What Happened To Me During The Thunder Match Gaming Store Grand Opening at Sunway Pyramid

Ten hours and nothing

Before any of you start losing your collective shits and go all keyboard warrior on me, know this. I thought long and hard about whether I want to actually write this article or not but I felt like my story needed to be told. I hope that this article would help in the improvement of any future Thunder Match grand openings (or any store for that matter) in the future by avoiding the mistakes made during this whole debacle.

Warning: This article is going be a long one. I intend to explain every bit of detail as I want to paint a clear picture as best I can as to what exactly happened that night.

I didn’t plan on going to the grand opening initially. I was never the kind of person that would actually go out of my way just to take advantage of a sale, no matter how crazy the discounts were. However this time my editor convinced me that I should go to Thunder Match’s sale because they were selling an ASUS GeForce ROG Strix GTX 1050Ti for an insanely cheap price of RM 299 (normally that particular GPU would retail at around 900 ringgit!). I needed a new GPU anyway so I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to get one.

I couldn’t help but chuckle and shake my head as I wrote the above sentence.

What went down during the grand opening itself was anything but perfect.

Thank you for the heads up Super Daddy

So Thursday came (the day before the grand opening) and I remember going through Twitter that night and came across a picture of a few people already lining up in front of the closed Thunder Match store in Sunway Pyramid, preparing themselves for an overnight stay. This was at 11PM mind you, the day before Thunder Match’s grand opening. My mental alarm bells started wailing as if Quasimodo himself was ringing them and hollering “SANCTUARY!” and I remember swearing loudly like a sailor when I saw the picture and contemplated for close to an hour on whether I’d want to go there and stay in line overnight myself.

Couldn’t find the original tweet but here’s the aforementioned picture

I mean the prospect of me owning a brand new GPU was at stake here! I couldn’t let that opportunity go! So of course I decided to go in line overnight myself at Sunway Pyramid.

I went there with a friend who was gracious enough to drive my idiot self to an empty mall at midnight just so I could buy a goddamn GPU. I even made him walk all the way from the basement parking bay to Thunder Match with me just so that I wouldn’t make a total ass of myself walking around an empty mall with an overnight bag. Eventually I reached the closed Thunder Match store and to my surprise, the line was empty!

False hope

My mind started spinning wildly with questions.

Was I mistaken? Was the picture actually an old picture of a previous Thunder Match store opening?

My heart started pounding with excitement. I was getting a GTX 1050Ti!

All that excitement drained out of my face immediately when I realised that there were already bags (and even sandwiches!) placed in a line, a ‘booking’ attempt by the people who stood in line before me.

My heart sank a little when I saw how many bags, books and sandwiches were there in line. Each driving home, inch by inch, a metaphorical dagger of realisation of me not walking away with a spanking new Strix GTX 1050Ti. I forced myself to remain optimistic however, as there are many other items on sale.

After I said my goodbyes and started mentally counting down the minutes of a daunting 9-hour wait, a few more people came. All wanting a piece of the action. All was fine during the first hour of waiting, until a Sunway Pyramid security guard came around in his Segway like Paul Blart and kicked us out. He told us that we weren’t allowed in the mall after hours and told us to wait outside at the mall entrance until 8.30AM. 

Turns out that the first few people in line were kicked out as well as they were all assembled outside the entrance. Upon seeing me walk out of the mall the elected representative of the group informed me that I was the 21st person in line that night. Bye bye GTX 1050Ti. They were all surprisingly civil and well organised about this whole thing. The group representative, Ed (not his real name) even made a list of who’s getting what during the sale the next morning. Most of the keyboards were already snapped up so feeling utterly defeated I only asked for the ROG Gladius mouse. Even that was for a friend.

A few more people came as the hours went by. Finally, at least 50 people entered their names and their products in the list provided.

The wait was tough. The first few hours went by fine as I had a few gamebooks on my phone to keep me company. When those books were all finished a couple of hours later, in came the challenge of finding a good place to rest or at least get an hour’s shut eye. Started walking around the outside of Sunway Pyramid until I saw a 7-Eleven and luckily had the opportunity of sleeping at one of the tables inside. Some weren’t so lucky. One of the people who waited overnight there slept in a trolley.

Everyone started lining up in front of the mall entrance at around 7.30AM, eagerly awaiting the moment the guards’ll eventually let us all in. When the time finally came to let us in some couldn’t contain themselves and began running to the store.

And that was when the imaginary excrement hit the imaginary fan.

Give or take a hundred people were already lined up in front of the store. We couldn’t believe our eyes. How were these people in line already and how weren’t they kicked out by security like us? Our belongings, the ones we used to ‘book’ our spots were tossed aside. Luckily nothing of mine was lost or broken or there would be hell to pay. Ed tried to make a case with the Thunder Match representative, explaining how we were all there since the night before. The Thunder Match representative, Joe (not his real name) wouldn’t allow us to go to the front of the line, instead told us to hang around while he makes a few calls to presumably Thunder Match HQ.

It was utter chaos. The people who were in line started making noise against us. Luckily there were no physical altercations involved. The atmosphere was expectedly tense nonetheless. An hour later and still no solution was found to our problem. Back and forth negotiations between Ed and Joe was seemingly heading nowhere. Joe was constantly on the phone with his superiors trying to find a way out of this mess.

Dirty and dog tired from waiting for hours last night I decided to walk around in an attempt to escape the madness and to clear my mind. I was too tired to feel angry even. I just wanted this thing to settle ASAP as I wanted my Gladius and go home. In the meantime I took the opportunity to talk to some of the other people from my group who waited overnight. Some of them traveled all the way from Malacca just to catch this crazy sale. Some even traveled all the way from the East Coast with their return tickets ready in their pockets.

After that it was mostly walking around aimlessly as nobody knew what the hell was supposed to happen. Heck, even the staff was clueless and just stood there with blank faces, watching. Everyone was just waiting for Thunder Match to open their blasted store.

Finally, when it was near opening time, Joe called us all up to try and settle this thing once and for all. The conversation between Joe, Ed and the rest of the group was conducted in Mandarin. Confused as all heck I had to rely on translations made the guy next to me. Based on what he said only the first ten people from our group were allowed inside Thunder Match to get the stuff they wanted and that Joe promised the rest of us some sort of compensation. We didn’t know what the compensation would be (neither did Joe as a matter of fact), and that they’d call to let us know what it would be. Physically and mentally exhausted, I and the rest of us (well most of us) begrudgingly accepted Joe and Thunder Match’s offer as we didn’t really have the energy to argue. We filled in our contact details in the list Ed had made earlier and went home empty handed.

I think we all know what happened to Thunder Match after this whole disaster.The public uproar came thick and fast with the overall response being largely negative. People mainly complained about the poor management and how people were allegedly walking out with more than one promo items when the rules clearly stated that a customer can only a single item. They were also furious at how the promo items were quickly sold out before 12PM when Thunder Match’s posters stated that they officially open for business at 12PM. The response was so bad that people began posting a sea of bad, single star reviews that left an abysmal 2.7 star rating on their Facebook page. See for yourself:

Some even went out of their way to call for a boycott on Thunder Match. Much like the outrage caused by Gamers Hideout infamous incident that happened earlier this year.

ANGERY

In hindsight, letting Ed and the first ten people inside to purchase the stuff they wanted was a little unfair to the rest of us who waited the whole night. Sure we got compensation but to wait for a grueling 5 to 10 hours for a frikkin mouse? We deserved to go in there too. At least there wouldn’t be the feeling of putting all that effort in for nothing. It makes sense from Thunder Match’s public relations standpoint as there were already pictures of these guys waiting outside their store the night before floating around social media but boy does it sting for the rest of us.

They even foolishly tweeted me these to which I responded simply.

I LOL’d

They didn’t reply though.

I applaud Thunder Match though for pulling through on their promise of a compensation though. They recently contacted me saying that the ROG Gladius mouse was available for me to purchase at the same discounted price during the Grand Opening. This was accompanied however, with a request that we, the compensated customers, leave a 5 star rating on their Facebook page to help them recover. Sorry Thunder Match. I appreciate the discounted Gladius but I wasted 10 hours waiting so no, this does not warrant a 5 outta me. I’d probably give you guys 2 stars. 3 stars if I’m generous.