I agree with what you are saying in a broad sense but for me this has happened too often with EB pre-orders for me now to be just coincidence. I do everything to ensure success for the pre-order: 1) ordered early 2) go into store to put money down for pre-order (which I find has become mandatory for most recent pre-orders) with my up to date edge platinum card account that I basically got just for these exclusives 3) check with the store before and then after the reported release and am always told "don't worry, we'll call you" unless the item happens to be in the store at the very moment I go in and I am lucky enough to grab the pre-order then. Or the item is not as hot a seller and I have in these cases gotten an eventual call, this is rare however.
The issue remains for me more so that it seems a lot of times stock is put out into the store and pre-orders go unfilled and ultimately missed by people who take the above steps. I know for a fact this happened when I pre-ordered Bespin Leia as I went into the store to see exactly one on the shelf. When I took it to the counter to ask about my pre-order, the manager, after hunting for my pre-order in drawers and boxes behind the counter, told me "oh this is your pre-order". So had I not gone exactly then I would have missed this one as well. Other times I have just flat out missed the item as it has been sold away before I have gotten there. The easy way to explain this to a customer is to say we didn't get enough to fill pre-orders as this is almost impossible to disprove, but as with my Bespin Leia this wasn't the case as they had put it out on the floor to be sold and I would have been none the wiser had I not gone in when I did.
So, while recognizing that these are usually more limited stock it doesn't for me explain how pre-orders go unfilled on a regular basis, unless truly they got 2 in and most pre-orders went unfilled, which is something I recognize can happen but I also know from experience this is not always the case. I've never bought a video game from them but I suspect they have been doing video game pre-orders for years and they should have had all the bugs ironed out by now in terms of reliable pre-order system for any type of merchandise.
End rant
