About 2 weeks ago I ordered Fire Emblem from an Amazon market place seller. She didn’t have great feedback but everyone on the list seemd to have recieved their goods eventually so I figured I could save a couple of pounds and wait a couple of days longer. As expected I had to email her a couple fo days later and ask where the game was;

‘I ask my customers to wait 28 days for delivery don’t worry though, just sent it off this morning’ (or words to that effect) well actually, sellers agree with Amazon to dispatch their orders within 2 days of recieving them so what she asks means fuck all (she didn’t ask anyway) but I bit my tongue (?fingers?), said ‘thanks’ and went back to waiting. It arrived on Saturday, having paid 1.99 for postage and pagaging I was surprised to find the game boxed in an old pasta packet with a second class stamp on it (65p) . On opening it I found that not only was it the wrong game, Fire Emblem sacred stones the sequel which has yet to recieve a European release, but with my keen eye for print quality I immediately noticed the box looked odd, my suspiscions were further piqued when I noticed that the cover of the manual was printed with a slightly squished aspect ratio and confirmation of my fears of piracy was in the fact that the Nintendo on the back of the cartridge was in the wrong typeface, it was good enough to fool most people but not good enough to get past my masterfull detecting skills.

Obviously I’m annoyed, regardless of legality pirate cartiridges have a habit of running out of memory battery because they’re made on the cheap and anyway. Also, having paid £20 for something I expect what I ordered, if i wanted a pirate cart I’d go to eBay and find a £5 ‘buy it now’ version.

So I emailed back politely saying that if she gave me a full refund we could end the ‘confusion’ but in 2 days she hasn’t replied, so these are the options. 1 I could wait ’till 30 days after the order date and complain through amazon using one of my 5 lifetime A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantees then leave some daming feed back. 2 Report her to Amazon straight away for suplying pirate software and risk not getting my £20odd back. I had a 3rd idea but I can’t remember what it was. My feelings at the moment are towards 2 as it’s a bit shit that less observant (less geeky) people could buy these carts unaware that they’re a bit crap.

Incidentally the name of the seller is MysticEnchantress and she has an AOL email account, I should have known.