Pokemon Center Implementing a New Queue System, Presumably to Combat Bots!

By: Water Pokémon Master · Posted Posted onFeb 3, 2025 at 12:00 PM · 18 Comments

The Pokemon Center appears to be implementing a new queue system during periods of high traffic. The system first appeared last Thursday during a small restock of TCG products.

Visitors are placed inside a virtual “waiting room,” which is a static page you must keep open without refreshing. Once the system determines it’s your turn, the page will redirect you to the Pokemon Center website.

The Japanese Pokemon Center implemented a queue system a few years ago. It has worked favorably for fans during set releases, although this is also because you can only buy a certain number of booster boxes.

The American system hasn’t been used for a large release yet, so it’s unclear how effectively it will deter bots or allow real customers to purchase product.

As we announced a few weeks ago, our next English set will release on May 30th. We don’t know anything about it yet, but it should be available for preorder on the Pokemon Center website in mid-March.

Currently, we anticipate the set will feature the cards from the Steven’s Metagross ex and Marnie’s Grimmsnarl ex decks, Heat Wave Arena featuring Cynthia’s Garchomp ex, and The Glory of Team Rocket featuring Rocket’s Mewtwo ex.

View thread (18 replies)
I’m not certain I understand how this deters bots and is not just adding them to the queue with everyone else? But anything is better than what’s happened in the drops recently
 
Yeaaaaah, no. This won’t change anything at all.

Shoe stores have a similar system along with lotteries and bots STILL clean ‘em out.

The only thing could actually make a dent in this is pairing your PC account with some form personal identification (preferably a government-issued ID) but nobody seems to want to put something like that in place.
 
now if they could just pair it with ONE purchase of each product in a certain time frame, we'd be golden.

Or do a presale like they do for concert tickets. You sign up, are given a code and when the products are released you enter the site with said code, and then can use said code to save 10 percent or what not. There are dozens of ways to do this, they just don't want to monitor anything
 
The Binder Guy said:
Yeaaaaah, no. This won’t change anything at all.

Shoe stores have a similar system along with lotteries and bots STILL clean ‘em out.

The only thing could actually make a dent in this is pairing your PC account with some form personal identification (preferably a government-issued ID) but nobody seems to want to put something like that in place.
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What about like a verified phone number is required to pre-order?
Just for pre-orders so people buying regular items don't have to put it in.
 
Y’all got far too many SKUs available per set. Focus on producing booster boxes, ETBs, and Ultra Premium Collection to include exclusive promos. All 3 of these products overlap one another and fill each respective type of person in the hobby, which is the collector, the player and the completionist. All these extra products are very unnecessary. Why do we need 6 pack booster bundles, battle decks, 3 pack blisters, multi variant tins, binder collections, figurine collections and individually sleeved single packs. From a manufacturing perspective this is all extremely inefficient especially when you don’t have dedicated packaging facilities specifically for packaging. MPG of Japan and North Carolina needs to print and only print, then they ship to an equally large facility to split the packs across all the product lines. This is the only way to meet current demand other than to do the above suggestion.
 
I am not an expert in any sense on these subjects, but cant they just set up a system that flags orders, at least in large quantities going to the same shipping address?
 
JohnFoster said:
I am not an expert in any sense on these subjects, but cant they just set up a system that flags orders, at least in large quantities going to the same shipping address?
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Their system already does that. However putting a different address bypasses that as many people have multiple addresses including their work address. Only way to mitigate people buying too much is by doing an invite system, but that is painfully slow and difficult to manage properly.
 
They have ALSO implented a new "verification" system that comes up when you just try to navigate to the Pokemon Center website. The "verification" is quite flawed though, as it is blocking a standard chrome browser from accessing the website. How do I know? Because I then loaded Firefox and the site loaded, then loaded the site on Palemoon and again on Edge. Talk about a failure of website programming.
 
Bradachin said:
They have ALSO implented a new "verification" system that comes up when you just try to navigate to the Pokemon Center website. The "verification" is quite flawed though, as it is blocking a standard chrome browser from accessing the website. How do I know? Because I then loaded Firefox and the site loaded, then loaded the site on Palemoon and again on Edge. Talk about a failure of website programming.
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that’s been in place for years
 
Snowy Lilacs said:
now if they could just pair it with ONE purchase of each product in a certain time frame, we'd be golden.

Or do a presale like they do for concert tickets. You sign up, are given a code and when the products are released you enter the site with said code, and then can use said code to save 10 percent or what not. There are dozens of ways to do this, they just don't want to monitor anything
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i mean any effort to combat bots and scalpers is gonna cost them money, and selling out instantly is great for them. i can understand why they’ve been hesitant to despite the goodwill of the community
 
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