The Microsoft Store Needs some Work

As I explained a few weeks back, I ordered an XBox 360 on Cyber Monday.  As I explained then,  I ordered the Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition 360.  While the games that came with my order shipped a couple days after the order, the XBox was marked as “Delayed” for the following 4 days.  No other information was provided.  I contacted Microsoft Store Support twice and both times they couldn’t explain how long it would be delayed or why there was a delay.  Finally, Friday afternoon, I received a phone call from them saying that they had run out of the MW2 set.  That’s right, there tracking and logistics isn’t good enough to know when they’re out of items.  So since they couldn’t offer me what I had ordered, they instead offered me the normal XBox 360 Elite and an extra controller at the normal Elite price ($299).  So for $299 I got a 120GB Xbox 360 Elite, extra black controller, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and a 3 month subscription for Xbox Live.  All in all, a pretty good deal which I would expect since they botched the original order.  However, when they set up the new order, they still took another 7 days to ship to my house.  So from the initial order, it took 11 days to get the XBox to my house.  Since the original order couldn’t be filled, I would have at least expected some sort of expedited shipping, but no.  Furthermore, in a day when many online retailers can ship your item out on the same day (TigerDirect, Zappos, etc) it’s pretty pathetic that Microsoft takes as long as it does just to process orders.  It will most likely be a long time before I order something else from their store.