Criticism
Some criticism comes from the fact that the Nintendo of Europe Stars Catalogue is only available to members in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and later Portugal. Bergsala who is responsible for all Nintendo-related distribution in Scandinavia, closed down Club Nintendo in the region at the end of year 2006 and writes in their website that the reason being it wasn't economically viable to keep Club Nintendo going. Nintendo of Europe's website is notorious for becoming easily overwhelmed by traffic when quantities of the more valuable items are added, which often causes difficulty for customers who are attempting to make purchases. There was also some consternation that very few items were added to the site for an extended period of time, with the frequency of larger batches of non-digital items being added becoming quite rare.
In March 2007 during a test of the new Wii Points purchasing system, 1000 Wii Points accidentally appeared in the stars catalogue for a price of 789 stars. Nintendo of Europe offered anyone who purchased these either 1000 Wii Points or a refund of their stars. In addition, upon the official launch of the Wii Points Cards offer, the website was swamped with traffic, meaning very few people could login and take advantage of the Wii Points trade on offer. The system has also been criticised because the Wii Points Card codes are only available in limited stock, and so it can be hard to get hold of them at times.
At the beginning of June 2007, Nintendo of Europe revealed that starting July 1, 2007, they will make drastic changes to their privacy policy. Any stars that members have earned before then will vanish from their accounts on July 1, 2008, and any stars earned after that date will disappear two years after earning them. Members who choose not to accept the new privacy policy will lose all their stars instantly and have their account locked. Members who registered after the Wii's European launch date, December 8, 2006, are not affected.
Another highly controversial subject is the quality of the rewards, which tend to be far higher in Japan than the other regions.
Read more about this topic: Club Nintendo, Loyalty Program, Europe
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—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)
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—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)