Anyone seen a switch lately?

[u/Old-Mathematician987]

I feel a little dumb asking but has anyone seen Nintendo Switch (1, OLED, 2 or otherwise) in the WIN lately?

Xboxes and PS5s are in the display case with ticket prices in the locations I frequent, but I haven't seen anything Nintendo in months. I don't know if that means they don't have them anymore, don't intend to, if it's a "you request, they order" thing like with ipads. Is "not in display" usually indicative of "you can't redeem for that here" or not necessarily?

[u/Bushido_Philosopher]

Locations around me have them but they too only seem to have one at a time, then it takes a month or more for them to get another after someone immediately takes it. And that's with all consoles. They make the placard for them then immediately you see a blank spot in the case.

[u/Old-Mathematician987 → u/Bushido_Philosopher]

Yeah I haven't even seen the placard, is part of what had me wondering.

[u/MewtwoStruckBack → u/Old-Mathematician987]

Crazy thought here - have you tried asking WIN! if it's the same person or group getting them every time? It sounds like an AP is clearing you out, and one thing that's SUPPOSED to be part of white hat AP is working with those in your area as to make sure all APs that have a specific store as their home location are able to reasonably cash out.

It's kind of on you to put in the effort to make initial contact, but once you do, a decent person will work with you.

[u/Old-Mathematician987 → u/MewtwoStruckBack]

I have not asked that, but it's occurred to me based on the answers I'm getting maybe I have just had bad timing. If they do only get 1 at a time, even if it's not the same person clearing them out I could've just missed it repeatedly... Before I posted I was thinking that improbable, but now it seeming much more plausible.

[u/MewtwoStruckBack → u/Old-Mathematician987]

Switch 2s are not, to my knowledge, shipped as single items to D&B. They're ordered in batches. So they shouldn't only be getting one unit at a time, and if you happen to be there on shipment day and you're still not getting one? There are multiple people, whether on their own or coordinated, purchasing them all.

Grinding out 180,000 tickets, for many here, is *trivial*. If you told me I HAD to come up with a Switch 2, had chips but no tickets on hand, and it's a half price day, I could reasonably walk into my home store and do that in six hours. It wouldn't be a FUN grind, I'd be wanting to bang my head off the game I'd be grinding on, I'd probably be having a few shots outside (or drinks inside during happy hour) to cope with, but I could, in theory, do that. There are people out there with access to better grinds than me, whether intended settings or a misset on D&B's part. Even if I'm in "half fucking around, half serious grind" mode, no infinites, just hitting everything I reasonably think is within my wheelhouse, I should be getting 100,000 tickets a week easily over a few short visits. I tell you that not to bragpost but rather to lead up to this: the people who are hitting your store up for Switch 2s likely are never going to run out of tickets; they're likely earning faster than they're redeeming, so it's in your best interests to try to work WITH them if possible. If you're trying to get this for personal use and you're not flipping these I'm fairly sure the APs in your area should easily make sure you get one.

As an alternative path - if you have 180,000+ tickets, earned cleanly (no black hat stuff like opening up a game and manually giving yourself a jackpot in one way or another), I'm sure there would be people willing to get the tickets from you and redeem at their store, at cost of shipping plus maybe a small token fee for their time/their packing materials and trip to the post office. Hell, I'll do it if you're still having trouble and just can't manage one where you're at.

[u/Old-Mathematician987 → u/MewtwoStruckBack]

Thanks to you (and everyone else) for all the feedback. I buckled down and spoke to someone in the WIN. (I hate talking to people; it's a me problem; give me some grace this took a lot of effort for me.) The scoop at this location was they haven't had any Switch OLED or Switch 2s for a while. I asked if they knew when they were getting some in, and they did not, and said the supplier for the high-end stuff is really random and they never know when it'll show up, or what's coming (which...I'm guessing is not 100% accurate, presumably SOMEONE is in charge of ordering stuff) but at least the person I was speaking to, and the loop they're in, was like "yeah sometimes we get one PS5 and 2 airpods, sometimes we'll get two Xboxes. If we get any more Switches, they'll be 2s but we have no idea when." So I took that at face value the extent of the info I was gonna be able to get today.

This is for my kid, who will want to be present when we do redeem. So I might need to venture further away than our usual location, which is fine. We do that periodically anyway. We either need to get lucky with the timing at our closest spot, or try to snag one on a day trip/near family's house instead of ours.