Since its initial release in April, the Oculus Rift has suffered significant shipping delays for both new orders as well as customers who pre-ordered early in the year. Earlier this week, shipping estimates were still backordered until August.
However, according to some buyers on the Oculus subreddit, their long-awaited orders are suddenly being fulfilled:
- Soaringspoon: “I just received an email from Oculus saying that my order was going to ship soon. I have a ship date of 7/18-7/28”
- Themariokarters: “Got this email around midnight last night, was extremely pleasantly surprised since my expected delivery date is 7/18-7/26”
- SternerCrow: “I just got an email stating ‘Hello! If you are receiving this email, your Oculus Rift order will be processing for shipment soon…’ - It's 38 days early if this is the email.”
- Zenoen: “I finally received an e-mail from Oculus saying it was sending me my rift. I was about 6 hours after they allowed pre-orders. Guess that means the US shipping has finally gotten through most of the early orders.”
- TheSmJ: “The last revised date given to me for my Rift preorder was July 7-14. The original estimate given to me when I preordered was ‘June’. I received an email from Oculus about the order being processed and my Paypal account was charged an hour ago … I suppose it's worth mentioning that I submitted my order over 2 full days after preorders had first opened.”
- Cacahahacaca: “Mine had a shipping date of 6/27 - 7/7, but my credit card just got charged and I was told to expect a shipping notice soon”
- Aweffs: “On my birthday today - received processing email from Oculus nearly 2 months early. Original shipping window - June 18-28 - Revised shipping window - July 18-28 - Order batch number 50 - Ordered on February 8th”
The initial delay in order fulfilment was caused by what Oculus calls a “component shortage”. Hopefully that bottleneck has now been rectified, and the initial flurry of pre-orders have finally been made ready to ship to their buyers. The Oculus Rift will be hitting retail stores in the US soon, so it would be nice to have back orders through Oculus’ site see shipping parity with those through future retail outlets.
