As my annual subscription sets to expire for my Hasbro Pulse membership, I briefly considered whether or not the $50.00 annual membership truly held any value to me. In doing so, I came up with this pros and cons list, which I thought I would share with you.
First off, what is Hasbro Pulse Premium? Basically, it's an annual subscription fee you pay which provides you with free shipping, early access to products, first access to restocked items, season promotions and discounts, access to exclusive Hasbro Pulse content and events, and what they call, "other perks". So let's break this down by category.
FREE SHIPPING
Depending on how much you buy, this perk alone can easily pay for your membership. For me, I suppose it did within the first day. I signed up for Premium leading up to Pulsecon 2020, and during that event, I purchased multiple items of varying sizes, which shipping would easily have covered the cost of the membership. To that aspect, yes, there is value here.
EARLY ACCESS TO PRODUCTS
With the exception of 2020's Pulsecon, here is where the value of this option failed miserably. While I did indeed receive early access e-mails to many items, the problem with this was that I don't sit around all day watching my e-mails come in. I'm certainly not looking for them from Hasbro at any given moment.
What essentially kept happening was that while I was getting these e-mails, I didn't see them until several hours, if not days later. As such, it didn't matter if I had the opportunity for early access. I never knew when an e-mail was coming, so I missed them all. Even on ones I may have happened to catch early, the result was always the same when I clicked on the link, "SOLD OUT".
FIRST ACCESS TO RESTOCKED ITEMS
Somewhat in conjunction with the above, telling me an item has been restocked is relatively useless if I'm not watching my e-mails twenty-four hours a day. Again, I saw little to no value from this aspect of the Premium membership.
ACCESS TO EXCLUSIVE HASBRO PULSE CONTENT AND EVENTS
All the events held by Hasbro were on Youtube, which anyone can access just by going to the link - Which they had right on the front page of their website leading up to every single one. There was nothing exclusive about any of the content or events they offered. Further, these events were typically held in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday when most people are at work. So again, this is useless to your average person.
SEASON PROMOTIONS AND DISCOUNTS
Really? Where? I never saw any promotions or discounts during my year of being a member.
OTHER PERKS
What a joke that they even included this in the description. Please, Hasbro. Tell me what these "other perks" were.
TO CONTINUE
So obviously the majority of the perks for being a member noted above were all but useless to me. However, in the off chance that I did place an order, there was another caveat that really hindered the value of this plan, and that was the fact that nothing I pre-ordered shipped before other online retailers, or even physical brick and mortar stores received the products.
Despite pre-orders for Flint, Lady Jaye, Zartan and Cobra Infantry, I found all of these via other avenues, and ended up canceling my orders. While you would think direct from the source would be the fastest route, this was anything but the case.
BOTTOM LINE
I'd rather just save the fifty dollars in the future. If I'm going to miss out of 99% of purchase opportunities because they sell out within minutes. Why bother? If I do manage to place an order, I find it well in advance of Hasbro shipping it. So again, why bother?
Using the exclusive Snake Supreme Cobra Commander as an example, that figure was forty dollars from Hasbro Pulse. With the fifty dollar Premium membership, I essentially paid $90.00 for it. However, I could have just as easily gotten one off of ebay, for sixty, and saved thirty bucks.
At the end of the day, unless you're buying something from them frequently, and taking full advantage of the shipping, and you're willing to wait extended periods to get what you bought, there's simply no reason to buy a Premium membership from Hasbro Pulse.
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You would think Hasbro would ship their own product before other retailers, but no. Maybe if everyone cancels their subscription, they'll change their processes. Customers vote with their wallets.
ReplyDeleteYou would definitely think that, and that's probably the biggest disappointment of the whole thing. Missing pre orders, that's on me. But come on. Ship the stuff, and ship it fast!
DeleteUsually I purchase from Hasbro's ebay store. They have about the same stock and free shipping. If they were the first to reliably get product I'd consider it but I've found stuff in stores most of the time before Hasbro Pulse had it. Most of the Iron Man Legends set was the exception this year.
ReplyDeleteBoggles the mind how the people selling the toys don't ship them faster.
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