Some Best Buy customers see something devious about their delayed Pixel 7 pre-orders

Some Best Buy customers have been posting on the retailer's online forum about a delay that has kept them from receiving their Pixel 7 or Pixel 7 Pro pre-order. Apparently, several customers who pre-ordered one of the new Pixel 7 models before October 13th have yet to receive their order even though these phones are available to purchase from the Best Buy website.

A Best Buy customer who did not receive his pre-order has sent us an email to tip us off to what is happening. Not only has Best Buy reportedly kept affected customers in the dark about the situation, but this customer also says that when he called the retailer's customer service line he was pressured to cancel his pre-order. When Best Buy was asked why customers can just order either phone online and many pre-orders have not been fulfilled, Best Buy apparently cannot come up with a "satisfactory answer."

Some of the Best Buy customers waiting for their pre-order have come to the conclusion that the retailer is looking to avoid having to hand out some of the goodies that were promised to consumers as an incentive for them to pre-order the phone such as a $200 gift card. Canceling pre-orders would also allow Best Buy to void trade-in deals. Supposedly, Best Buy plans on automatically canceling pre-orders that have not been shipped by November 1st/2nd.

Is that what is happening? Check out this post on the Best Buy forum from a customer with the handle hngo83: "Pre-ordered one day later after the announcement on October 7th, Friday. Chose pick-up option instead of shipping, don't like how most deliveryman handled packages. Expected pick up date was on release launch day, Thursday, October 13.

On that day, in the morning received email informing that my order is not ready and was being worked on processing then later in the evening on same day, another email arrived and informed me that the order will be delayed to "a few days". Yesterday, 3 minutes before midnight at 11:57pm I received another email notifying me of the cancellation. Today around 9am, I chatted with Best Buy support via Live Chat. Told me to order again but $200 e-gift card is no longer included. Very, very bad preordering experience!!"

It also appears that Best Buy is not allowing those who have yet to receive their pre-ordered new Pixel handset from switching from picking up the phone in the store to having it shipped even if it shows a possible shipping date online. The option to select shipping as the preferred delivery method is "grayed out" giving these customers only one option: canceling their pre-order and ordering again. Of course, any promotional gifts related to the pre-order would be canceled.

What other conclusion can we come to here? If all of these customers are correct, the retailer seems over-eager to force those who pre-ordered the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro to cancel the pre-order and order through the website again thus eliminating them from receiving the gift card they were promised.

Those losing the $200 gift card might have no recourse, but those who will lose a price they were promised for a trade-in can move their order to the Google Store if BestBuy cancels their pre-order. That is the plan from one Best Buy customer with the handle jonstrong. He posts, "BTW: if you CAN'T get the $200 card, I think the better deal may be to go straight to Google. If Best Buy doesn't cancel me, my trade in is worth $545...plus the card. If the $200 card disappears then it's just $545.

But my trade in is a 512GB Pixel 6 Pro, and Google would give me $600 for it on a trade, and they claim something like 3 or 4 day turn around if you order a P7 or P7P from them."If BB cancels me, I'm ordering directly from Google I think."

We hope to get a comment from Best Buy and if necessary, we will update this story.