u/slinky2

Every drop on Pokemon Center brings a swirl of good and bad experiences with the queue & checkout, theories and predictions- some accurate and some not. I'd love to start a conversation about what we know and what we don't know about Pokemon Center to try and increase everyone's chances of beating the bots and having a good experience.

What I know

• Safari on an iPhone automatically refreshes way more than my Ubuntu computer instance. Doing anything but staring at the queue page on your phone (like responding to a text message) almost guarantees you'll lose your spot when you return to Safari.
• Erratic or obsessive behavior on the site before & during the drop will cause your device to be flagged as possibly a bot. Slow and steady.
• Minimal clicking & forward movement once into the site is recommended. No use of the back button or refreshing the page. If leaving your cart, click back on TCG Cards instead of using the back button.

What I want to know

• Specifically how do certain individuals on Discord know about drops? They use words like "loaded" and "going live" as if they have a dashboard of some kind. Some can provide relatively accurate times & item descriptions while others just know "today".
• How are devices blocked from the store once it thinks you're a bot? Is it IP based? browser ID based? What action can you take to get back in line if falsely identified as a bot?
• Is it better to sign into Pokemon Center or checkout as guest? There are seemingly 50/50 mixed reports on which is better. If signing in, do you sign in after you queue or before the queue?
• How long do you have once you're into the site? I've noticed if I hang around long enough I'll get an error and pushed to the back of the line.
• If you use the same credit card but ship to two different locations, will 1 or both of the orders get cancelled? What if they are different credit cards but the same name on both credit cards?
• Others have reported that if you receive an error while in the website, you can open another tab and direct it back to the Pokemon Center and your access will persist. Is this true?
• Obviously the wait time displayed is unreliable. Sometimes taking significantly longer, sometimes surprisingly shorter. What can you extrapolate from watching these times? When it goes for 15 minutes to 20 minutes, why? When it jumps by leaps and bounds, why?

What I've experienced

• I did this last checkout on a VPN to the Netherlands from the US. I wasn't expecting this to work, but I got email confirmation that the order completed. "Bot behavior" must not ALWAYS be related to VPN usage.
• A few times when the site is busted (links not working), manually adjusting the URL to go to places like /cart will work, but I haven't been able to actually check out after CC information is entered using this method.

Or does no one have disposable income to do that right now? I went to my favorite Mexican restaurant for lunch today and noticed they were heavily staffed and clearly prepping. Did it pan out for them? Anyone participate? Just curious in economic indicators.