[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] emil10001:
I believe Amazon over Asus in this because of years of dealing with Amazon with good results. Even after this, I trust Amazon more than any other online retailer because of their customer service. I know that they will do everything they can to fix a problem, and when I was on the phone with them about my cancelled pre-order, that is exactly what it sounded like they were doing.

I have also had Prime for several years and I regularly get deliveries faster than I expect them. I have had deliveries from Amazon the same day that I ordered. For me, Amazon has been extremely reliable as an online retailer. Contrast that with my last experience with Asus. When they launched the TF101, it took me several weeks to get my hands on a tablet and several more to get a dock. The pre-order situation seemed quite similar to how it is now. So, do I think that it's more likely that Amazon ordered more than what they had been told they could, or that Asus had simply underestimated demand once again?

There is another possibility that no one has mentioned. Let's say that the initial online allotment that Asus produced was 1M devices, followed by 1M retail devices, and that there were 10 online retailers offering pre-orders. If they told each of those 10 retailers that they were able to order up to 150,000 devices each, thinking that it would be very unlikely for more than a couple retailers to sell out of pre-orders. Then, one the retailers sold out their allotment, and the rest sell around 100k. If you simply cancel 50k from the order of the retailer that sold out, you now are able to fulfill everyone's orders without impacting retail availability. The problem is that for the second million, none of those are going to online retailers, who have to wait for a portion of the third batch, at some unknown date.

To me, this seems like it could be a reasonable scenario, as Asus would want to encourage online retailers from selling as many units as possible while thinking that it was unlikely that the total demand would be higher than 1M. When the total demand was higher than their capacity, they had to cancel the portion of pre-orders that represented the overage. I would bet that Amazon had more pre-orders than anyone else, if only for the fact that shipping is extremely cheap, they don't charge taxes and are generally very reliable.

Here's the part where I put the blame solidly on Asus, why are they not fulfilling pre-orders for their device while, at the same time, launching this thing in retail stores? They explicitly stated that they were aware of the high demand, and that everyone who ordered before Dec. 1st would get their unit before Dec. 19th. They had the ability to allocate a certain percentage of retail units to the existing pre-orders, instead they chose not to. From Amazon's perspective, if Asus simply cancelled a portion of their order, and didn't give a date for when they would be getting another batch, why would Amazon hold onto those orders. They likely have no idea if/when they'll be getting more units, and are probably a bit apprehensive after the damage already caused by Asus in this situation. As a company that cares about customer service, if a distributor burns you, giving you a black eye, you're probably going to be more careful with them in the future and not simply trust that things will keep moving forward smoothly.