2,500 Robbed of Their Holiday Wii

As the holidays have now come and gone, many of us are happily playing one of the finest presents that any suspiciously bearded man could have brought to our door: our Wii. For an extremely large handful of customers in the U.K. however, the holidays weren’t quite so cheery, as the British media retailer Ozone Electronics did not make good on their holiday Wii preorder promise.

According to the BBC Consumer Reports, over 2,500 people were caught up in an elaborate bout of trickery this holiday season, as Ozone Electronics offered £250 Wii bundle packs guaranteed to arrive before Christmas that never came. Even
worse, the dastardly folks over at Ozone have apparently jumped ship with the money, pocketing over £600,000 worth of illegitimate customer cash.

As is evident by the remarkably sketchy homepage for Ozone Electronics, customers who have been wrongfully taken for a ride should contact their banks in hopes of getting back some of their holiday savings. What’s worse is that according to UK law only customers who purchased the bundles via credit cards are guaranteed to get their money back; cash customers are completely out of luck, while debit cards generally do not have the same sort of financial coverage and stipulations, which means the person must appeal to their card issuer for a refund (a tedious process indeed). As this terrible scene unfolds, we here at MyWiiNews will be sure to keep you up to date with the latest details that emerge from the UK.

With all of the problems resulting from the Wii’s second holiday ranging from bad (extreme shortage) to worse (scalpers abound), one does start to wonder where to place the blame for this holiday season. It’s easy enough to excuse a systems first holiday as an extreme example of supply and demand, but shouldn’t these issues have been ironed out a year into the console’s cycle? Terrible things such as this come about when supply is low and people are tricked, but can Nintendo really be held accountable? I don’t know myself, but it’s rather apparent that the lack of consoles hurt a lot of people this holiday season. We can only hope that those 2,500 people will somehow get a Wii into their hands well before this year’s season begins.

(First spotted at Monsters and Critics)

Wii Tennis and Real Tennis, Together At Last

Nintendo Australia has announced that they have become the “Official Gaming Console Supplier” for the Australian Open this year. The event takes place between Jan. 14-27 at Melbourne Park and requires an “Official Gaming Console Supplier” because…look, I’m sure there is a perfectly good reason, I just can’t think of it. Maybe there has been some confusion in past years as to who supplied the players and patrons with their video games. Guess it shows how aggressively Nintendo is targeting all those non-gamers out there.

At least the obvious Wii Sports tennis connection is being promoted with a Wii Tennis tournament in which the winner will receive tickets to the Men’s Final as well as the chance to take on veteran player Mark Philippoussis in a game of virtual tennis. Daily winners will also be crowned and receive prizes. If there is one thing that I’ve learned through various plays of Wii Tennis its that real tennis skills do not translate so this can be the perfect chance for an out of shape, middle aged person to say they beat Mark Philippoussis in a tennis match. Then again, maybe Philippoussis is one of the greatest Wii athletes in the world.

[Via GameSpot]