Early Bird Purchasers Of Sony PS3 Slim To Pay More

Here’s an interesting one.  Early bird buyers of Sony Malaysia’s new PS3 Slim are being charged more for the PS3 Slim if they opt to buy it on 30th October, according to the following details from Sony Malaysia’s Facebook account.  According to the page:

Ouch.  That hurts.  Queueing up early in the hope of securing a discount towards the purchase of the PS3 Slim has a RM 100 penalty.  If you recall, when I initially posted about this earlier, the PS3 Slim is being sold at RM 1,299 instead of RM 1,399.  The press release page from Sony themselves still says this, click here if you don’t believe me.  Fail score = 1.  I quote from the press release:

“The new PlayStation®3 (PS3™) system and PSPgo will become available in Malaysian stores nationwide from October 31st, 2009, at a very attractive suggested retail price (SRP) of RM1,299 and RM1,099 respectively.“

Click on the picture above for a larger image.

So, here’s the deal – the left hand giveth, and the right hand taketh away (some).  This must be a first for corporate Malaysia.  Interesting way of doing business.  The queueing will yield some benefits though – first in queue gets RM 1,000, 2nd – 10th RM 400, 11th – 50th RM 200, 51st – 100th RM 150, and 101st – 150th RM 100.  ”Gets” means a cash voucher, but whether this can be used towards offsetting the cost of the PS3 Slim on the day of purchase itself, I do not know.  There are some terms and conditions attached to this offer, but it’s so small that I can’t see, and the image is as big you can get.  Heck, I had to pore through an electron microscope just to read out the queue benefits above.  Fail score = 2.

And since the RM 100 difference can’t be for the additional items labelled as “free” (PS3 game, DualShock controller & t-shirt) in the picture above, this can only be construed as misleading advertising.  The queue madness starts at 1 Utama New Wing on 30^th October at 10am.

So, in addition to the flip-flopping in pricing, Sony Malaysia is also moving the availability date from 31^st October to 30^th October.  Must be a rush to get in some additional sales revenue for the month – this month’s sales figures are probably not up to expectations, and HQ is probably sitting on them to do better, hence the sale of the devices one day early.

There are similar offers for the PSPGo as you can see in the picture above, but my electron microscope broke, so I can’t see anything clearly since I’m now on the wrong side of 40 – you have to figure this one out yourself.  But the free gifts of the t-shirt and umbrella are sure to tempt millions of fans to queue up early.  Yippee…free umbrella and t-shirt!

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