Pokemoncenter Reviews 

Absolutely shocking experience. Allows Bots and Scalpers to mass order items whilst everyone else is stuck in a queue waiting, and then if you do manage to get through the queue to the website, there's the risk of your address being shadow blacklisted by the site/company so you can never order from them again. Then when you contact customer service to try to resolve the issue and prove you're not a bot, they give a cut and paste response, followed by telling you any further communication about the issue will be closed and ignored. And then the company wonders why people buy from scalpers in the first place, when their website isn't fit for purpose and punishes legitimate buyers who just want to open some packs and see what cards they get.

Worse website in the world, spending hours in queue and having the payment always rejected, no matter how many different cards i try. That's it for me. Pokemoncenter so dumb that they can't realise that harder they make it better it is for scalpers and bots. Normal customers have issues with simple things , scalpers and bots can manage to pass them all, you making it worse for us don't you get it.

Been a genuine customer for years, ever since the site first opened. Have had my home IP blocked earlier in the year (hurray for mobile data backup), and multiple bank cards tried and failed during pre orders for no known reason. Another family member has had their pre orders cancelled and account closed without explanation and refusal from support to review or elaborate. Site has no problem with me paying for expensive LEGO products they’re struggling to shift. I sympathise as when it comes to TCG it is incredibly difficult for them to have to deal with the extreme high load of traffic and they manage it the best they can. However their support needs an overhaul, it is non-existent.

Zero stars if I could
Appears the bots and scalpers get the collections rather than the real collected/child.
Wait in a queue for hours, website won't accept payment over multiple browsers and cards then after an hour of trying website crashes or appears sold out

Pathetic

Absolute time wast!!!! I have waited hours in the queue only to be rejected and treated like a bot. Finally I managed to get it and add some items to my basket only to be stalled by ridiculous messages regarding my card when I use it everyday without any issues. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME!!

tried today for 30th anniversary pre-order, every card I have (all different banks), all wouldn't work. sort this out

Some reason they believe the protection in place protects against bots. The only ones able to buy anymore are the bots. Awful dev / product team lacking brains and not understanding anything they built. Can't ever buy and only resellers and bots flood the market with successful purchases

Genuinely the worst website. They let what 1000's of bots through on pre order but god forbid I try to get one booster bundle. Oh no then I get flagged as a bot and banned. And if I do eventually get in after what, 3 hours, I put in my details, add my card thinking omg I can finally get a pack. Wrong. I get an error message and get kicked again. Then, I try and get back in, try over and over and over again and, oops sorry out of stock! Absolutely rubbish

One star. Queued for six hours to buy the thirtieth anniversary booster bundles, only to reach checkout and find the payment system completely broken. Tried six different cards, none went through. Checking social media, I can see hundreds of other customers reporting the exact same issue, so this isn't a one off problem on my end, it's a site wide failure. Six hours of waiting for nothing is unacceptable, and there's been no communication or fix. I'd expect some form of compensation for this, whether that's guaranteed priority access on the next restock or a discount code, given how much time customers have lost. Extremely poor way to handle a major product launch.

I waited eight hours today in the queue to finally get in and I thought there was one item available and I tried to add it to the cart and it said everything was sold out. 8 frickin hours of keeping the Pokémon Center page open and not refreshing just to find out everything is sold out don’t you think you could tell us before?

When I Finnish an order 80% of the time it comes up with an error message. Doesn’t even tell you why it’s an error just sends you to a page with very vague instructions that don’t affect it at all.

Bad, there’s no reason I should have to prove I’m a human more than one time. Every time I have to prove I’m a human I get put at the end of the line. This is ridiculous. Meanwhile people on Reddit are sad because their bots could only get 10 etbs. Meanwhile I have to once again prove to the website that I am a human.

I wish I read these reviews on here before purchasing. I ordered a plush more than 2 months ago and the wrong item was delivered. Like many others I experienced the horrific customer service. The online chat service seems to be an AI bot - you upload pictures and asking for a resolution time, you’re not given anything at all; it’s when they review your case. 2 months no contact. I raised another support ticket and yet again same experience. There are thousands of people ahead of you in the queue and then I refresh the screen and it changes from 20mins call wait to up to 3 days reply from them.

Must feel really great to receive the product, but it’s a huge risk and after this appalling customer service never going to buy from them again. Which is a real shame for fans of the franchise. But sadly, I can’t quite tell if they are just happy to take your money and that’s it. Maybe they just send out anything random if they run out - because it seems to be a huge red flag everyone complaining.

Avoid. Joined this website because I had to write this review.

Unfortunately the Pokemon Centre UK isn’t doing enough to support genuine collectors and combat scalpers that sell sealed product on the secondary market.

Things have only gotten worse over the last few years. When there is a big product drop, as happened yesterday with the 30th anniversary run, the website does not have the infrastructure to withstand the volume of customers. You can sit in the queue for hours, get to the front to find an error message blocking your access, and suggesting fixes that are already in place (e.g. enabling cookies and JavaScript). Yesterday I got to the front of the queue after waiting around 2.5 hours the first time and 50 minutes the second. There was stock still available, but the error message booted me out twice. By the time I reached the shop for the third time, all the product was gone.

Scalpers run rampant buying up as much product as possible so there isn’t any left at retail price and they can sell it on the secondary market for four times the price. You can see eBay sales go live minutes after the product is released on the Pokemon Centre UK (which is against eBay rules - selling items that are not in hand).

Both of these issues could be almost entirely solved if the Pokemon Company sold their stock via invite only. Real collectors would be able to register and sporadically get stock over time (like most real collectors want to do), and the scalpers would be left with enough inconsistency that they would not be able to financially rely on the scalping process. This would ultimately mean less ‘stock’ for resellers, and less people having to pay scalping prices as they would have managed to get enough stock directly.

This raises the question ‘do the Pokemon Company actively want to combat scalpers?’. In their current system they make a lot of money and what happens to the product after doesn’t financially impact them. If they moved to an invite only system, they would still sell out as they always do, but the product would be spread more fairly.

Are the Pokemon Company willing to spend extra resources on the administrative cost of an invite system? I hope for the enjoyment of the hobby, they do. But for now, one start is all I can give.

Rude and ineffective customer support. Genuine buyers appear to be blocked by the website, while scalpers and automated bots somehow manage to purchase large quantities of stock with little difficulty.

Que for hours just to get error 15 or 17 and then get blocked by the security team meanwhile scalpers still boting the sight then posting they're 100 orders on Facebook, with the money the PC is earning you'd think they'd actually be able to sort out the awful issues on the site.

Terrible customer service, no solution just automated emails.

Maybe with all the tcg money they ate raking in they could invest in some decent site programmers. I've done everything right, updated app, clean cache, no refresh, waiting patiently on thr same page get to the checkout and IPblocked. I haven't managed to get anything for over a year now. It's getting way too expensive to build decks when you need to buy all common cards so I have had to stop playing the game now too

Kicked back into the virtual queue while attempting to make payment for a purchase. Unbelievably disrespectful!