Today is Sept. 4th and I still don't have my copy of Privateering.
I'm old school and I like to physically buy things instead of ordering. Not the best idea but it's my contribution to save the local stores...
Official release was supposed to be Aug. 31st and I could find the standard 2CD version + LP only today.
No Deluxe and of course no Super Deluxe. Absolutely useless and offending.
They said they can order the Box for ca. 120 Euros ... Who's gonna pay twice the price to have things 2 weeks taler ?
Will show them next year what I can get for 120 Euros.
I don't understand the commercial strategy. How can the music industry complain if they show no respect to the customers ?
Maybe I won't buy at all their f*** record.
Hello tunnel85,
I too chose to buy mine from a shop rather than on-line. I specifically avoided ordering through the "official" website, MarkKnopfler.com because they had demonstrated such poor service and communication over shutting down the discussion forum there.
So at after work today, September 7th, I was finally able to make it to a shop that said they had both the regular and deluxe versions in stock. I looked though the rack and found no sign of anything by Mark Knopfler - not even an empty bin with a tag. So I asked a clerk and she informed me, "All our CDs are on the shelves. We don't order extra stock that we don't have room for on the display racks. If it's not there, we either didn't get it, or we're sold out."
Fortunately I found another CD I wanted and picked that up or I might have left empty-handed. They had a customer computer kiosk nearby where you can check for their stock of any item and when I typed in Privateering, it told me there are "8 copies at this location".
I approached a different clerk about finding where those 8 copies might be and she said, "Oh, you'll have to ask the cashier to check."
So, I went to the cashier to pay for my other CD and ask her about the Mark Knopfler one as well. She asked me twice how to spell his name and couldn't find anything so I asked her to search by title as I had done. I spelled out P-r-i-v-a-t-e-e-r-i-n-g for her. She watched her screen and then grabbed a piece of paper and made some notes without saying anything.
She then went to see yet another clerk who turned to look at me and smiled and said, "I'll just go look in the back". I said, "There's a deluxe version available too. I'll take that if you've got it."
A minute or two later she returned looking quite pleased and had a copy of Privateering in her hand. "It's 2 CDs," she said. "Is that the deluxe version?"
"No, I replied ruefully. "The deluxe version is 3 CDs."
"Oh. Well this is all we have."
Can you believe it?
The release date here in Canada was September 4. Another store nearby had it on the shelf the day of release, but at this place they seemed completely unaware and had to go digging in the back-room for it - 3 days
after the release date! And nobody it seems, has anything other than the standard 2-CD version.
Of course I bought it, but I don't know how I'm going to get the deluxe version or the bonus tracks unless I now go and place an order on-line!