Um, its more like ATI didn't come through BECAUSE of places like CompUSA, because ATI did come through, just to CUSA and not the customers. Those who preordered would have had their cards by now if ATI didn't prefer the middle-man to the customer...which is wierd, because you'd think ATI would make more money off of directly selling their cards to the customer. ATI needs to get their cards to the stores, not the online channels of other stores. They aren't gaining new customers by having CUSA sell out these cards online, because its the same people who preordered and were sick of waiting from ATI.
I definitely agree with you here. ATI has some strange business practices (must be the Canadian water). But being a consumer, I'm pretty much at the mercy of big business. If it was up to me, I'd rather have had my $240 pre-order come straight from ATI. But the fact of the matter is that ATI doesn't care about poor little Joe Schmo that pre-ordered from their website. They care about big business.
If I can get the card I want from CUSA and it costs me $70 more to have it today, I'd rather do that then play the waiting game again with ATI. Estimates now put the card shipping mid-march. I pre-ordered on 1/12. That extra $70 is well worth it to me if I can have the card today (and it was still under MSRP, even with overnight delivery) from CUSA rather than wait any longer with ATI.
Either way, I feel ATI is on the losing side here. They couldn't deliver on the X850 XT pre-orders, and it looks like they might not be able to deliver on the X800 XL pre-orders as well. But who knows, this might be their plan to get those pre-orders self-canceled, thus saving them the trouble, but also getting a little more green for their cards, since so many of us did get 30% off a $299 MSRP card...