On Reddit, a member of OculusVR has given a few explanations of the reasons that have led them to temporarily suspend sales in China, Russia and Ukraine. In the first case due to having detected an excessive resale which is against the policies of Oculus VR, and in the second due to problems arising from a new classification of the product for import in those countries. We have translated the entire message for you and transcribed it below.
Hello everyone,
Since there is a lot of confusion around this particular topic, I am going to clarify it in the hope of eliminating any unnecessary speculation.
China has been left out as we needed to launch a new sales process for the region due to an excess of resale activity. We are finalizing the new process and will have it shortly so that our developers in China can purchase DK2s. Existing valid orders will still be shipped as planned.
Russia and Ukraine have been left out in April, as we have a new product that has new parts and new classifications for import into those countries. It was quite complicated for us and we have to work on some outstanding issues to ensure a safe delivery of our products to our customers in those regions.
There are some other countries not mentioned above that are under embargo. We are forbidden to ship to these countries by law, and we apologize if you can’t get the development kit.
As for the merchandise agents, they are not allowed [suponemos que se refieren a clientes que a su vez reenvían el producto a otros]. Our goal is to make sure that we get our product into the hands of developers around the world safely. If someone uses a merchandise agent we have absolutely no control over the delivery methods, tracking information or security of our product, since they take care of everything until delivering the product to the customer. Any shipment after delivery to the address in our system is also not insured. If a customer resends something and it breaks, or is lost in transit (which happens frequently for tickets we have received in Support) they are not covered and therefore, we cannot replace the damage or loss. The client would go on his own, which is a bad experience. While I understand people who say they will “take the risk”, how do you think they will be upset when they receive a broken product or if it is lost before reaching them? They will have lost a lot of money and will not be able to develop impressive VR content. It’s a loss for everyone.
Our goal is to protect our clients by implementing an appropriate process to reduce/eliminate risk. We want to have as many of our development kits out there with developers as possible. If we turn a blind eye to this, we are doing everyone a disservice. We are trying to raise the level of customer service, and we apologize if some think that our methods put obstacles or barriers, but they know that we only have the best interests of our customers in mind.
We are treading new ground in global manufacturing and logistics with DK2 which is bringing us some headaches. We are working through these exciting challenges and appreciate your continued patience. The good news is that this is only making us stronger for our consumer product launch in the future. We are glad that you are taking this journey with us and we can’t wait to show you what we have in store for you with DK2 and our future products!
