Had to register just to post on this. My experience with their online store has been horrible. It's amazing that MS thinks what they're providing now as a purchasing experience is equivalent to what their fruit-flavored competitor presents (regardless of what you may or may not think about the products in question).
I managed to squeeze in an order for the Dec 15th batch of 256 GB models before they went completely out of stock yesterday. I received the usual "your order has been submitted, a confirmation email is on its way" message from the site that you'd get from any store. 16 hours later I still have no confirmation email and no sign of the order on the store's account page, however my card has been charged for the full amount (I thought we weren't charging until it shipped?).
I call them, figuring it's better to talk to a real person. Provide nearly all of the info you'd need to place an order in the first place over the phone (name, address, phone number, last 4 digits of CC, account email) just to get them to look up the order. They want an order number even though my issue is that I didn't get any order confirmation. I get past that. So far so bad. After some time on hold I'm told that my order is in the system but it's "in review." This is sounding like all those pre-orders that got cancelled now, right? I'm told I should contact my CC company to confirm the charge (which has already gone through according to my CC account site). I talk to my CC company, who inform me that the charge was successfully processed and they have no idea what MS is talking about. As far as they know there's no "review" in process as the charge has already gone through and no one there having any interaction with the MS store about the order beyond that.
So MS is clearly making this up; the system flagged the charge for review, which means something obviously, but no one can explain what exactly. The CC company has already processed the charge and is not involved in this supposed "review" in any way. At this point my theory is that the MS store, being extremely dysfunctional in general, is using these "reviews" to drop orders that exceed the capacity they were supposed to sell. When I placed my order yesterday the 256GB model had already gone out of stock once, then back in stock. It went out of stock again about another hour later, which is how it's stayed since. If I had to speculate I'd say I'll be getting a cancelled notice (even though my card was already charged) and that the reason is actually because they weren't supposed to go back in stock, so the orders are being canceled. The CC security review may be a smoke screen to prevent backlash from canceling orders due to accidental overselling.
If I actually do get a confirmation email and my order goes into the system properly I'll definitely report back, but I'm not hopeful. The rep I talked to said that I should get my confirmation email "within 6 hours of placing the order." I pointed out that it had been 16 hours, but there was no point in pushing it; he's at a call center in India and it's not his fault that MS can't operate their store properly.
Standard MS experience: I want their product, they make it hard to get what I want. I'm tempted to just go get a 128GB from BestBuy, forget about the educational discount or the extra RAM and never deal with MS's store again.
