, to which some players shared their stories that it had taken 3 months for some of them in previous events, but the package did arrive. So I once again, decided to wait.

 Now we’re at almost 4 months of waiting for this calendar, and nothing has happened. No Emails, No calls.

I contacted Customer Support to see if I could either receive a tracking code (To which, they do not provide) or schedule a re-delivery.

To my absolute surprise, Customer Support responds by explaining that the Calendar was never sent in the first place! (To which, they later clarified that under such a circumstance, they were supposed to email me about that unavailability, but they Hard Confirmed that they never sent that email and apologized for not doing so)

Apparently, Puerto Rico is an area that is simply unavailable, and the reason I received was that it’s 100% Covid’s Fault (Even though it’s just a bit weird, considering that I can currently order stuff from South Korea and have it delivered to my house, I do however understand the difficulties that Covid is currently providing)

After being offered the option between the calendar and 500SS as compensation, I told them that I would go for the calendar option (Cause again, I really want this thing) and asked if I could make this PSA post to let you know how this entire experience has been, to which they said it was ok. (Props to that)

Conclusion:

Honestly, I don’t think anyone walks away from the current situation as a winner.

For me, I’m pretty much left worried and in the dark as far as things go for the delivery of this calendar. Since they specified that they don’t know when the delivery will be available and Covid 19 still being a very real thing, and even more so now with the Delta Variant cases popping over here, I have no idea when in the world this package will ever EVEN be sent, despite being promised to be updated with all the information I’ll need. All I have is a small glimmer of hope and trust that they will pull through in the end and that it will be worth to finally have that calendar after waiting so long.

As for them, it puts them in a rough spot for dealing with this situation and if you ask me, it doesn’t make them look good (To be clear about this, I hold no animosity toward GM Cartuja. I’m very certain that there was no intention to Lie/Mislead me in regard to the package, especially when Cartuja hard confirmed that the information for which of the  deliveries [50 calendars in total] were never sent in the first place cause of Covid 19 was not available when I first asked him [1 month after the event], so Cartuja was simply dealt a bad hand and had to play it)

And as for you fellow reader, you might be in the same predicament as I am without even knowing it. Keep in mind that in the Event Regulations section that they use, there DOES NOT EXIST a list of the places around the world where delivery of prizes are currently unavailable due to Covid. The CLOSEST that you even get to this is located in Section 3: “Prizes/Award and delivery information”, in which you can find this, to which my laymen interpretation is just: If you THINK something might be holding the delivery, please contact CS. 

“Delivery may be delayed due to internal issues of the courier company or the event organizer. Please contact us through customer support should you have questions or concerns about delivery.”

So you could actually win a Calendar, the cool looking playmat or EVEN the Luna figure, and not be aware that you can’t receive that prize at all unless you contact Customer Support and have to choose between waiting uncertainly for it or 500SS.

I hope that this post helps you all out in some way and you don’t end up in a predicament like me. Because in my opinion, I don’t think anyone deserves to win a Calendar, Playmat or Very limited in quantity figurine and suddenly be in a “You Won, but not really, so you actually still lose” situation. If the calendar ever arrives in my house, I’ll make a post with like a photo of the calendar.

Let’s hope for a satisfying resolution for all parties regarding this situation!