Unlike my colleagues, Eric and Joe, who had somewhat unpleasant experiences obtaining their Nintendo Switch 2 consoles at Midnight, I’ve had a rather pleasant one thanks to Walmart. Who had that on their Switch 2 launch bingo card?
See, I zigged where Eric and Joe zagged—I opted out of participating in a midnight launch at GameStop or Best Buy. I certainly thought about it, but a one-year-old at home made the decision easy. Instead, I pre-ordered my Switch 2 and Pro Controller in two separate orders through the Walmart app. At the time of placing my order, good ole Wally World guaranteed I would have my Switch 2 at my doorstep by 9:00AM on launch day. I scoffed at what I thought was another empty corporate promise, and relished the fact that I was even able to obtain a pre order at all.
Fast forward to yesterday. I checked the Walmart app to see the status of my order—“Arriving tomorrow by 10pm”, it said. Ah yes, there it is. That classic corporate kick in the nuts that we’ve all experienced. I commiserated with a buddy who also had a pre-order at Walmart. It was too good to be true, just as I expected.
At 6:30 this morning, my alarm goes off, I smack my phone to shut it the hell up. I opened the Walmart app once more to see if something had changed, betting the farm that it hadn’t. I was dead wrong. My Switch 2 was a mere six stops away and I couldn’t believe it. At 7:15, a nice lady named Heather popped out of her personal vehicle to deliver both my Switch 2 and my Pro Controller.
The best part was a surprise bottle of Coke and a tube of pizza-flavored Pringles—a small gesture of thanks from the boys in big box blue. This sealed a 9/10 pre-order experience from my standpoint, and from Sam Walton’s bunch nonetheless. And it would have been a 10/10 if I didn’t have to explain to my wife why I had a bottle of Coca-Cola with the name “Brittany” on it when I got home from work this evening.
Great job, Walmart, from one happy Switch 2 customer.
