In case you hadn't checked on GS.com, it's spelled out pretty clearly:
http://www.gamestop.com/gs/help/Pre-orders.aspx
For the link-lazy:
[quote name='From GS.com Pre-order section']
Low Price Guarantee
Pre-order any product, and if the price drops before the release date, you will be charged the lower price.
Payment Processing
Your credit card will be charged only when your order is processed. In some cases, we will process your order and authorize your credit card up to 10 days before the release of the product. This allows us to get the product to you faster.
Availability
Occasionally, manufacturers will limit the amount of a product available. If this happens, we will process the online orders in the order in which they were received.
Promotional Items
From time to time, GameStop.com will offer a special promotional item with a pre-order. Due to limited availability, these items are only available while supplies last.
Note: An order cannot be cancelled once the pre-order item or code has been supplied.
Delivery
Orders containing both pre-orders and in-stock merchandise will be broken into separate shipping groups. Each group will be shipped as soon as the merchandise becomes available. Handling charges will apply to each shipping group independently.
In an effort to ship pre-orders as quickly as possible, sometimes we use external resources to “drop ship” merchandise to you directly from the source. This eliminates the time it takes to ship product to our warehouse before shipping it to you. Due to the tight time constraints, some orders will not make it into our drop ship process. Those orders are shipped directly from our warehouse, usually on the following business day.
Some of the order types that will typically miss our drop ship process are:
- Pre-orders received by us too close to the release date. Cut-off dates are normally three or four days in advance of the ship date.
- Postal orders like, P.O. Box, APO/FPO and Value Shipping.
- Pre-orders that fail our credit authorization process.
Pre-order Release Dates
GameStop.com works tirelessly with game publishers to ensure accurate release dates on our site. Occasionally, publishers run into problems during the production of a game and the release date must be changed. Sometimes dates move forward; more often they move back, and frequently they get changed more than once.
If a game is scheduled for release far in the future, the vendor may not even give us a date. In those cases we rely on the collective wisdom of our buying staff to estimate a date based on their knowledge of the industry and the vendor's history.
We guarantee that we will always post the best release date information available at the time of our posting. We know that you want that hot new game yesterday, and we want to be the company that gets it to you quicker than anyone else.
Still have Questions?
Contact us at
[email protected] or call (800) 883-8895. Hours of operation are 8:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m. (CST) Monday through Friday and 8:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. (CST) Saturday and Sunday.[/quote]
Wait until the order is processed and shipped, and when you get it, take it back to the store to return it. Unless there's a dollar amount listed on your invoice for the pre-order bonus, they can't bill you for it.
